• grue@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There are two basic ways of doing “random” songs:

    1. Pick a new song randomly each time a song ends. This is the naive way to do it and can result in playing the same song twice.
    2. Randomly shuffle the list of songs once and then go through the shuffled list in order, guaranteeing that no single song gets played a second time before all songs have been played.

    The strategies are different, but I’d argue that they’re equally “random.”

    I’ve got a cheap Chinese aftermarket head unit in my car that uses strategy #1, and it’s mildly infuriating.

    • Bumblefumble@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, but all modern music platforms use a more advanced random, where it will avoid putting two different songs by the same artist in a row for example. But it’s still based on the second strategy you wrote.

      • Longpork_afficianado@lemmy.nz
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        1 year ago

        This seems somewhat flawed. Lets say you have 90 songs by Vengaboys, and 10 songs by Slayer in your playlist. In order to play every song without playing Vengaboys back to back, you’d need to play Slayer 4x more often than you play Vengaboys.