I've quite appreciated iTunes (which is what I will call Apple's Music app [which is not to be confused with Apple Music {which, itself, is not to be confused with Apple Records}], now and forevermore) and its smart playlist feature, for the fact that I have one such playlist, containing all of the songs in another playlist1 that I haven't heard in at least 25 days. I also have another playlist of all of the songs in my library that I haven't heard in over six months. This one gets... slightly less play, mainly for the fact that I have a lot of musical soundtracks, video game soundtracks, and many other songs from earlier years that, for better or worse, fit under the umbrella category "dork music", and the shame of those songs weighs heavy on me.
BUT, ANYWAY, with my "not heard in nearly a month" smart playlist, I keep abreast with any algorithmic biases that may be present in Apple's shuffle algorithm, and tend to be pleasantly surprised at how well it manages to have me hear all 400+ songs in that playlist fairly regularly.
(which — you wanna talk about "so improbable as to be impossible" some time — has, for the past two years and counting, shuffled in such ways, that the song playing at any given moment has underscored what has been happening to me or around me in that moment. Yes, I'm saying that my life has had its own theme music. for the past two. years.)) ↩
I'm not an "Apple guy", but I totally appreciate the utility of a "smart playlist" feature. I don't have any problem with Apple, or Spotify, or anyone else choosing to manually tweak an otherwise-random process. I get it. And quite frankly, it makes sense.
My primary annoyance stems from two factors:
Labels matter. Spotify doesn't have anything called a "smart playlist". They have... "shuffle". As a poker player, I know what "shuffle" means. And what Spotify does when you click that button most certainly is not a shuffle. Don't tell me that this button will shuffle my playlist if it does no such thing.
Features matter. Having the ability to truly randomize a playlist (i.e., shuffle) is a nice feature. It's a feature that's desired by a great many Spotify users. I know this because I've seen the forum threads that stretch on for thousands of messages from other users who are exasperated by Spotify's failure in this matter. So I would argue that any service that purports to playback your own lists should always offer the option to do a true, simple shuffle. If they want to offer alternatives way to "shuffle" the playlists weighted on other factors, that's great. But don't use those alternatives to completely replace the basic shuffle feature.
I fully agree. The current behavior that they call shuffle should be called something truer to what it actually does, which sounds more like an auto-DJ.
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I've quite appreciated iTunes (which is what I will call Apple's Music app [which is not to be confused with Apple Music {which, itself, is not to be confused with Apple Records}], now and forevermore) and its smart playlist feature, for the fact that I have one such playlist, containing all of the songs in another playlist1 that I haven't heard in at least 25 days. I also have another playlist of all of the songs in my library that I haven't heard in over six months. This one gets... slightly less play, mainly for the fact that I have a lot of musical soundtracks, video game soundtracks, and many other songs from earlier years that, for better or worse, fit under the umbrella category "dork music", and the shame of those songs weighs heavy on me.
BUT, ANYWAY, with my "not heard in nearly a month" smart playlist, I keep abreast with any algorithmic biases that may be present in Apple's shuffle algorithm, and tend to be pleasantly surprised at how well it manages to have me hear all 400+ songs in that playlist fairly regularly.
(which — you wanna talk about "so improbable as to be impossible" some time — has, for the past two years and counting, shuffled in such ways, that the song playing at any given moment has underscored what has been happening to me or around me in that moment. Yes, I'm saying that my life has had its own theme music. for the past two. years.)) ↩
I'm not an "Apple guy", but I totally appreciate the utility of a "smart playlist" feature. I don't have any problem with Apple, or Spotify, or anyone else choosing to manually tweak an otherwise-random process. I get it. And quite frankly, it makes sense.
My primary annoyance stems from two factors:
Labels matter. Spotify doesn't have anything called a "smart playlist". They have... "shuffle". As a poker player, I know what "shuffle" means. And what Spotify does when you click that button most certainly is not a shuffle. Don't tell me that this button will shuffle my playlist if it does no such thing.
Features matter. Having the ability to truly randomize a playlist (i.e., shuffle) is a nice feature. It's a feature that's desired by a great many Spotify users. I know this because I've seen the forum threads that stretch on for thousands of messages from other users who are exasperated by Spotify's failure in this matter. So I would argue that any service that purports to playback your own lists should always offer the option to do a true, simple shuffle. If they want to offer alternatives way to "shuffle" the playlists weighted on other factors, that's great. But don't use those alternatives to completely replace the basic shuffle feature.
I fully agree. The current behavior that they call shuffle should be called something truer to what it actually does, which sounds more like an auto-DJ.