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Reminds me of the old iTunes shuffle thing. When it was first introduced it was actually random but too many people complained it was broken when they heard the same artist multiple times in a row so they rewrote it as a shuffle algorithm that would feel more random than actual random.
Just goes to show, we don't actually want random, we want variety.
There are two basic ways of doing "random" songs:
The strategies are different, but I'd argue that they're equally "random."
I've got a cheap Chinese aftermarket head unit in my car that uses strategy #1, and it's mildly infuriating.
Yeah, but all modern music platforms use a more advanced random, where it will avoid putting two different songs by the same artist in a row for example. But it's still based on the second strategy you wrote.
Reminds me of an article I read long time ago of the need in computer games to tweak percentage chance of success and failure, because if it is true as presented 80% success rate players think it should be "almost always" and complain when one fifth of attempts fail.
Me when the weather app says 80% chance of rain, so I go everywhere with an umbrella but it's overcast all day long. Then it says 15% and I get rained on while walking to the store.
I'm never going to learn.
I found out recently that those percentages actually mean 80% of the local AREA would have rain and 20% would not. Meaning if there is a chance of rain in your town at all it’s likely raining somewhere even if it’s just a tiny drop or two.
So if you don’t want to get wet at all bring an umbrella if the chance is over 0%.
Source: was talking to a meteorologist about this exact thing.
Well rain chance is a compound probability it's the probability that it will or will not rain multiplied by the percent of land hit with rain. Like if 50% of an area will be hit and there's an 80% chance it will rain the number the weather Channel will give you is 40%
Chance of rain is calculated based on two things: Meteorologists' educated guess on the chance of rain, multiplied by the area that will receive rain, in the event it does rain.
It’s a big complaint for new players to Baldurs gate 3. People think a 95% chance to hit won’t fail but it does sometimes. Just the luck of the dice.
'drop rates' are the same thing. 10% chance doesn't mean you will see it drop if you run a mission or defeat that boss ten times.
Or thinking that if you didn't get the drop in 9 attempts, you're practically guaranteed it in the next attempt.
Nope, still 1 in 10 chance.
In most simple written RNG calculations, past failures do not guarantee future success.
I believe some games will keep a tally of failures and award a successful loot after x failures to avoid frustrating players.
There was a huge fight about this on The Battle for Wesnoth
Same thing happened with the iPhone shuffle. People complained it wasn't "random enough" and would often end up calling members of the same family and/or household in a row. So they rewrote that algorithm too.
Wait, what?! There's a call a random person feature?
Those were the best days of Apple. Steve Jobs literally titled the feature "Less Random".
It’s not just about not wanting random, but randomness is actually very hard to create. Every random number is actual pseudo random
Some basic breakdowns of this concept:
https://slate.com/technology/2022/06/bridle-ways-of-being-excerpt-computer-randomness.html
The problem modern computers have with randomness is that it doesn’t make mathematical sense. You can’t program a computer to produce true randomness—wherein no element has any consistent, rule-based relationship to any other element—because then it wouldn’t be random. There would always be some underlying structure to the randomness, some mathematics of its generation, which would allow you to reverse-engineer and re-create it. Ergo: not random.
Kid friendly version:
Every random number is actual pseudo random
No, there are true random sources in a computer. Any outside input can be used to generate randomness. Mostly user input, but temperature fluctuations can work as well, if the sensor precision is high enough.
Also the argument is only correct on a technical level for PRNGs. Choose a 65535 sided dice and make the instructions a thousand steps long and you'll have a pretty hard time to deduce the instructions from the generated numbers. Not to mention how long the list of numbers needs to be for the attacker to start guessing.
For the purpose of shuffling a playlist pseudo random is indistinguishable from truly random in all the ways that matter anyway.
Wait until he finds out DJ X just plays the playlists from Spotify curators and he isn't really keeping track of what you skipped.
I don’t know where you heard that but it’s not correct.
https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/02/how-to-shuffle-songs/
I didn't hear it anywhere, its personal experience. Spotify straight up isn't shuffling any of my older liked music. Everytime I hit shuffle it always ends up localized around recently saved music and it never changes. Moreover, that's a blogpost from a decade ago. Spotify changes stuff constantly. I seriously doubt that is the same algorithm they're using now. ESPECIALLY considering they've introduced 'Smart Shuffle' which doesn't only shuffle music you have saved but adds completely new music into the mix as well. That and Spotifys overall quality control has dropped drastically in the past decade.
I've got thousands of liked songs and I get a nice variety of old and recent stuff. From last month to as old as 8 years ago. Sometimes I get too many songs from the same band, sure, but when you've got 50-100 songs from the same band liked, that's bound to happen
Yeah I've got like 8000 and there have been times when it feels like it's focusing on newly added stuff, but older stuff definitely does pop up and I feel like it's a pretty good mix. 90% of the time I've just got my whole library on shuffle unless I'm actively looking for new stuff to add.
Personal experience aka anecdotal evidence aka fucking useless
Especially when they state it like it’s fact in the title and then can’t back it up at all.
The shuffle button does it's thing every time you activate it. I believe, anecdotally, that it uses whatever song is playing or selected as a seed to build the random queue.
Try this, select a song and press Shuffle. When it gets to a song you don't want to hear, skip to a song you want to hear and toggle Shuffle off and on.
Good to know, but it would be even better if it just shuffled the playlist you are listening to instead amaright?
But you can make it actually random by doing this:
Now you have truly random shuffle
I'm pretty sure this is wrong. From what I understand, automix just blends together the ending and beginning of the two songs. For example if there's silence at the end of one song, or 'compatible' music, the 'ai' will try to smooth out the transition like a dj would while making a mix.
Edit: yup, that's what it is https://support.spotify.com/ca-en/article/tracks-transitions/
Turn off* cross play.
That will give more randomness, but I still get a bunch of songs on repeat in a 3K song playlist.
Annoying.
I doubt it. True random shuffle play is rare, because humans don't understand the chaos of true random generation, we see patterns in it and assume it's not random.
A truly random shuffle can play the same song twice. A truly random shuffle can play multiple songs from the same artist in a row. In the fullness of time all of these will happen with a true random shuffle.
Nothing does that these days. Nearly everything "random" is algorithmically engineered to be less random so it feels more random to humans.
You can definitely make a truly random shuffle that doesn’t play the same song twice within a gap of ten songs.
You just make a list of all the song IDs that aren’t in the last ten played, and grab an item at a random index.
Randomness is a texture not a shape. Dice are random despite only being able to present six outcomes.
A truly random shuffle can play the same song twice. A truly random shuffle can play multiple songs from the same artist in a row. In the fullness of time all of these will happen with a true random shuffle. Nothing does that these days.
Tidal does and it's annoying af.
now I wish for a more nuanced configed shuffle because I totally love having a few songs from the same artist back to back but not the same one.
A truly random walk through a playlist might choose the same song twice in a row. A truly random shuffle would only have each entry appear once and you'd have to play past the end of the shuffle to hear a song repeat.
Shuffle uses a limited list that rarely gets updated, but not just the 100 most recent ones. You can force it refresh by turning off shuffle and force closing the app.
Hit the shuffle button twice to turn on Smart Shuffle. It will throw some brand new songs into the playlist shuffle.
It is shit like this that made me get back into buying my own music.