| > Perhaps it doesn't work as well with large playlists? Me and my friends tend toward 1000+ songs in a playlist, but most other playlists I've found are rarely over 250 songs. I think you're right. Recently I spent a bit of time writing about and playing with various shuffling algorithms, trying to see if I could find something that works better for me than the built-in shuffle. The answer is: it's hard! An algorithm that works for a well-distributed set won't work so well for something with large clusters of similar stuff (think a mixtape vs a playlist consisted of a dozen albums from six different artists). And even when you think you've come up with a good solution, it works well six times, and then the seventh you start to find something that doesn't work quite how you like. It's a process of tweaking. My final test case was a large playlist like you describe, since I have a few of these, too. This is what I found worked best for me: - (Optionally) Fisher-Yates shuffle the whole thing, then
- Slice the playlist into X chunks
- Shuffle the order of the chunks using Fisher-Yates
- Analyze the contents of the chunks
- Pick a suitable shuffling algorithm based on the contents
- Shuffle the contents of each chunk There are lots of details around things like, how recently was this artist/album/compilation played? What's the relative tempo or genre of the most recent X songs, and how "harshly" are we willing to change it up? Is this a playlist with a lot of disparate songs (by artist/album/compilation) or is it a collection of like-minded albums and artists? Is the playlist just someone's discography? etc. It takes a lot of passes and a lot of listening to find and tweak these things to find something that works and feels good. And in the end, I don't think the people who can do this are incentivized to actually do this. Especially considering the linked Spotify article is an entire decade old by now, and the Every Noise at Once guy was let go seemingly at random by Spotify. They care about "good enough for now" more than Actual Quality. |