How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)
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How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)
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Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)
#2> Let’s go back to our users who have also fallen victims to Gambler’s fallacy. If you just heard a song from a particular artist, that doesn’t mean that the next song will be more likely from a different artist in a perfectly random order.
Wait no, it does, right? Since we are not doing random independent events, but taking things out off a finite set. Going back to the colors, if there are 4 green and 4 not-green, there's a 50% chance that the first song is green. But if the first song is green, doesn't that mean that there's now a 3/7, or 43% chance, that the second song is green? And 57% that it's NOT green?
At the extreme, if I have a single song of My Chemical Romance among 10 songs, and it plays first, I expect MCR not to play again (until the list resets, the algorithm describes a finite set, not a rolling one).
Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)
#3This is one of my favourite things about psychology, perception and programming.
When people say they want to "randomly shuffle a playlist", they really don't want that. They want the perception of randomness, but _true_ random doesn't abide by rules.
If you're actually random, there is a probability that it might just play all the songs straight through. Or just pick songs by a single artist back-to-back.
Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)
#4Supposedly, the "pros" use a combination of one-step key shifts, similar tempos, and slowly ascending "energy" (which I've never found a good definition of) to pick the next song. Key-finding algorithms don't seem to be particularly accurate from what I have heard of.
Ideally, you'd use this, plus the year and metadata about whatever microgenre. Use the radio adage of "don't hit me with a brick after you tickle me with a feather."
Occasionally do a "two from Band X" or "three from the year NNNN." I would probably weight the microgenre in the metadata by how rare it is: "rock" isn't particularly descriptive as compared to "doom rock" or "Southern rock."
Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)
#5> Let’s go back to our users who have also fallen victims to Gambler’s fallacy. If you just heard a song from a particular artist, that doesn’t mean that the next song will be more likely from a different artist in a perfectly random order. Wait no, it does, right? Since we are not doing random independent events, but taking things out off a finite set. Going back to the colors, if there are 4 green and 4 not-green,…
When they say "more likely from a different artist" they don't mean "more likely than before your last song" but rather that the probability that it is a different artist is higher than the artist last played (which is what the average person likely expects from their shuffle)
If we're shuffling the set of my liked songs, and 90% of my liked songs are by Taylor Swift, even after hearing 3 of her songs back-to-back on shuffle, chances are I'm hearing her again next
Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)
#6This is one of my favourite things about psychology, perception and programming. When people say they want to "randomly shuffle a playlist", they really don't want that. They want the perception of randomness, but _true_ random doesn't abide by rules. If you're actually random, there is a probability that it might just play all the songs straight through. Or just pick songs by a single artist back-to-back.
I want all songs truly randomized once, then playing in that order.
Sadly youtube just picks the next one based on the current ones ID + some seed, so it constantly gets stuck in loops
Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)
#7I actually just wish Spotify stop spamming me the very same songs and artists over and over in virtually any "made for airstrike" radio / playlist.
Give me "NOT made for airstrike", please. I often want to start a radio off a song precisely because I'm trying to find new songs that go with that one, not so I can have an excuse to unironically listen to "More Than This" for the 20th time this week...
Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)
#8I actually just wish Spotify stop spamming me the very same songs and artists over and over in virtually any "made for airstrike" radio / playlist. Give me "NOT made for airstrike", please. I often want to start a radio off a song precisely because I'm trying to find new songs that go with that one, not so I can have an excuse to unironically listen to "More Than This" for the 20th time this week...
It seems like the discover weekly playlist does a better job at showing new songs, but you only get that once a week of course, and without any genre control.
Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)
#9I actually just wish Spotify stop spamming me the very same songs and artists over and over in virtually any "made for airstrike" radio / playlist. Give me "NOT made for airstrike", please. I often want to start a radio off a song precisely because I'm trying to find new songs that go with that one, not so I can have an excuse to unironically listen to "More Than This" for the 20th time this week...
It seems like the discover weekly playlist does a better job at showing new songs, but you only get that once a week of course, and without any genre control.
There are also genre-based playlists and a release radar.
Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)
#10This is one of my favourite things about psychology, perception and programming. When people say they want to "randomly shuffle a playlist", they really don't want that. They want the perception of randomness, but _true_ random doesn't abide by rules. If you're actually random, there is a probability that it might just play all the songs straight through. Or just pick songs by a single artist back-to-back.
> When people say they want to "randomly shuffle a playlist", they really don't want that.
Same in games. "I had an 80% chance to hit and didn't" is a perfect example.