Spotify Shuffle Isn't Truly Random?

December 05, 2022 By Prelo Con

(Image Credit Google)

If you've ever used Spotify's shuffle feature, you've probably noticed that it frequently doesn't feel at all random. It turns out that this is intentional and that Spotify's shuffle feature takes a number of factors into account. If this is a complaint you have, you most definitely are not alone. There are numerous complaints concerning the shuffle feature posted on Reddit and the Spotify Support forums. It is plainly not functioning the way that people anticipate it to. Let's examine the reasons behind this. Our sense of what is random and how random actually operates in the real world are at the heart of this situation. The most frequent criticism of Spotify's shuffle option is that it lacks a sense of randomness, yet we don't really want true randomness. A nice illustration of this is flipping a quarter. We anticipate a fairly even distribution of heads and tails after 10 flips of the coin. True randomness, however, has an equal chance of producing 10 straight heads. There is a 50/50 chance that the coin will land on heads or tails each time it is flipped. The outcome of the prior coin toss has no bearing on that probability. [caption id="attachment_68680" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Spotify Shuffle

Image - howtogeek[/caption] The same holds true for playlist music. True random has an equal probability of playing any song at any time, therefore it can wind up playing songs by the same artist repeatedly. This was how the shuffle feature operated up until 2014, although users argued that it wasn't sufficiently random. Therefore, Spotify modified it.

How to Use Spotify Shuffle?

Spotify does not immediately choose the next song at random once you push the "Next" button. When you activated shuffle mode, the following song was already selected. Actually, the name "shuffle" is a really good description of how it operates. Consider how a deck of playing cards would be shuffled. All the songs on a playlist are shuffled into a different order when you click the shuffle button. Every time you press the shuffle button, this occurs. If you look at the queue, you can see this. I created a playlist of 10 songs, half of which are by the same artist, and five times set the playlist on shuffle. Each time, Spotify generated a different song list. You can easily see some of the problems people complain about even in this small sample size. Spotify Shuffle

The first two times I shuffled, the identical music appeared at the top of the list; this is an example of "random doesn't seem random." More crucially, the musician that appears five times in the playlist is never allocated equally. In two of the shuffles, in fact, four of the five tracks were combined.

By Prelo Con

Following my passion by reviewing latest tech. Just love it.

Spotify Shuffle Isn't Truly Random?

How to Use Spotify Shuffle?

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