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Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#111

Post by dvt »

rdiddly wrote: post #109
patmcc wrote: post #15

Here's the problem: go ahead and ask a bunch of different people what they want/expect their shuffle/random button to do and you'll get a bunch of different answers. 1. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, with replacement (same song twice in a row is possible). 2. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, without replacement (each song is removed from the list once played). 3. I want it to "seem" random (…

Take that comment almost verbatim, and turn it into a menu in the options/config area, and you can have my money!

I love this idea so much, I made it an issue on a the Lofi repo -- a somewhat popular Spotify player I built: https://github.com/dvx/lofi/issues/37

I'll work on it when I can get a bit of free time.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#112

Post by gothroach »

zamalek wrote: post #94

Because random doesn't look/seem random to humans. The problem is that these players aren't randomizing the order of the songs, they are randomizing the next chosen song. You'll want to shuffle the entire playlist at once; or use a player that attempts to avoid this issue (Winamp would let you bias the RNG to choose songs further away from the current one, for example). If you decide on the latter, there is always th…

I believe the issue he's describing is not how random the playlists seem, but rather that it randomizes a list once and uses that as the order instead of each time the list is played. I've definitely seen that behavior in some music players.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#113

Post by perfmode »

patmcc wrote: post #15

Here's the problem: go ahead and ask a bunch of different people what they want/expect their shuffle/random button to do and you'll get a bunch of different answers. 1. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, with replacement (same song twice in a row is possible). 2. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, without replacement (each song is removed from the list once played). 3. I want it to "seem" random (…

the random function in itunes employs heuristics like this. specifically, it avoids multiple songs by same artist in a row.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#114

Post by Nydhal »

rdiddly wrote: post #109
patmcc wrote: post #15

Here's the problem: go ahead and ask a bunch of different people what they want/expect their shuffle/random button to do and you'll get a bunch of different answers. 1. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, with replacement (same song twice in a row is possible). 2. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, without replacement (each song is removed from the list once played). 3. I want it to "seem" random (…

Take that comment almost verbatim, and turn it into a menu in the options/config area, and you can have my money!

Users want more control. Take this idea apply it to what shows up on your favorite social network feed/timeline.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#116

Post by magduf »

This has little to do with music, but as an example of how a program has a "random" setting that doesn't make much sense, my KDE rotating background I've found has a really annoying implementation: Suppose I give it 2 directories full of photos, one of those containing 1000 photos, and the other containing only 1. It'll show that 1 photo half the time, because it's randomly selecting between the directories first, and then selecting among the photos in that directory. It should be selecting randomly between all 1001 photos, but that's not how it works.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#118

Post by rdiddly »

dvt wrote: post #111
rdiddly wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take that comment almost verbatim, and turn it into a menu in the options/config area, and you can have my money!

I love this idea so much, I made it an issue on a the Lofi repo -- a somewhat popular Spotify player I built: https://github.com/dvx/lofi/issues/37 I'll work on it when I can get a bit of free time.

Even better, heh heh!

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#119

Post by gervu »

mikeash wrote: post #80
patmcc wrote: post #15

Here's the problem: go ahead and ask a bunch of different people what they want/expect their shuffle/random button to do and you'll get a bunch of different answers. 1. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, with replacement (same song twice in a row is possible). 2. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, without replacement (each song is removed from the list once played). 3. I want it to "seem" random (…

Further complicating things, lots of people will say they want 1 or 2, but really want one of the others, because they don’t really understand what randomness looks like. Lots of music players started out with true randomness and then dialed it back because people complained that it wasn’t very random.

Because users never wanted mathematical randomness. They wanted variety.

Not that saying "random" is wrong, but users mostly mean it in a colloquial sense, while programmers are apt to interpret it in a technical sense. But one leads to math.urandom() and the other to shuffle algorithms.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#120

Post by jraph »

magduf wrote: post #116

This has little to do with music, but as an example of how a program has a "random" setting that doesn't make much sense, my KDE rotating background I've found has a really annoying implementation: Suppose I give it 2 directories full of photos, one of those containing 1000 photos, and the other containing only 1. It'll show that 1 photo half the time, because it's randomly selecting between the directories first, an…

This should get fixed. Have you reported this on bugs.kde.org? People are very friendly there.
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