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How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

engineering.atspotify.com

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Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#31

Post by kubanczyk »

Bewelge wrote: post #26
Akronymus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have had the (conspiracy) theory for a while that this is by design. Kept happening to me on an account where I've disabled watch-history. Now I'm watching on an account where it's enabled and it hasn't happened even once. And it's been months since I switched. Actually not sure if it's even that far fetched. Making the logged-out-experience worse on purpose is something all the big internet firms do.

But... You've asked YT not to remember the previous videos, and it doesn't: LGTM.

There could be advanced implementations (like with the remembered passwords, where YT would store a list of seeded hashes of your viewed videos). But they are that: advanced implementations, that impose an extra cost.

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#32

Post by Akronymus »

Bewelge wrote: post #26
Akronymus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have had the (conspiracy) theory for a while that this is by design. Kept happening to me on an account where I've disabled watch-history. Now I'm watching on an account where it's enabled and it hasn't happened even once. And it's been months since I switched. Actually not sure if it's even that far fetched. Making the logged-out-experience worse on purpose is something all the big internet firms do.

I have watch history enabled and still get the loops all the time.

I even went so far to seek out a website that does it for me, and which I set up as a bookmark https://youtube-playlist-randomizer.bitbucket.io/

Altough, seems like the site is now broken

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#33

Post by prawn »

yellow_lead wrote: post #8
airstrike wrote: post #7

I 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.

You can use "song radio" to get a mix of new material and favourited songs that relate to a song, album or artist. It's even been given a prominent icon if you're using Spotify via Car Play or similar.

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#34

Post by tjoff »

taneliv wrote: post #17
theshrike79 wrote: post #3

This 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.

Back in the 90s, when portable CD players were still a thing, I had one. It had a toggle for random play. It indeed apparently played the tracks at random. By random I mean random, not shuffle. It would play the same track multiple times during a listening session. For example tracks in order like 2, 2, 7, 8, 7, ... I actually liked that. If memory serves, it would stop playing after it had played each track at least…

Hah, that reminds me of Spotify. If you had shuffle on and it happened to play the last song it would stop playing, because it was the last song in the playlist ...

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#35

Post by prawn »

low_tech_love wrote: post #14

Not so related, but I actually like Spotify’s algorithm for suggesting new music a lot. Currently my daily routine for discovering new music is 1) pick an album that has something to do with what I want, 2) start the last song in the album, 3) skip it. It works pretty well!

I think this gives you similar material to the Song Radio functionality. You could use Album Radio or Artist Radio as a shortcut. I use these and Discover Weekly to discover a lot of new tracks. I know some people don't find discovery via Spotify to be useful at all, but like you, I think it's excellent. I've come across thousands of new tracks, and their strike rate for suggestions is generally very high.

It might help that my bar for favouriting a track is as background noise for the office or around the house rather than purely 10/10 killer desert island tracks.

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#36

Post by panxyh »

rob74 wrote: post #20

Ok, so this article proves that they know how to do it, but they seem to have forgotten over the intervening 9 years - according to some, the shuffle function now prefers similar songs to "keep the vibe", but according to the Spotify support pages, that's a "smart shuffle" feature, and I don't have that because I'm too cheap for the paid plan. Anyway, shuffle should play the songs in a playlist in random order, but m…

Winamp had it right.

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#37

Post by PetitPrince »

xjay wrote: post #19
theshrike79 wrote: post #3

This 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.

Rob Pardo (Blizzard, World of Warcraft (2004)) said they decided to model randomness after how players thought it worked. > ..at least once a week, a developer would come to my office, and say "the random number generator is broken, we need to look at it."--It's because they hit a streak. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhC0NaB6ock&t=2343s He shares more details about game design choices in the video.

Video games are rife with randomness manipulation.

- X-Com 2 lies in favor of the playing when displaying a chance of hitting of 85% [ https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/jake-solomon-explains-t... ]

- Baldur's Gate 3 "Karmic Dice" will prevent streaks of very high or lows rolls

- Tetris games doesn't use Math.random for piece distribution. Most modern Tetris (like Tetris Effect) uses Fischer-Yates with 7 pieces (in the community we call 7-bag) or 14 pieces (it avoids repetition "at the seam" of a bag). The Tetris game I like the most (Tetris the Grand Master) uses a history system (the chance of receiving a recently distributed piece is heavily reduced; it's less predictable than 7-bag). IIRC even classic NES Tetris has a repetition avoidance system.

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#38

Post by benjijay »

airstrike wrote: post #7

I 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...

Around a decade ago, the 'radio based on' RATM's Killing In The Name was a good mix of everything, because of the push for that as Christmas no. 1, it suddenly had a lot of people listening to it who regularly had their tastes in all sorts of other genres. It was quite a fun bit of whiplash to go RATM > SOAD > Dolly Parton > Radiohead > The Kinks and so on

Almost felt like a little 'hack' to get a broader selection of suggestions for a few years (though still largely mainstream stuff)

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#39

Post by Nullabillity »

xjay wrote: post #19
theshrike79 wrote: post #3

This 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.

Rob Pardo (Blizzard, World of Warcraft (2004)) said they decided to model randomness after how players thought it worked. > ..at least once a week, a developer would come to my office, and say "the random number generator is broken, we need to look at it."--It's because they hit a streak. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhC0NaB6ock&t=2343s He shares more details about game design choices in the video.

A shuffled deck of cards is still random, even if the probabilities of each card draw aren't independent.

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#40

Post by h1fra »

rob74 wrote: post #20

Ok, so this article proves that they know how to do it, but they seem to have forgotten over the intervening 9 years - according to some, the shuffle function now prefers similar songs to "keep the vibe", but according to the Spotify support pages, that's a "smart shuffle" feature, and I don't have that because I'm too cheap for the paid plan. Anyway, shuffle should play the songs in a playlist in random order, but m…

And they also push songs you recently liked more often.
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