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How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

engineering.atspotify.com

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Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#61

Post by at_a_remove »

troupo wrote: post #12
at_a_remove wrote: post #4

Supposedly, 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 wi…

It's almost impossible to define those microgenres per song because the metadata for music is shit :) Spotify does try to do it, but it's not an exact science: https://everynoise.com From https://everynoise.com/EverynoiseIntro.pdf --- start quote --- There are other ways to plot music genres, of course, than the one used by the map at any given time. We use 10 dimensions internally, and two completely independent mea…

Oh, yeah, it's messy. Still, I was thinking MusicBrainz for some of it.

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#62

Post by Jiocus »

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…

I'm a paying user so I can't speak about the free Spotify experience, but..

Spotify will only repeat a song during shuffle if you also activate repeat. It will also repeat a song if you actually added the song twice or more to said playlist. You can try it out by shuffling a playlist+deactivate repeat then check which songs have been queued from start to finish.

Smart Shuffle -despite the name- is more a playlist function than a shuffle function. It's like the Radio playlists but with the songs interspersed temporarily in your own playlist. Note that these songs were not already in your playlist - so they do not repeat unless you activate repeat.

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#63

Post by king_geedorah »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #29

The only thing I really want is for albums to never shuffle. The number of times I've started listening to an album in shuffle-mode unintentionally, then only realised by the 3rd track that plays, by which time the playthrough is ruined and I have to just listen to a different album altogether...

More than a few times I’ve wished that starting the first track of an album from that album’s page would automatically turn off shuffle if I had it on. Would be a nice setting to have at least.

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#64

Post by traverseda »

qsort wrote: post #59
traverseda wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also specific physical shuffling techniques used in physical magic the gathering games, in order to distribute mana more "evenly".

Yeah, but those are cheating, and it's not particularly easy to cheat in that specific way. In a high level match, whenever you shuffle your deck, your opponent can (and in fact is required to) also shuffle it, and they're the last to touch it. Cheaters, like in any game, tend to look for methods that maximize the combination of impact and plausible deniability. Marked sleeves, sleight of hand (pun very much intended…

It can also be used in friendly games, where everyone is aware of it.

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#65

Post by mitsu_at »

gosub100 wrote: post #52
PetitPrince wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

there was a whole HN post about the Tetris RNG a few months back. I'm too lazy to search rn but it might be worth a read for others.

previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20872110 - Sep 2019 (41 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37107346 - Aug 2023 (16 comments)

Re: How to Shuffle Songs? (2014)

#66

Post by winternett »

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…

Spotify designtes songs that play that way because it's a casino rigged against playing unknown and independent artists. Each time a song is played, Spotify has to pay royalties, by steering money to artists that buy spotify ads, and to major labels, they get major kickbacks.

If they paid indie artists properly, their operational budget would be much lower. Payola is the real reason why music doesn't play randomly almost anywhere anymore. It's even the case with many app music players that you download in app stores, the whole music industry is skewed to favor just a few well known and industry planted artists under the hood. And it's bent on getting worse..

If you hear an already popular TikTok song playing in the supermarket or at a gas station, it's literally driving royalties up for the involved artist. It's also why you rarely hear new music from small artists, and why Taylor Swift dominates news media every time she scratches her nose.

If you are regularly featured on the front page of YouTube, Spotify, and on CNN.Com, you dominate streaming now, and nobody else can get that spot without being backed by major money.

This is why I back up and always carry my own personal music collection. Streaming now is a generically engineered and controlled repetitive hellspot for me without real choice.

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