4 ms·

Shuffle is great for playlists, but terrible for albums I just wish shuffle was truly random, but it seems to favor tracks with the (edit- got this mixed up) l

by tomc1985 5y ago

Shuffle is great for playlists, but terrible for albums I just wish shuffle was truly random, but it seems to favor tracks with the (edit- got this mixed up) lowest payout. I had the same track repeated several times to me in a few hours, in a playlist of several hundred tracks

ibejoeb 5y ago
> it seems to favor tracks with the highest payout Why would it do that? Wouldn't it optimize for the lowest per-stream rate?
- tomc1985 5y ago
  You're right, I had my wires crossed.
bumbledraven 5y ago
When you listen to 60 songs from a shuffled playlist of 300 songs, the likelihood of hearing the same song 3 or more times is approximately 29%. (Quick simulation: https://play.golang.org/p/2RNADWRQx4h https://play.golang.org/p/2RNADWRQx4h) This is related to the Birthday Paradox. EDIT: Disregard this. I was thinking of shuffling as repeatedly choosing songs uniformly at random with replacement from the playlist, but commenters reminded me that shuffling shouldn't work that way. I found an open issue about this: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Mac/Shuffle-should-not-repeat-individual-songs/td-p/4960511 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Mac/Shuffle-should-...: "In a playlist of mine that is more than 6 hours long, shuffle often plays songs twice or three times within 30 minutes."
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Sure, hearing one track a few extra times I could accept. But it happens a lot. And it seems to favor certain artists. I am well acquainted with the properties of randomness and what I've seen suggests some kind of weighting system.
- setpatchaddress 5y ago
  shuffle != random
setpatchaddress 5y ago
What you actually want is a true shuffle, where the entire set of songs is shuffled like a deck of cards, so you don’t get repeats. This is what iTunes does, to the best of my knowledge.
Kiro 5y ago
https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/02/28/how-to-shuffle-songs/ https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/02/28/how-to-shuffle-...
- discardedrefuse 5y ago
  This is from 2014.
discardedrefuse 5y ago
Can confirm. I usually shuffle play my "liked songs" (which has nearly 1000 songs) and lately the same group of 40 or so songs play over and over. It's terrible.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  That's exactly what I witnessed: a subset of the playlist receiving nearly all the attention

ibejoeb 5y ago

> it seems to favor tracks with the highest payout Why would it do that? Wouldn't it optimize for the lowest per-stream rate?

tomc1985 5y ago
You're right, I had my wires crossed.

bumbledraven 5y ago

When you listen to 60 songs from a shuffled playlist of 300 songs, the likelihood of hearing the same song 3 or more times is approximately 29%. (Quick simulation: https://play.golang.org/p/2RNADWRQx4h https://play.golang.org/p/2RNADWRQx4h) This is related to the Birthday Paradox. EDIT: Disregard this. I was thinking of shuffling as repeatedly choosing songs uniformly at random with replacement from the playlist, but commenters reminded me that shuffling shouldn't work that way. I found an open issue about this: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Mac/Shuffle-should-not-repeat-individual-songs/td-p/4960511 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Mac/Shuffle-should-...: "In a playlist of mine that is more than 6 hours long, shuffle often plays songs twice or three times within 30 minutes."

tomc1985 5y ago
Sure, hearing one track a few extra times I could accept. But it happens a lot. And it seems to favor certain artists. I am well acquainted with the properties of randomness and what I've seen suggests some kind of weighting system.
setpatchaddress 5y ago
shuffle != random

setpatchaddress 5y ago

What you actually want is a true shuffle, where the entire set of songs is shuffled like a deck of cards, so you don’t get repeats. This is what iTunes does, to the best of my knowledge.

Kiro 5y ago

https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/02/28/how-to-shuffle-songs/ https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/02/28/how-to-shuffle-...

discardedrefuse 5y ago
This is from 2014.

discardedrefuse 5y ago

Can confirm. I usually shuffle play my "liked songs" (which has nearly 1000 songs) and lately the same group of 40 or so songs play over and over. It's terrible.

tomc1985 5y ago
That's exactly what I witnessed: a subset of the playlist receiving nearly all the attention