this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023

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Skipping along, missing most of the beats... (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Just because someone skips a track doesn't mean that track was wrong for that playlist. It just means the time was wrong for that track. The mood.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed; but "Shuffle" used to be a good thing! Now; it frequently just isn't good at it's job. There's no control over the "Randomness" of the shuffle anymore, and there's no way to turn off any "Algorithm" that promises it can pick the next song better than random shuffling can.

Sometimes that experience of a truly random or an algorithmic shuffle is good; and sometimes it delivers bad options, and being able to say "Nah, I'm just not into this track today, NEXT!" is something I regard as a fundamental right, and something that you too, should do. Skips shouldn't be precious actions. Your mental heath shouldn't be impacted by an unlucky shuffle, nor should your mood.

Music is a deep, and almost primal form of expression; and it can express many things. Sooo...Being able to skip the emotional equivalent of a 💩 pile of poo 💩 is actually pretty important...even if it doesn't 🌹 always (metaphorically) smell 🌸 like poo to you all the time.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Random shuffle really wants me to listen to a specific group of songs on revanced music.

Doesnt matter if I'm listening to rock, musicals, soundtracks, or medieval versions of "pumped up kicks", it always brings me back to a handful of pop songs after one or two songs.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I remember when I used spotify and it just kept insisting on putting and seemingly prioritizing popular pop songs in its generated playlists if I ever liked just one or two. Even in my own playlist if prioritized them a lot over the songs I did hear over and over again. And like, why??

[–] ThatWeirdGuy1001 13 points 1 year ago

Bro I'm fine with emojis but your placement choice is whack

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I was only vaguely aware of the algorithm on Spotify and that not being allowed to skip very often is a thing there, and man, this comment read like a completely deranged monologue from some sort of alternative, dystopian reality.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

algorithm... not being able to skip... Glad I went back to a dedicated mp3 player.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

OOTL here, Spotify hasnt done that for me yet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think, it's only in the free version of Spotify. So, if you're paying for Spotify Premium, you wouldn't have that problem.

But I mean, I'm obviously completely out of the Spotify loop, so definitely take that one with a grain of salt...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I am fond of a partial shuffle algorithm I wrote in Bash for my music playlists that often preserves neighbors of the input list in the output list.

Blue: input sequence.
Red: complete shuffle.
Green: partial shuffle.

The result is like skipping through my media library in order but occasionally randomly enabling shuffle to jump to a new place. Since the input list clumps albums together and since albums often have a similar vibe, if I want several similar songs of a particular feel to play one after another, I just have to manually advance through the outputted playlist until I hit a song that has what I'm looking for; then I can let the playlist continue automatically since each subsequent song is likely to be similar to the previous song (until another random jump occurs).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Nice. Once upon a time Winamp had a functional preferences slider that controlled the "Shuffle Morph Rate" and I can imagine it likely used a similar algorithm to shuffle.

I only wish this existed in more software in general...and that music players would let you select what method the randomization is achieved with.

[–] KpntAutismus 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Spotify shuffle just plays the "popular" songs (that are good either way) when there are like 5 of them and the rest is the most fire indie beats known to man. i really enjoy using spotify, but that and the lack of at least CD quality music is disappointing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yep; that's an algorithm...just a crappy one.

I never have used Spotify myself for music needs tbh. I do speak about it because I have tried it a few times and it's always sucked ass.

[–] Robin 39 points 1 year ago (4 children)

On some days listening to a whole album start to finish just hits different

[–] LameName3000 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's what I do most of the time. I have never even created a playlist for myself, I like the the coherent style of an album more.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Same, my girlfriend doesn't get it as she's the "all your songs on shuffle" kind of person

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah it's albums like Neverbloom by Make them Suffer, which have songs that are great on their own, but are even better as one whole artpiece together.

[–] captainlezbian 2 points 1 year ago

That’s how I tend to be, but some albums I like just have songs that need skipping. No offense to Tom Lehrer but I don’t know who George Murphy is and I don’t care about Johnson’s vice president

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just put everything in a single list and shuffle all

[–] thegreatloofa 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, even notification sounds. No skips.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Not sure, what kind of notification sounds you have that you'd need to skip to the end of them. A foghorn?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

We as a species clearly do not possess the technical acumen to randomize alert sounds. Be realistic, this is a Lemmy, sir/madam/othergender!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Is legit.

But, you kinda have to do one playthrough like that. You can have the playlist perfect in theory, but until you listen to it all the way through, you can't know that you got things the way you really want them. Quick skipping through is the best way to do that with the ability to keep track of what your impressions of the playlist are, rather than just vibing to single songs and missing the overall flow.

It's absurd absurd how much thought I've put into playlist creation and management lol.

[–] satans_crackpipe 2 points 1 year ago

I prefer to create dozens of playlists with between one and three songs. Trust me, there is a ton of overlap too.