"Random" shuffle

[Dougr33]

I really like this app, but it has the worst random algorithm of any music player I've ever used.  I'll load 5 albums (folders) in the queue, and ask it to shuffle all.  It almost always plays 2, sometimes 3 songs from the same album before going to another. And, it may play 15 songs and not even to every folder once, sometimes only 3 of them. I understand statistics and random, BUT if I play 15 songs out of 5 albums, it ought to come somewhat close to playing 3 songs from all 5 folders, and 'rarely' play two songs from the same album in a row (as it is, that's usually the rule).

 

I don't see anyother settings to mess with. Anyone seeing this?  Samsung Galaxy S4, kitkat.

[andrewilley]

I've seen a number of people who have posted similar observations, but each time Max the dev assures us that the randomising process is truly random. It apparently generates a random list though, so in theory you should hear every song exactly once before anything gets repeated (rather than each 'next' function doing a new totally random search, which could in theory even pick the same song again).

Subjectively my own brain seems to hear what appear to be biased patterns too, but Max assures us this is just the nature of randomness.

Andre

[Dougr33]

Thanks for the response. But this isn't even close to random; it's so bad I was assuming someone would point me to an obscure setting, or suggest that I might have a software conflict.  It wouldn't be unusual for me to load 5 albums, and have it play 2 from #1, 3 from #4, go Back and play 1 or 2 from #1, and then maybe play another from #4 before getting to a third folder.  Quite maddening! I've taken to using another program when I'm doing a 2 hour road trip.

[dvhttn]

I posted this blog post in another thread on the topic. From it:

 

  but I suspect this is due to humans underestimating how likely repeat plays are (if you play 30 songs every day, there is actually a decent chance that there will be an overlap in a 3000 song library)  which makes our brains consider repeat plays surprising, making the events stick out in our mind, as opposed to the last 100 songs which we considered random and therefore unremarkable.

Also see the link within that posting to the Spotify view on 'randomness'. It may surpise you as I'm guessing, from your comments, that you expect 'random' to mean 'play the next song from a different album until albums are exhausted then do the same again'. Which isn't random in the slightest, just what you would prefer and what you 'perceive' as random.

 

To be frank I'd also like 'random' to be a little like that. Maybe Max could either alter the 'random' to mean something like that or do something along the lines that Spotify has done recently (read the links ...)?

 

Dave

[Dougr33]

I posted this blog post in another thread on the topic. From it:

 

  but I suspect this is due to humans underestimating how likely repeat plays are (if you play 30 songs every day, there is actually a decent chance that there will be an overlap in a 3000 song library)  which makes our brains consider repeat plays surprising, making the events stick out in our mind, as opposed to the last 100 songs which we considered random and therefore unremarkable.

Also see the link within that posting to the Spotify view on 'randomness'. It may surpise you as I'm guessing, from your comments, that you expect 'random' to mean 'play the next song from a different album until albums are exhausted then do the same again'. Which isn't random in the slightest, just what you would prefer and what you 'perceive' as random.

 

To be frank I'd also like 'random' to be a little like that. Maybe Max could either alter the 'random' to mean something like that or do something along the lines that Spotify has done recently (read the links ...)?

 

Dave

I think I described what I'm experiencing pretty well. It's not even close to what I've experienced shuffling 5 albums on at least a dozen different programs on Windows, Android and IOS.  It's not a perception problem 

[dvhttn]

....   It's not a perception problem 

 

BUT ....  if every song is really random then there is just as much chance of another song on the same album being played as there is of a song on a different album. If you believe that 'random' means something else then it is a 'perception' problem. If you've read the link I gave you'll see that people complained to Spotify of exactly the same thing and, although they said what I said above - that 'it's random, thus could play anything next' - they changed the algorithm so that it more closely matched what people's perception of random was, even though now it's not truly random ......

 

And if Spotify have had to do this why not others ?

 

Dave

[Dougr33]

BUT ....  if every song is really random then there is just as much chance of another song on the same album being played as there is of a song on a different album. If you believe that 'random' means something else then it is a 'perception' problem. If you've read the link I gave you'll see that people complained to Spotify of exactly the same thing and, although they said what I said above - that 'it's random, thus could play anything next' - they changed the algorithm so that it more closely matched what people's perception of random was, even though now it's not truly random ......

 

And if Spotify have had to do this why not others ?

 

Dave

I actually DO understand what 'random' means, and yes, the next song on the same album has exactly the same probability as song X on a different album.  However, it's highly unlikely that I should be experiencing what I'm seeing ALL the time.