• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    372 years ago

    And since they removed my playlist radio, song discoverability has gone down so much. They just keep playing me the same damn music when I want related stuff.

    • @[email protected]
      cake
      link
      fedilink
      182 years ago

      For the life of me, I cannot figure out why they got rid of playlist radio. It makes Spotify so much worse and I can’t imagine it saves them any money

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        82 years ago

        Probably some over complicated statistical model that will eek out cents more revenue per user.

        It’s one of the worst changes they’ve made and it’s legitimately been making me take another look at all of their competitors.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      32 years ago

      For the same reason all the streaming sites decided to gimp their discoverability and just force you into whatever the algorithm thinks you need.

      Some middle manager wanted to justify their bonus so they jumped in the current fad

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        12 years ago

        I don’t use any streaming service, instead YouTube Vanced or NewPipe when I want to make a queue… But I absolutely hate that the algorithm chooses whatever it wants no matter what you play, and it’s just randomly chosen out of one of the few songs I played before. Also I sometimes play the one+ hour long compilations either to sleep (Nemo’s Dreamscapes) or fantasy music and YouTube decided that auto play will always choose one of those after playing anything (rock, metal, country, folk, name it, it doesn’t matter)

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      3
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I’ve been listening to music from the 60s almost exclusively on spotify this year. The algorithm is hell bent on me listening to the band “The Smoke”. I really don’t think a one hit wonder band that broke up in 1976 would be paying to have their music pushed so hard like that.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    112 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      22 years ago

      Good to know, but it would be even better if it just shuffled the playlist you are listening to instead amaright?

  • PrivateNoob
    link
    fedilink
    112 years ago

    Technically right. Computer can’t do actually random calculations, instead researchers have made pseudo random functions, which similarly behaves as a truly random function would.

    • DarkThoughts
      link
      fedilink
      92 years ago

      Spotify is still the worst in that regard. It even loves to constantly repeat the same ~5 songs or so, at least before I quit the damn thing. Winamp has done this better a couple decades ago already, among many other features.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      92 years ago

      That’s true. It also has nothing to do with the topic: only shuffling recent songs (allegedly). The title has more info than the meme image.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        12 years ago

        Because it’s not the reason. Pseudorandom number generation is statistically identical to random.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          12 years ago

          It absolutely is part of the reason and your little “statistically identical” line is reductive as fuck.

          You clearly are not a programmer and don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about

      • PrivateNoob
        link
        fedilink
        52 years ago

        They probably didn’t like my nerdy joke. I see the argument that it’s kinda not the topic, but we are talking about randomness. It sounded fun in my head.

  • Saint of IllusionB
    link
    fedilink
    102 years ago

    Hit the shuffle button twice to turn on Smart Shuffle. It will throw some brand new songs into the playlist shuffle.

      • Saint of IllusionB
        link
        fedilink
        42 years ago

        I’m on android. I just confirmed you can’t do it with an album but instead with playlists. Add a song to a playlist, hit shuffle, then hit shuffle again and a little star should appear in the shuffle icon.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          22 years ago

          Only works on self created Playlists, not on playlists created from spotify like “Discover weekly”. The first time, you get a little popup which explains it.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    127
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      35
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      There are two basic ways of doing “random” songs:

      1. Pick a new song randomly each time a song ends. This is the naive way to do it and can result in playing the same song twice.
      2. Randomly shuffle the list of songs once and then go through the shuffled list in order, guaranteeing that no single song gets played a second time before all songs have been played.

      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.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        152 years ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          22 years ago

          This seems somewhat flawed. Lets say you have 90 songs by Vengaboys, and 10 songs by Slayer in your playlist. In order to play every song without playing Vengaboys back to back, you’d need to play Slayer 4x more often than you play Vengaboys.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        12 years ago

        iTunes originally did 2. Then they changed it to a modified version of 2 where it then looks for clusters of songs that are similar (same artist, genre, etc) and breaks them up, which is statistically less random but feels more random.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      24
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      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.

      • idunnololz
        link
        fedilink
        112 years ago

        Pokemon players are very versed in this. This is why I only use 100% hit rate moves.

        • Karyoplasma
          link
          fedilink
          22 years ago

          In gen 1 that would be only Swift, Bide and self-targeting status moves because every 100% accuracy move can miss due to a bug (1/256). Fun fact: you would actually be able to beat the game with these 2 moves because Bide, in gen 1 only, bypasses Ghost’s immunity to Normal moves.

          • idunnololz
            link
            fedilink
            12 years ago

            Hot take. FireRed > Red so I never need to play gen1 even if I am feeling nostalgic.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        192 years ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          112 years ago

          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%

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          23
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          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.

      • teft
        link
        fedilink
        72 years ago

        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.

        • ares35
          link
          fedilink
          42 years ago

          ‘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.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            4
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            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.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              22 years ago

              Yeah Pity systems are quite common Also used in loot boxes to keep you buying with the terrible odds they have

              • teft
                link
                fedilink
                3
                edit-2
                2 years ago

                Don’t use it though. The karmic dice system works for enemies too. So if you enable the system your rolls will fail less often but so will the enemy’s dice rolls. With karmic dice on I find the enemies crit me more. Especially on tactician mode.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      82 years ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      9
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      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:

      https://stackoverflow.com/a/633085

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        22 years ago

        This is an irrelevant distinction for any case where you aren’t worried about someone reverse engineering the algorithm and seed by logging output. Any half decent PRNG’s output will be statistically indistinguishable from true randomness.

      • Turun
        link
        fedilink
        5
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          22 years ago

          It is all based upon calculations with known numbers.

          A computer can’t create a number out of nothing.

          That is why Cloudflare uses lava lamps to generate random numbers for their cryptography. And even those aren’t fully random.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            62 years ago

            Modern cpus actually do have trng hardware built in. So yes, modern computers can create numbers out of nothing, because they have specialized hardware to do so

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            32 years ago

            No, CloudFlare doesn’t use lava lamps to generate random numbers, that was a marketing stunt. Using a camera in a completely dark room is a better source of entropy than one pointed at lava lamps.

            Also, nobody is saying that computers create a number out of nothing. The environment is a great source of entropy (temperature fluctuations, user inputs and so on) which are then expanded into a larger amount of entropy through CSPRNGs.

            • Karyoplasma
              link
              fedilink
              12 years ago

              Using a camera in a completely dark room is a better source of entropy than one pointed at lava lamps.

              Why is that? Naturally occurring or manufacturing-related impurities in the optical chip?

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                12 years ago

                All digital cameras are imperfect - there is always a bit of noise, but usually it doesn’t come through since your scene is bright enough to make small amounts of noise imperceptible. In a completely dark room the camera still tries to get data from the photo sensor, but the noise (created by temperature fluctuations, imperfections in the chip itself and so on) is all you get. You may theoretically be able to predict the noise on short time scales, but it’s a chaotic system.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    72 years ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    202 years ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    212 years ago

    But you can make it actually random by doing this:

    • Tap your profile picture
    • Tap settings
    • Tap Playback
    • Toggle the “Automix” switch to off

    Now you have truly random shuffle

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        3
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        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.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        12 years ago

        Well it’s some setting. I recently made the switch and now I’m hearing random songs I haven’t heard in years. It’s actually sampling my whole collection as far as I can tell.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        12 years ago

        Often completely botching existing transitions on, say, two consecutive songs on an album that already flow into one another.

    • Hildegarde
      link
      fedilink
      112 years ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        32 years ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          0
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          But then it is not truly random, that is the point.

          The same song 10 times in a row also has a chance of happening in a truly random list.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        3
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        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.

      • HubertManne
        link
        fedilink
        12 years ago

        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.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        12 years ago

        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.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      62 years ago

      Yeah because that’s reasonable… give me a fuck break

      How many times you gonna sit there thumbing down tracks when listening to random? What if you actually like the song?

      This ain’t a solution

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      22 years ago

      Yeah okay, so they use the Fisher Yates algorithm. Then how the fuck in my playlist of 1000 songs am I CONSTANTLY getting hit with multiple songs by the same artist? Once in a while, okay, that’s statistically likely, but not all the time, and not every time.

    • Stamets [Mirror]OP
      link
      fedilink
      35
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        172 years ago

        While I can agree with others that it might not be that strict and they may get more variety, from personal experience, my 700+ song playlist tends to focus on a handful of songs. Blue - Eiffel 65 gets a CRAZY amount of playtime for some reason. It’s a running joke with my carpool that it’s my car’s theme song. I can sometimes skip it 2-3 times on my drive to work. And some songs seem to never come up. I’ve been having some better luck with the AI DJ lately, although it will throw in an entire chunk of songs I don’t even care about as basically ads.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        6
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        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

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          22 years ago

          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.