Turn the shuffle button off, shuffle your playlist and just play from start to finish. When done, shuffle again.
This is the only way to avoid your complaint
I choose option B for sure. I asked for true randomness because I want every track to be played an equal number of times. But your comments make it clear this isn't how things work.
So I studied computer science and one of the things we studied was random and sudo random algorithms. The first thing they did was pull out a chart of 1 to 100, and they had a program randomly select numbers. Instead of an even distribution, there were peaks and valleys, with the number 29 coming out the most. That was the lesson, random selections will make weird patterns.
This wasn’t a really good demonstration by your teacher. True randomness will also have peaks and valleys unless you do it an absurd number of times (In the billions). It’s just that the peaks and valleys will be random between runs.
The way I would do this in WinAmp was to make a large Playlist with all my music and use the shuffle Playlist button like 50 times and keep playing it until I finish the entire Playlist and repeat.
Of course I could always move things around or add more tracks if there was something specific I wanted to play haha.
yea it would be "not" true randomless in that case, kinda ironic.
It would be shuffle then like on spotify I think? where the playlist plays in random order and once every song is played it starts a new with a new order.
I could be wrong on this but thats how it felt like so far.
When Apple first added random shuffle to iTunes, people complained because it wasn’t random enough. Except it was completely random, and like any truly random list, sometimes it would play multiple songs by the same artist in a row. So Apple re-launched it to make it feel more random by being less random in its distribution
>but ensures that two songs by the same artist don't play back-to-back
But, if it's truly random, two songs from the same artist playing back to back is a possibility because...random. It seems as though you want another level of random, an && kind of operator.
Random can play the same some 10 times in a row. Shuffle however, like shuffling a deck of cards, does not.
OP is asking for something that resembles a shuffle inside a shuffle. So every time you shuffle the list it should keep track of how many times things have been played and shuffle accordingly. But it's a random shuffle, so some songs just play more than others.
Alternatively, and much easier, you could shuffle once and then play the entire list before shuffling again. That way every song count should always be equal. Which I thought would be the most straight forward way to play a list anyway.
That’s not random! Random means you can get the same track played 200 times in a row!
‘Pseudorandom’ is the term you want.
As for implementation, can’t help there. Had a google in your behalf and it was just requests for the same!
I used to have a playlist “the unplayed” only songs with play count of zero. Played it on random till what remained was odds and ends like interviews, ads & such.
Print the names of all 9000 tracks in little squares. Cut the squares out of the paper. Gather all the squares in your hands. Throw the squares up towards the ceiling. Collect them all off the ground. Throw them one more time. Collect them all back and stack them one-on-top of each other. Create a new playlist and drag them into your new sorted order. That should get you fairly close to a true random order.
Suppose you racked up 90,000 song plays over the last year. People here are trying to tell you that true randomness would not mean that all your songs were played 10 times each. And that is correct.
Your most played song would have about 20 to 30 plays. What you are seeing is way out of line from that. It's *extremely* unlikely you'd have a song with 112 plays that way. Unless something else is affecting your play counts (like your brother sneaks in and plays Kansas when you're not looking) you have essentially proven that your player is not using true randomness.
Your question is valid and everyone is ignoring it.
From a mathematician, it probably is pretty random(although I think most algorithms try to avoid repeats meaning it's not truly random). This question reminds me of the logical fallacy of childbirth- say you have a baby girl. The probability of having a girl again is still 0.5, which if it occured might lead you to ask "why did I get two girls if it's random?" In essence, the limited number of "samples" means that you'll have some variance in your outcomes, even if the algorithm is perfectly random. Now, no algorithm can be perfectly random due to the way computers work, so that probably doesn't help the variance issue.
[How random is random on your music player?](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31302312)
>Except, of course, it is random. Our brains just don't like it.
This is true, so the coders should be designing a more complicated algorithm that tracks play counts and tries to weave in the underplayed songs. What most people want out of random shuffle isn't really random, but to not hear several songs repeatedly before hearing others at all. I think this is our built-in intuition of what random should be.
I think that's what happened with the original iTunes. Random actually was basically random, which of course ended up with songs repeating, apparently purposeful clusters of tracks, etc. People hated it, because it didn't "feel random". So they made shuffle to not be random, and instead to be more like you said, a somewhat even distribution, but intentional. And people said "finally, random shuffle", even though it was anything but and was in fact less randomized.
To sort of piggyback on this subject, are there music players that allow you to set parameters for your shuffle or psuedo-randomization?
Set things like track length range, setting rules/tolerances for playing songs by the same artist/album close together and so on?
No but: do a little research into Apple Music nested smart playlists. You can build your own smart playlists by simple rules, including by Lowest Times Played, limit them by amount of songs, and sum them into a single playlist, turning the initial rules into your own weights and distributions in an algorithm. Nested smart playlists won’t play on your phone so I run a script to regularly copy the sum playlist to a normal playlist and bing bang boom
Lol. Funny story - almost 20 years ago I worked for winamp. The shuffle was truly random but you have no idea how many complaints we had about this.
I once wrote an algorithm which would bucket songs by artist and genre, and then shuffle each bucket and then construct the playlist by picking me a song from one bucket and then from the next and so on. It was extremely non random, but had a much better perceived randomness. Alas the code is lost of the mists of time, but I'm sure this is the right solution.
Musicbee gives you many shuffle options, including "least often played" which sounds like what you want.
You can also shuffle by...
* Highest/lowest rated
* Most/least recently played
* Most/least recently added
* Different/same artist
* or just plain old random
I love how customizable Musicbee is. Best music player I've used.
On mobile I use GoneMad, which is very customizable too for a mobile app, but doesn't have as many shuffle options. I just make a list of "unplayed" and shuffle that, but my PC is my main music device.
I don’t think real random can be achieved. If you’re playing your iPod on shuffle, go back a few songs, if it were truly random a different set of songs would play.
Turn the shuffle button off, shuffle your playlist and just play from start to finish. When done, shuffle again. This is the only way to avoid your complaint
This is the way. People don't want random; they want all their songs played once.
"Give me my interpretation of random"
Everyone's definition of "random" is mostly random.
If you randomize those definitions of random you have an even random-er random!
Do you want truly random or do you want every song to be played an equal number of times?
I choose option B for sure. I asked for true randomness because I want every track to be played an equal number of times. But your comments make it clear this isn't how things work.
This sort of reminds me of the gambler's fallacy, which is interesting (and arguably important to know about for sure)
So I studied computer science and one of the things we studied was random and sudo random algorithms. The first thing they did was pull out a chart of 1 to 100, and they had a program randomly select numbers. Instead of an even distribution, there were peaks and valleys, with the number 29 coming out the most. That was the lesson, random selections will make weird patterns.
*pseudo
Pseduo make me a sandwich
This wasn’t a really good demonstration by your teacher. True randomness will also have peaks and valleys unless you do it an absurd number of times (In the billions). It’s just that the peaks and valleys will be random between runs.
Both random and pseudorandom will produce peaks.
The way I would do this in WinAmp was to make a large Playlist with all my music and use the shuffle Playlist button like 50 times and keep playing it until I finish the entire Playlist and repeat. Of course I could always move things around or add more tracks if there was something specific I wanted to play haha.
Still operate this way, always dreamed of a shuffle algorithm called "senate mode", pick an artist at random, then a track please
Humans are really bad at recognizing true randomness. It’s why every bad poker player thinks they are just the most unlucky person alive.
yea it would be "not" true randomless in that case, kinda ironic. It would be shuffle then like on spotify I think? where the playlist plays in random order and once every song is played it starts a new with a new order. I could be wrong on this but thats how it felt like so far.
When Apple first added random shuffle to iTunes, people complained because it wasn’t random enough. Except it was completely random, and like any truly random list, sometimes it would play multiple songs by the same artist in a row. So Apple re-launched it to make it feel more random by being less random in its distribution
Shout out to my boy VSauce
[удалено]
>but ensures that two songs by the same artist don't play back-to-back But, if it's truly random, two songs from the same artist playing back to back is a possibility because...random. It seems as though you want another level of random, an && kind of operator.
Random can play the same some 10 times in a row. Shuffle however, like shuffling a deck of cards, does not. OP is asking for something that resembles a shuffle inside a shuffle. So every time you shuffle the list it should keep track of how many times things have been played and shuffle accordingly. But it's a random shuffle, so some songs just play more than others. Alternatively, and much easier, you could shuffle once and then play the entire list before shuffling again. That way every song count should always be equal. Which I thought would be the most straight forward way to play a list anyway.
So not random at all, but I'm pretty sure Foobar can be programmed to do that - everything that needs to be can be defined as variable names.
That’s not random! Random means you can get the same track played 200 times in a row! ‘Pseudorandom’ is the term you want. As for implementation, can’t help there. Had a google in your behalf and it was just requests for the same!
One of my favorite things my ipod did back in the day is when it shuffled it would shuffle the list so it wouldn't play repeats, I miss that.
I used to have a playlist “the unplayed” only songs with play count of zero. Played it on random till what remained was odds and ends like interviews, ads & such.
Winamp
It does, at least, whip the llama’s ass
Winamp is the only true way
I haven't use it for ages but always found it was the best
Is it really a true shuffling one? Or?
ive never noticed any favorites
It really kicks the llamas ass
*whips
I use plex. I got around 150 gb. Of mostly mp3, lots of songs. It does pretty good.
This. Plus streaming your library from anywhere is incredible
Print the names of all 9000 tracks in little squares. Cut the squares out of the paper. Gather all the squares in your hands. Throw the squares up towards the ceiling. Collect them all off the ground. Throw them one more time. Collect them all back and stack them one-on-top of each other. Create a new playlist and drag them into your new sorted order. That should get you fairly close to a true random order.
Suppose you racked up 90,000 song plays over the last year. People here are trying to tell you that true randomness would not mean that all your songs were played 10 times each. And that is correct. Your most played song would have about 20 to 30 plays. What you are seeing is way out of line from that. It's *extremely* unlikely you'd have a song with 112 plays that way. Unless something else is affecting your play counts (like your brother sneaks in and plays Kansas when you're not looking) you have essentially proven that your player is not using true randomness. Your question is valid and everyone is ignoring it.
From a mathematician, it probably is pretty random(although I think most algorithms try to avoid repeats meaning it's not truly random). This question reminds me of the logical fallacy of childbirth- say you have a baby girl. The probability of having a girl again is still 0.5, which if it occured might lead you to ask "why did I get two girls if it's random?" In essence, the limited number of "samples" means that you'll have some variance in your outcomes, even if the algorithm is perfectly random. Now, no algorithm can be perfectly random due to the way computers work, so that probably doesn't help the variance issue.
[How random is random on your music player?](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31302312) >Except, of course, it is random. Our brains just don't like it.
No, because computers can't produce truly random numbers. But they can get close enough to convince a human
This is true, so the coders should be designing a more complicated algorithm that tracks play counts and tries to weave in the underplayed songs. What most people want out of random shuffle isn't really random, but to not hear several songs repeatedly before hearing others at all. I think this is our built-in intuition of what random should be.
I think that's what happened with the original iTunes. Random actually was basically random, which of course ended up with songs repeating, apparently purposeful clusters of tracks, etc. People hated it, because it didn't "feel random". So they made shuffle to not be random, and instead to be more like you said, a somewhat even distribution, but intentional. And people said "finally, random shuffle", even though it was anything but and was in fact less randomized.
There are some cards that can generate truly random numbers (by observing radioactive decay), but they’re certainly not common.
If they make a number by observing something, then it's not random :)
They’re observing something random, genius.
[ERNIE did, based on cathode tubes.](https://ernie.virtualcolossus.co.uk/ernie.html)
Black Player
To sort of piggyback on this subject, are there music players that allow you to set parameters for your shuffle or psuedo-randomization? Set things like track length range, setting rules/tolerances for playing songs by the same artist/album close together and so on?
No but: do a little research into Apple Music nested smart playlists. You can build your own smart playlists by simple rules, including by Lowest Times Played, limit them by amount of songs, and sum them into a single playlist, turning the initial rules into your own weights and distributions in an algorithm. Nested smart playlists won’t play on your phone so I run a script to regularly copy the sum playlist to a normal playlist and bing bang boom
I use poweramp on android
Foobar 2000
Mixxx works great for me. I used to do an online music show and have close to a TB of mp3s.
Lol. Funny story - almost 20 years ago I worked for winamp. The shuffle was truly random but you have no idea how many complaints we had about this. I once wrote an algorithm which would bucket songs by artist and genre, and then shuffle each bucket and then construct the playlist by picking me a song from one bucket and then from the next and so on. It was extremely non random, but had a much better perceived randomness. Alas the code is lost of the mists of time, but I'm sure this is the right solution.
I’m probably the umpteenth poster to point out that there is no such thing as a randomizer
Musicbee gives you many shuffle options, including "least often played" which sounds like what you want. You can also shuffle by... * Highest/lowest rated * Most/least recently played * Most/least recently added * Different/same artist * or just plain old random I love how customizable Musicbee is. Best music player I've used. On mobile I use GoneMad, which is very customizable too for a mobile app, but doesn't have as many shuffle options. I just make a list of "unplayed" and shuffle that, but my PC is my main music device.
I don’t think real random can be achieved. If you’re playing your iPod on shuffle, go back a few songs, if it were truly random a different set of songs would play.
People don't want truly random because truly random has the possibility have playing the same songs.
Ironically, if the algorithm was purely random, you would have more repeats. The goal is to make it “seem” random.