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The Joy of Random Shuffle
ajayvb writes "Wired has this article on how the iPod and other music players have brought random shuffling of songs to the fore. This generation seems to like their music that way, and according to one of the authorities in the article, it's because they are likely 'brain damaged' and have lower attention spans. Ouch."
Started I random it like time, all shuffle much the I've so the using.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Who would have thought that shuffle would be popular? You know, like the radio?
Random shuffle of recorded music bears a resemblence to the other way people listen to their favorite genre of music... radio play. On the radio, rarely are two songs from the same artist played back to back, and it's extremely rare for twelve songs of the same artist to be played in a row.
But, actually, radio play is not a truely random selection. Radio programmers mark certain slow-paced songs as "do not play in the morning drive" because nobody wants to be put back to sleep while driving to work. They also bias their selections towards favoring more popular songs, artists who are coming to town soon, recent "fresh" hits, and the songs that best define their format.
iTunes, Real, and nearly every other music organizing program are starting to catch onto this with their playlist generator, which very closely resembles the way that radio program directors deal with their playlists... setting a ruleset that creates a quasi-random base for their day, and then displaying the results for potential human manipulation.
The end result is that we're all basically running our own cluster of radio stations. Sometimes you feel like listening to the songs you've rated 5-stars, sometimes you want a mix of high-energy fast-paced songs, sometimes you want some soft background music. Each of those is defined as different playlist, and as new music is added into your system they automatically drop into the rotation on their appropriate lists.
So, there you have it. As much as we want to escape radio, we love it when we're the one running the board...
From the article:
"Temporal order is an important element of how a work unfolds dynamically over time, an important factor underlying the aesthetic effect."
Well, sure it is within a song, but saying that the order of songs within an album is important to the "aesthetic effect", is like saying that if I read a book by J. Random Author without reading all of his other books, in the order they were written, that I'm missing the effect.
A song, like a book (or book series), is a discrete unit of art. Sure it's similar to the other songs on that album, and sure it can be nice to listen to an entire album, in order, but where on earth does he find evidence for the claim that random shuffle appeals to "brain damaged" kids with short attention span.
I like a good random mix as anyone. However, I am also rather fond of the "rock opera" format. You lose something if the songs of "The Wall" or "Tommy" or "Greendale" are scrambled and mixed in with other tracks: a lot of the enjoyment is in the "story" and sequence. I suppose you can get around this by making sure that these albums are encoded as one single audio file.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The expert quoted in the article was a professor of marketing, hardly the go to guy as far as neuroscience is involved.
Thalasar
First of all, I hardly think my preference for random translates to a lower attention span since many of the tracks on my playlist are half an hour or longer. Furthermore, a lower attention span is not necessarily a bad thing. It has been noted by more intelligent people than me that there is an extreme overabundance of information in this world. Perhaps a short attention span is a defense mechanism to help filter out people's bullshit.
OK, so I'm an old fart... Why don't any of the MP3 devices/programs/whatever that I use allow a "random album shuffle", that plays albums completely through, then chooses another album? /frank
And the worms ate into his brain.
When I listen to an album in its original format, the end of one song triggers a memory as to what's coming up long before the song actually starts playing. It gets monotonous. It's much more pleasant to have a mix.
Regardless of the fact I had to read the above around 3 times before I picked up all the sentences...
It's common for people to fear what they don't understand. When a person doesn't understand that I happen to enjoy a wide variety of music, from techno, to classical, to the beatles. The fact that I enjoy a surprise when I encounter something unexpected, and the fact that I don't like hearing the same song on repeat for weeks on end, ala a radio station. Just because you don't don't understand, doesn't make you smarter or better, just different.
You'll start listening to stuff you would have never thought you would.
That's funny. I know my attention span is damaged because my 'forward' button is worn out. Plus, it's all in the thrill of gambling what's next anyways. Content? Who needs it anymore?
"Personally, and I believe I speak for many old farts here, I appreciate listening to music, be it an opera or a pop album, in the sequence in which the artist decided to present it," he said.
That's good and all, but being a 'young fart' myself, random makes much more sense. With the portability of music nowadays (iPods, etc.), we tend to hear a lot more music throughout the day. The only way I listen to music is on random, otherwise I'd hear the beginning of a (cd, folder) a hell of a lot, and never hear the tracks towards the end of the playlist. Imagine hearing the first two minutes of song one EVERYTIME you left a class...how dull.
"it's because they are likely 'brain damaged' and have lower attention spans."
I'm outraged!
Who wants to go ride bikes?
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Winamp's had this for like ... a long time, man. What about like DJs playing shit on the internet radio ... that's like random.
Article posting is a troll.
It produces a stream with the same appeal as a college radio station -- loosely aligned with a particular format, but quirky and eclectic.
That article feels like someone found a few dozen quotes about a topic and made an article about it. It seems every other paragraph is a quote from some seemingly random person.
offense to this article about being brain damaged and further more....Oooh I got a new email message...
Sig it.
Probably "Authority==Orderliness Nazi" Music has for the most part been shuffled on radio for years, except those stations that just play loops. Gotta slow down on reading up on such "authroities" I'm developing a sodium problem.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's probably that our brains enjoy doing pattern matching. Doing the little "what random song is this?" game is great little exercise for pattern matching and memory retrival.
Winamp has had that feature for years. People were shuffling mp3s that way before ipod was a sparkle in an apple execs eye.
The article states that they interviewed one person who has 20,000 songs in their collection to which the interviewee have never even given a listen.
Either this person bought 2000 albums just for the one song they liked and never listened to the rest, or (more likely) they pirate a whole lot of random stuff.
Either way: Unbelievable. Why would anybody waste time and hard drive space like that?
Is this new? I've had 'shuffle' on every single player I've owned since CDs! Wired, I'm ashamed.
One user interviewed by Bull, for example, said the iPod "colors" one's surroundings, and random shuffle can significantly change one's perceptions of a familiar place.
Very interesting statement and quite true. I no longer think of the NYC subway system during rush hour as an intense, pushy, completely undesireable place. I now think of it as "three little birds sit by my doorstep..."
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
i resent the depiction of a whole generation as 'brain damaged' and with a low attention span
furthermore, i... wait, what were we talking about?
oo look! shiny object!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
RANDOM SHUFFLE CAUSES BRAIN DAMAGE ! Buy CDs if you want to live!
random big at should be makes. More much decipher for Every dialogue. Fun interesting to words paragraph challenge especially thing.
Before we're using it to play Monopoly or some such, in order to waste time that would otherwise be spent productively.
'Marlybone Avenue, 60 rent.'
'Gimme a sec, this solo rules!'
Not that it needs to be dragged on any longer than it is anyway, of course...
I used to be a huge fan of shuffling (this isn't a new feature - every mp3 player ever has had the ability) until I started appreciating the album as a cohesive work. I never really enjoyed the music of the Beatles, for example, until I listened to Abbey Road the whole way through and realized that the album's genius lies at least in part in the overall construction. I feel like a lot of this is lost through random play.
"Personally, and I believe I speak for many old farts here, I appreciate listening to music, be it an opera or a pop album, in the sequence in which the artist decided to present it," he said.
"Temporal order is an important element of how a work unfolds dynamically over time, an important factor underlying the aesthetic effect. Random shuffle pretty much flushes that down the toilet."
He is assuming, of course, that the songs being listened have any real order. A good deal of the albums produced have no theme, no real order, and are just collections of songs. This is especially true for rock/pop/blues stuff. Listening to an album in order just means you get a preset random chunk of tracks vs a dynamic random chunk of tracks... not to mention you often find that you only like several songs on a given album.
I usually use a Smart Playlist that takes all the 4 and 5 star songs I haven't heard recently, and plays them in shuffled order. That makes it like a radio station that only plays my favorite songs, with no repeats (albeit one that only plays songs I've actually heard before).
Sometimes there's no substitute for listening to an actual album in order, but shuffle is a nice way to introduce some serious variety - there's nothing like hearing Coltrane followed by Queens of the Stone Age...
Sounds to me like someone at Wired is heavily into ye olde art rock, and expects people to listen to albums that are really just collections of pop songs as if they were Dark Side of the Moon.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Strictly speaking, a shuffle play shouldn't be random. Like a dealing from a shuffled deck of cards, once it's played one song, it shouldn't play that one again until it's finished them all and reshuffles.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Secondly, albums that kids listen to suck. Shuffling means you get good songs all mixed up, and not a bunch of crappy ones and then a good one.
I remember listening to music on Tapes, CDs, etc. Where the songs were presented to you in a specific order normally. I found it annoying that every time I would hear one of the songs anywhere else like the radio my brain would always expect the next song on the tape, CD etc. I never have that happen any more. Now whether that is good or bad I don't know, but it serves my purpose.
I'm not brain damaged, I just think that way
Who can concentrate on just one thing when so many things are cool now-a-days??
I mean, we aren't communists!!
Mod +5 Drunk
I'm 20 and don't shuffle. Albums are supposed to be listened to from start to finish.
Shuffle mode is one of my few gripes with the iPod. I make large playlists and like to listen to them in shuffle mode, but I always listen to my albums straight - no shuffle. However, I'm constantly forgetting what mode my iPod is in, and listening to the first few songs on an album in shuffle mode, or vice versa. I would really love it if Apple would update the firmware to track shuffle mode independently for playlists vs albums/artists. Or, even better, if it could track the shuffle preference of each playlist, album, or artist individually.
This is OT, but BayStar which invested millions in SCO just requested their money back, citing various paragraphs -- some of those concerning insider information -- according to a press release just out.
See the yahoo SCOX board for the minute by minute action! :-)
I hardly call myself brain damaged though. I just like not having to think about things.
It's nice to be able to listen to music without having to build a playlist. I listen to music at work all the time. I'm usually only at my desk 50% of my day, so while a 2 hour playlist would be OK for a few days my co-irkers would kill me (some are chained to their desks and would tire quickly). I usually listen to streaming audio (Live365.com kicks ass) because I never have to worry about playlisting or picking songs I want to hear. Punch in a good station, crank it up, all taken care of.
If I owned an iPod, I'd probably be jogging or working in the yard or something. I don't care about my playlist, as it's unlikely I have crappy music in my iPod. Random shuffle is a lot less work, especially since I usually don't care.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I wrote a program to shuffle my Winamp playlist (.m3u) by album (directory). Then, I put that playlist on straight-thru play. That gives me the whole albums (or at least the songs I didn't delete), and randomization.
Can iPod/iTunes do that? I might want to pick up an iPod eventually, but would like to use *MY* preferences for playorder, not Steve Jobs's.
Those movies were presented in a temporaly non-linear fashion. Think "flashback" in a movie or TV show. Temporal experimentation in art goes back to Gilgamesh.
Brain damage. Fuck. We are all braindamaged from reading Wired. Remeber: the are trying to turn us all into Libertarians.
I've been doing random playlist for years.
Tune in at eleven when I'll be hosting a two hour special on using the microwave to heat water.
--Tsiangkun
Well I can see how that applies for opera or classical music, where each track is an element of the larger work, but it's a rare pop album where the order of the tracks is of any real significance.
Increasingly albums are written as albums. Thus you can reduce a fantastic album down to a series of songs. (Daft Punk, Ester Drang, Chemical Brothers, and oh so man are this way)
On the other hand, I do like shuffle from time to time when I want to listen music that I've heard alot. Breaks down expectations and renews play lists...
that part, very nice.
is that like "random walk" on lithium?
- No Letting Go, Wayne Wonder (relaxed, Jamaican feel)
- Pimp Till the End, Lloyd Banks (relaxed)
- 10 Mins, Joe Budden (slow, but interesting)
- Stand Up Nucca, Joe Budden (kind of slow, but very vivid)
- Banks Victory, G-Unit (moderate, but vivid and intense)
- Paid in Full, Eric B. & Rakim (club track that's lyrically interesting)
This would not work at all on a random playlist, but it sure builds up when done correctly.True story.
I would like to point out users have no control of what songs they hear on the radio either (though it is usually from a smaller selection of tracks, and there is a great deal of repetition) As far as I'm aware, radio stations don't play entire albums from start-to-finish either.
--Mike Boos
I resent that!
I don't have a sho..
Offtopic? Not really. When hardware doesn't work, software doesn't work. Wake up.
Uh... Random shuffle isn't some big sociological boom, nor is it some killer new fad exclusive to hipsters with iPods and CD Players.
It's called variety. Ever hear a radio station play an album from beginning to end? Typically an album will have one artist (or group) and every song will be the same style. So if you want to "mix it up" you randomize the playlist. All of my music players are set to randomize, except for my home stereo which I rarely use.
I've never known anyone to listen to music by playing an album from beginning to end. Even back in the days of records, we'd flip through the collections to figure out what we were going to listen to next while the current song was playing.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Many CD players made random shuffles possible, within CD's or if they were multi-CD capable, even across CD's. So this is not a particularly new phenom.
It is the musicians themselves that have killed the album. When they record a CD with a few interesting songs, a couple of OK songs, and a bunch of filler, nobody values the album format. And why should they, since it would just be boring to listen through the filler to get to your favorite songs. An album, in the true sense, is a collection of songs that are similar and put together well (example: Pink Floyd). When it became just a bunch of songs thrown onto a CD as a delivery mechanism, the idea of the album lost its meaning.
...With a large music collection, it is very easy to forget some of the gems that are in there, and random tends to bring some of those out again."
Of course it's easy to forget what you have bootlegged off of p2p. That's why I prefer that the RIAA help me organize my collection rather than some crazy technology. Years of executive meetings and recycled crap can't be wrong!
My parents' generation listened to music on 45s, where they get together and play songs at random. My generation listened to LPs where the songs were in a particular order every single time. My kids' generation listens to MP3s and play songs at random.
Obviously, both my parents' generation and my kids' generation are brain damaged, because us baby boomers never took drugs while going through college....
Musucians tend not to spend too much time deciding on order. Yes, they'll put them in the order that they think is best, but, with certain exceptions, I don't think even they would claim that there's a "right" and a "wrong" order.
The guy likes his music to be predictable and formulaic right down to the order in which the tracks are played. This is perfectly fine. Just because other people don't like it that way it does not make them wrong. It's a matter of personal preference.
. ..
Are you guys kidding? random like radio? the reason I stopped listening to the radio is because songs make the "A" bin where they would be in heavy rotation adn you would hear the song over and over again during an afternoon or evening set.
Last time I had a random shuffle in public, people started screaming and I ended up in front of the magistrates.
Maybe back in the day an artist had a lot of say in terms of what went onto an album, and how the album unfolded as a listener worked through it. Perhaps at one point there was a larger message that could only be conveyed by an album, and couldn't be contained in a single song (I'm thinking of The Wall by Pink Floyd). But the reality is that nowadays so much of the music out there is crap that the album as an art form seems to be mostly dead. This is one of the reasons that people are more willing to buy an individual track than to buy an album. Personally, I prefer to buy an album, but ONLY after I've previewed (read: downloaded) enough enough material or I'm familiar enough with the artist to have some faith in them. I HATE being burned by buying an album based on one song and then finding out the rest of it was a load of shyte. Record companies seem less and less interested in promoting a good album, and care more about the 2 or 3 singles that they can extract and promote the hell out of. My point is that one of the reasons that the random play is preferred to an album at a time is because few entire albums are worth listening to anymore. Random play, with careful selection of what goes on the iPod in the first place, ensures that EVERYTHING that I listen to is good AND I get to be surprised. But ... it could just be the brain damage. If so, it's most likely brought on by too much commercial radio.
I made this webcam and barcode printed on card based, lego built, printed CD card music player (follow the link, it'll make sense then). As the music organised by CD and next/prev currenly means a trip to the PC, I've redicovered the joy of albums. I enjoy music differentlty when the urge to fiddle every 5-10 seconds is denied.
I say lazy because if I got my act in gear and finished the hardware I'm hacking I'd have full control.
Having said that, I'm quite enjoying the whole album thing. Hearing lots of other tracks from real bands where I'd only checked out one or two before.
PS Quite proud I've mentioned a card based system and have avoided a shuffle based pun!
"Kellaris said random shuffle likely appeals to the MTV generation -- kids with short attention spans who are likely "brain damaged."
I'd say quite the opposite. Those who listen to randomly shuffled playlists have the added mental capacity to deal with unexpected sequences of events.
Personally, I started listening to songs randomly when I downloaded a ton of songs from mp3.com and ripped to CDs based on type of music. The problem is I use a cheapo DVD player for playback and it can only play the songs in either alphabetical order or randomly. Alphabetical order doesn't make much sense, so I choose random and I find that I like the diversity it generates.
Intelligent shuffling with synapse
Is MSN messenger down?
go on then mod me down, I deserve it !
I am not an old fart, but love classic rock. I could not even begin to imagine listening to a live Grateful Dead or Phish concert in random. Most of these Jam bands groove from one song to another so if you listen to the concret in random you miss all the good jams! Also why would you want to listen to Pink Floyd's Animals in random or Dark Side for that matter. The entire album in its order is a complete work of art.
Cheers, Joe
Brain damaged is probably an accurate term.
I always use shuffle mode with my playlists. I just like to let the player pick a song for me. The only time I don't use shuffle mode is when I am listening to new tunes.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
while i can understand the rampant desire for "radio-ized" music re-ordering, i find music ordered sequentially (as the artist dictated) into albums to be more interesting.
often i find that artists arrange not only sound within songs for emotional effect, but also order songs themselves into an album to bring about certain emotional transitions. imagine a song as a "mood" and the album as "living a day of changing moods".
even more interesting is listening to an artist's discography in chronological order. then it becomes a series of related and evolving vignettes that describe an artist's changing conception of him/herself and his/her music.
it would be sad if radio-ization and the "discretized downloading" model were to destroy the idea of the larger album as a musical unit.
it would be like the loss of the novel to make way for the comic book.
I've been too lazy to put my latest favorite songs into a playlist
I've never done playlists on everything. If it is on the media, I want it played. I have never yet wanted to bother to make lists of subsets of available songs/tracks. In fact, I've been impatient with media-playing software that forces you to deal with playlists when all you want to do is "load 'n' play one song".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
What about classical music? You can't just randomly shuffle symphonies or sonatas or whatnot out of order. I guess this only applies to all other types of music.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Random shuffling is a byproduct of our MTV-induced brain damage, eh?
Should I point out to this idiot that we have something called "radio" that intermixes songs from multiple artists and albums, in an effort to provide what we call "variety"? Or that it predates xmms, winamp, and the ipod by several decades?
One would think a marketing professor would be familiar with these concepts.
Radio stations have been randomly shuffling music for a rather long time now. As a result, music is neatly compartmentalized into 2-4 minute chunks. Contemporary music is designed to be shuffled. The fact that you might enjoy your music as it was designed to be enjoyed is not a sign of brain damage. That some ivory tower mucky-muck professor of marketing seems to assign undo significance to "the sequence in which the artist decided to present it" means precisely squat. All the "hits" get re-released as "the best of"s in many cases with little or no production input from the original artists, it they're still alive, and customers promptly buy them. Artists and professors are over-rated.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I r brane damorged u isnesnitive clud!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Born in 1970. So I'll take the MTV/ADD/BD comment as not applying. Discuss.
Thanks.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Most new music is just a collection of random songs. Get a new CD, and there is no real continuity to the album. I ususally shuffle these songs, so I get a mix of different music. The difference lies in other albums. Take bands like Pink Floyd, or Dream Theater, these bands didn't write songs (in my humble opinion) they write albums. The songs flow from one to the next, and sometimes, it is hard to tell when the CD has changed tracks. Most of these CD's are my favorittes, and the ones I actually buy at the store. I think that developing Albums, instead of songs, has become a bit of a lost art in music production.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Kellaris said random shuffle likely appeals to the MTV generation -- kids with short attention spans who are likely "brain damaged."
"Personally, and I believe I speak for many old farts here, I appreciate listening to music, be it an opera or a pop album, in the sequence in which the artist decided to present it," he said.
"Temporal order is an important element of how a work unfolds dynamically over time, an important factor underlying the aesthetic effect. Random shuffle pretty much flushes that down the toilet."
This strongly depends on the quality and length of the album in question, IMO. Some albums need to be listened to in order (Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, Led Zeppelin I, and Hybrid's Wide Angle all come immediately to mind), but with the majority of CDs having no emotional continuity between songs, I see no reason not to skip around and only listen to what you feel like hearing. Besides, this argument doesn't address the popularity of mix CDs or the random shuffling of songs from multiple albums.
And, with music or any other form or art, what the artist intends to present in a piece of work is not always how the audience interprets it. Who's to say someone won't find more meaning in a random shuffle than in the original order of the same tracks?
The only thing she's right about is the fact that she is an old fart.
On a slightly related note, wasn't this the reason the Red Hot Chili Peppers (I believe) refuse to sell their music on iTMS? They want the CD to be appreciated as a whole, while their listeners wanted only a handful of the songs.
the coolest club on
"-- sometimes the only way -- to hear music that would otherwise go unplayed. "
I discover a new song everyday with using shuffle because i download so many random songs using P2P(yes i use it & love it!).If there was no shuffle i wouldnt listen to even half the songs I downloaded!
Besides listening to songs in the same sequence becomes sucky cos you keep listening to your fav songs and then become bored of them.
Lord of the Binges.
I think the biggest problem with "old" peeps is that they are use to something. Don't fear change! Kalelis or whatever said that he likes listening to songs the way the artist intended. Unfortunately, the artists of today don't be too concerned with the songs on their album after the first 2 or 3 singles. This is not all artists, but I know that several people feel just as upset as me about the quality of CDs presently. Random shuffling of a quality music collection ensures that you get good songs all the time.
I find that randomness helps me enjoy songs for a greater number of plays -- I don't get sick of songs as quickly when they are decontextualized. In album format, each track prompts too much memory of the succeeding tracks. And if the album has "bad" songs, then I find the memory of the bad song taints my enjoyment of the preceding song.
I'm sure music people don't want tactics that increase the number of enjoyable plays. Its in the music industry's interests for customers to become tired of the music so people go buy more.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The absolute worst thing(IMHO) is to have an mp3 player with a bad randomization algorithm. For example I had a panasonic cd/mp3 player that would play the same 5 songs over and over(out of 150 or so on the disc). That thing would drive me nuts.
But then again, this could just be my neurosis.
D
> "I appreciate listening to music, ..., in the sequence in which the artist decided to present it,"
> "Temporal order is an important element of how a work unfolds dynamically over time, an important factor underlying the aesthetic effect. Random shuffle pretty much flushes that down the toilet."
I call B.S.
Most artists today throw together a bunch of random songs in no particular order KNOWING that today's audience will be listening to individual tracks in a club, on the radio, or on 'random shuffle' on their player; Or they don't put that much thought into it at all.
This is probably dating me, but the last albums I recall that had a meaningful sequence were 'Pink Floyd The Wall', and maybe 'STYX Mr. Roboto'. Any more recent examples, please?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I used to ritually load up the old CD changer, and then use the first three songs played to predict the future.Now it's much easier, and more diverse, because I have my entire library of songs to draw from, at the push of a button.
I always figured it makes at least as much sense as reading Tarot cards...
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
"in which the artist decided to present it"
Well, most albums nowadays are built by marketing flacks, not artists. To suggest that I should submit my listening habits to anybody's judgements but my own is ridiculous.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
These people are on drugs.
It isn't new to mix different songs from different albums - when I was a kid the cool thing was to make "mix" tapes with a double tape deck, and trade them around. It was always more fun to listen to somebody else's mix tape than your own, because that element of unpredictability was there.
The technology has changed, but the desire to listen to an varied list of music, in an order that is surprising, has nothing to do with "the kids today" and their short attention span.
The really great thing about today's technology isn't that you can shuffle all sorts of albums, but that you can include only the songs on the album that you like in the shuffle. That is the huge advantage over putting 5 cds into the changer and hitting 'shuffle'.
Pixie
don't mess with those geekgrrls
Many older albums (Pink Floyd, especially) are meant to be listened to as albums, not singular songs "Amarok" by Mike Oldfield solves this problem: the CD/work is a single track of 60 minutes in length. Never mind that one can break it up into sections: it only plays as one track unless you have special player program written just to play parts of the single track.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
While I generally listen to random tracks, I have to say that they're only semi-random... I tend to (like most people, I'm sure) listen to randomized playlists so that I'm listening to music that fits my mood. Of course, when I listen to 'The Wall', it's from start to finish.
Listening to random tracks from my entire MP3 collection would be very weird, since I have a smattering of many different kinds of music.
Sure, this generation is brain damaged. What do you expect when their parents were all doing drugs at Woodstock and other dubious places? Brain damaged music for brain damaged people.
Real music is Beethoven and Schubert and Mozart and Wagner.
No, this post is not a troll, just a rant.
I have two observations:
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
While Professor Kellaris claims that "random shuffle likely appeals to the MTV generation -- kids with short attention spans who are likely 'brain damaged'," it appears to me that he makes no distinctions between albums in which each song is a self-contained unit and albums in which each track builds upon the one prior to it.
Not all albums need to be played in the order chosen by the artist. For example, it makes no difference if one plays Blue Oyster Cult's "Imaginos" album in track order or in shuffle mode; while each song centers on the same character, the original track order is non-sequential to begin with.
Live albums and "concept" albums, like Dream Theater's "Metropolis, pt 2: Scenes from a Memory" and Iced Earth's "Night of the Stormrider", have a stronger effect on the listener when played in track order. One normally purchases a "live" album to get a feel for how a band sounds outside a studio. Concept albums seek to tell a story. The aesthetic effect of both live and concept albums is broken by shuffle play.
On the other hand, albums like those of Britney Spears or Metallica's classic "Kill 'em All" can be listened to in any order; the power of a song like "The Four Horsemen" isn't diminished by the songs played before and after it, and Britney Spears will still sound like an untalented trollop no matter how you play her songs.
Dark side of the moon should be listened to in from begining to end. Alot of "good" albums should be. Perhaps it's not the attention span but the fact that new albums mostly suck.
McK
The "not so random" shuffle... same as random shuffle but there is an added "dislike" button that picks a new random song and flags the disliked tune so they can be dealt with in bulk later and are taken out of the shuffle loop... And if the RIAA weren't a bunch of money grubbing scammers they would let you return the disliked songs for a refund.
But apart from needing the ability to shuffle, is the need for a -GOOD- shuffle. I have an el-cheepo model mp3/cd player made by Emerson which claims to have a RND mode. The randomness is apparently an algorithm based on the number and length of songs on the disk. Therefore, the disk you insert is played randomly the same way every time.
No, seriously, I forgot what your point was. Could you repeat the question?
In general the quality of the album as a whole is just pitiful these days. Nobody's made a "white album" in a long, long time. These days albums are singles + filler, and who wants to listen to crap? Or, for that matter, buy it?
A random shuffle feature. Those iPods sure are marvellous.
For fuck sakes, can you not pass up an opportunity to schill those stupid iPods?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Dark side of the moon should be listened to in from begining to end. Alot of "good" albums should be. Perhaps it's not the attention span but the fact that new albums mostly suck This pretty much applies only to "concept albums" (which does include rock operas). "Dark Side of the Moon" is one, as is "Sgt Pepper". However, there is nothing inherently inferior about albums like "The White Album" which are great, but are not concept albums, and thus better hold up to "Scrambled" listening.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
That said, I do think there is some value in listening to albums in track sequence. Like other posters have pointed out, presumably the artists put the tracks in that order for a reason (although, more likely, a marketroid put the tracks in that order, but I digress) and since the emotional effects that a lot of posters have been alluding to are cumulative, you're clearly missing out if you always listen randomly. I mean, if there were no value to listening to songs in a particular sequence, what would the point of creating playlists be?
... and I like random shuffling because listening to songs in the same sequence all the time imprints the order on my brain. Knowing that "I love Rock and Roll" ALWAYS follows "Pretty Paper" makes music much less enjoyable.
What I'd like to see is a Tivo-like feature where the player takes your preferences and downloads other songs that you might like as well. Sorting thru tons of dreck to find the gems is so, like, last century.
Random/shuffle is soo yesterday!
Transparent adaptive playlists frameworks (eg: Synapse (Windows) or IMMS (Unix)) are totally the way of the future! I am surprised more hardware mp3 player manufacturers do not ship their players with software like that.
In an era where CDs rarely have more than one or two good songs anyway, I like to gather collections together on a single CD. Since the songs are from different CDs, different performers, etc., there is nothing to lose by telling the CD player to play them in random order.
Brain-damaged? Yeah, right...
...laura
nothing gets my goat more than a self-proclaimed expert in a completely subjective field.
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
I'll predict there will be a whole slew of similar reports from scholars amd government agencies about why enjoying your own music your own way on your own music player is either unAmerican, unhealthy, damaging to Our Way of Life, playing into the hands of terrorists, etc.
Because the music industry is horrified that the album, that high priced gold plated sacred cow of music commerce, is doomed. Artists make songs and the music labels make albums. End users listen to songs, but must buy albums to get them. The songs sell themselves, and users choke down the price of albums to get the songs.
The middle man, the record labels, touch all the money and most of it sticks to their fingers, but without the album there would be no middle man as such, and increasingly the online music stores are getting set up to cut the middle out. Since the music industry is mostly talentless marketing wonks who otherwise would have to market uncool things like vacuum cleaners, the extinction of the album as a concept would be a disaster and really cut down on the number of great parties and available women they have enjoyed up to now.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
While I do usually prefer to listen to albums as they were intended to be played, as a whole, I do occasionally like to be suprised with the random functionality.
I bought some cheap radio that would play mp3 cds from WalMart, for use at work, and apparently the random play feature rerandomizes after every play, or it just hav a poor randomization algorithm. I noticed that occasionally it will repeat songs throughout the sequence. It will play a song go to a different song then repeat the first, quite annoying.
Also it would be nice to bundle certain mp3s without merging them. Some songs are just supposed to be heard in the album sequence. Examples include: The Beatles - Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End; Queen - We Will Rock You / We Are The Champions along with many others. They just don't sound the same when not played in sequence. Yes I do realize I should merge the mp3s into one file but I like to keep the the tracks ripped just the way they were. Just a general bitch that I have.
Have you tried GJay?
It does acoustic analysis and then generates playlists with attention paid to tempo, dominant frequencies, and user-specified ratings and colour.
-rozzin.
When I listen through an album, I absolutely hate shuffle. I like to know exactly what is next. Usually the album is on repeat too.
I think though, it has to do with my style of music as well. I like techno and classical quite a bit, both of which are highly repetative and predictable. I often use music as a way to keep my mind focused while working, and so it has to follow a steady pattern. If it were to jump around, I'd probably get distracted by it. Sometimes I even pick a single song and leave it on repeat for hours. Rarely ever do I create playlists with mixed artists or albums, its either 1 song on repeat, or a full album on repeat.
no comment
Here's the big point I think that's missed about random play. It is essentially like listening to the radio, without the commercials, and with the music you WANT to hear. Radio is always random in the eyes (ears) of the listener - you never know what is going to come up next. This is not a generational thing, not an MTV thing, it's a radio thing (and last I checked, radio dates back way before MTV or the current generation). --*Rob
My wife and I have a music collection that is about 25 Gigs in size now. All of the tracks are ripped into high quality OGG files, CDex is awesome for this. I record some albums as full albums, such as "The Wall" by Pink Floyd but mostly we rip the songs individually and play our music randomly. There are always "lost" songs popping up and it's an awesome way to share my musical tastes fairly with my wife without arguing about what CDs to play.
I have a Celeron 400 Windows 2000 Server that acts as a Proxy server, File Server, Print Server and plugs straight into our Stereo next to the TV (mythTV is next once I upgrade the box). Our friends are ALWAYS commenting positively on the variety of music we have playing and asking how they can set up a system the same.
I doubt we've played an actual CD yet this century and I know that no matter what technologies and formats that the RIAA comes out with I will always be able to play my music the way I wwant it.
The biggest problem I have now is in having to tell my friends that while I can set up a music server for them I'm not allowed to give them copies of any of my music.
Has anyone else thought of just giving up and copying their music collections to a spare hard drive for their friends? Or borrowing a friend's CD for 15 minutes to rip it to your computer? I mean seriously, what better way to share something extremely personal with your friends than giving them a copy of your whole music collection?
I really can't think of a more convenient way to play my music and I don't care what the RIAA does, what legislation comes out or what new technologies come. I have brought CDs, LPs and Tapes and I'm sick of upgrading my music every time the technologies change. Now it doesn't matter as long as my computer has an audio out jack.
I have seen the future, I like it - I'll never go back.
John the Kiwi
here's my take:
i believe in the concept of an "album" - a set of musical pieces related in some way. in record production, thought is (should?) placed in ordering the tracks. the album as a whole, as opposed to the songs and individual pieces.
the whole is greater than the sum of its parts is applicable here.
so, i don't shuffle albums.
sometimes a mix of songs by many different artists is nice, and that's where shuffle belongs - like a radio station.
Winamp 5 and some other players (not iTunes though I think) have built in functionality that really adds some "oomph" to shuffling: enqueue
On Winamp, if your listening to a huge random playlist of songs, but you want to hear a particular song after the one your listening to, just select the song in the playlist and hit 'Q'. Winamp will finish the currently playing song, then play the song you selected, then return to randomly shuffling the tracks automatically. You can do this with multiple tracks, picking an order you want to hear those songs, and then having Winamp shuffle the rest.
Or just hit 'J' to search the list of the songs in the playlist, and select the song(s) you want to enqueue.
Awesome!
The MTV generations kid's are in high school and listening to MP3s and internet radio. MTV dates from like from like the late 70s/early 80s.
WRONG!
This fellow is clearly a stereotypical faculty member: the ivory tower has grown rather thick around his skull.
Our parents are the ones who first started the idea of shuffling: they were the first ones able to do mixtapes, they were the ones who could eventually buy large capacity CD players that could shuffle multiple songs across multiple CDs.
This fellow can't quite get it through his academe'd skull: his generation is responsible for any brain damage he might think is out there.
Now, if you don't mind, I'm going back to listening to Squeeze's "Singles: 45's and Under" in the order the artist presented it in. However, I can guarantee I will be shuffling songs on the way home from work.
What a nimrod. I am never going to the University if Cincinnati for a job or a higher degree if that's the calibur of faculty they hire... but, it is Ohio... should I be surprised? ;)
One may wonder whether people who shuffle their music had been children who watched a disproportionate amount of television between the ages of 1 and 3. See also:
Slashdot: TV, ADHD and Doing Useful Things.
Pediatrics Magazine: Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children .
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
I'll use random shuffle by album only, but when I do, it's only on unmixed albums. Of course, the oddest thing is, the mixed albums tend to actually be best, so I'm rarely using random shuffle. Probably has something to do with the artist actually taking care and time over their music so it all fits together well enough to make a mixed album rather than just slapping it all together and hoping the cash comes in (which, sadly, it usually does).
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Sometimes I use shuffle to choose which albums I'm going to listen to. Shuffle until I hit an album I want, then back up a few tracks and play through sequentially.
I'm sure there are players out there that can do this for me, but I don't really care.
Other times I use shuffle to "uncover the gems" (as is says in the article) There are lots of songs that I wouldn't otherwise choose to listen to, but really enjoy anyway.
You should all try to be like me, because I'm not a brain damaged crackpot.
Or don't. I don't care.
Decrying shuffle play is like complaining about remakes, when the original movie is still out there. I can listen to an album in its original order, or I can switch it around. Or I can mix it in with other albums, even by other artists.
And saying it gives light to hidden gems is absolutely right. When I play an album straight through, I'm often lulled into learning it as one monolithic composition. Shuffle play breaks that up and allows individual tracks to shine. I've discovered some wonderful tracks that way, tracks that I never noticed until I broke up the album's original order.
My name's Larry, and I've been using shuffle play on CD players for fifteen years. (Hi, Larry!)
Yes, some albums must be heard "in toto" to appreciate their intent (like Toto's albums);-)
However, the intermixing of S.C.O.T.S., Rossini, and the Beastie Boys might actually improve brain function... It's called creativity, or inspiration.
The fusion of disparate neural networks by chance (or otherwise). Hm.
Hey! Look at that squirrel! hehehe
Art has never been static and never will be. Using the argument that kids are somehow brain damaged because they like to listen to songs randomly doesn't hold water to me. One could easily argue listening to an album from start to finish shows a lack of creative thinking or openness. How is listening with random shuffle any different than listening to radio? Both do not play a CD from beginning to end, does that mean radio listeners are brain damaged?
"Brain damage", feh. If you listen to self-contained music tracks, there's nothing wrong with random sorting. On the other hand, if you want to appreciate Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or Pink Floyd's The Wall, you need to listen to the whole thing straight through.
Anyhow, the innovation promised in the message title. With my diverse tastes, listening totally randomly is pretty jarring, with an Albinoni string concerto from the 18th century going straight into a psychedelic rock track. I broke my tracks up by genre and wrote a "randomizer" that would preferentially stay in the same genre, if it could, and randomly jumped out, and it worked pretty well.
Basically, you have an X% chance of jumping up a directory, then I pick from all the songs underneath the current directory that haven't been played in the last X song plays (the other major failing of random selection, inevitable repetition). With 2-4 directories deep of organization (say genre, composer, album), it minimizes the crash of incompatible genres while still allowing the pleasures of randomization.
...play mental games with themselves when it comes to shuffled playlists?
Before you reach for the Offtopic mod let me explain. What I do personally is that when I'm bored of a song I say to myself "OK you have a maximum of five skips in which to 'settle down' and fully listen to the track".
So sometimes I would click the skip button and get a good song and think:
"Yeah this is good, but I have 4 skips left, there might be something within those four skips that is much better!"
What usually happens in that scenario is that the subsequent songs are even worse and you begin to panic! I'm sure there must be at least one other slashdotter who does this. Right guys? Guys?
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Does anyone know if the shuffle on the ipod is indeed 100% random (or as close to 100% random as one can get)? Because I swear that there are songs that my ipod plays more than others. I know it may just be becasue of my brain damaged short attention span, but I often wonder what is going on with teh shuffle.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Its because we like variety, not redundancy, OLD MAN!!!!
Albert Einstein: "God does not play dice with the universe."
John McCain (while campaigning): "One advantage of having Alzheimer's is that you get to hide your own Easter eggs."
From the article: "[Random shuffling] makes their music collection even more exiting and mysterious." ('Exiting' is just how I'd have put it.)
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
After they've stopped playing a song, each of the other songs on their play list has a 50% chance of being next.
Ok, not to start this out being petty, but it takes one to know one, and WHO made these 'morons' authorities?
Personally, I like a playlist on shuffle so as to mix it up, that way I don't know what is going to play next and I can be suprised.
#jlk
Homer: [walks up, looks at Guy Incognito] [gasps] Oh my God! This man is my exact double. [gasps] Oh my God! That dog has a puffy tail! [he chases it, giggling] Here, Puff! Here, Puff!
(shamelessly stolen from snpp.com)
Well, what about just adding some variety to life? I've got an mp3 CD filled with most of my regular CD collection. If I begin playing it at work at the beginning, I hear the same thing first every time, and the stuff at the end of the disk I would miss every day when I leave before the player gets to them. Same old same old same old day in and day out. No fun... Random play feature allows me to hear different songs, rather than reach the point of dreading the first number of songs on the CD as I've heard them and got sick of them in the morning. Much like I get sick of songs that are played very often on the radio, lack of variety makes me really annoyed with that one song that never goes away for more than 20 minutes.
I might ask the guy talking about people liking it because they're brain damaged, do DJ's onthe radio now, or have they ever, played a particular album stright through from start to finish? Or do they mix it up with different bands and different songs, in a somewhat random arrangement? (When they aren't really showing preference to some new song the Clearchannel folks have told everyone to play every 3rd song for a couple months...) Since the RIAA via Clearchannel now owns almost all radio stations, you'd think they could enforce the requirement to play albums from start to finish for the remaining people ut there that don't yet have brain damage, surely there is some reason this hasn't been done for the last 50 years??
...when they talk about the integrity of an album and say that it's an artistic crime (A crime, I say!) to sell songs by track rather than as a whole. And in the face of the greats mentioned in this thread ("The Wall," "Tommy," "Dark Side of the Moon," ...now I gotta look up Greendale), it sounds like a valid argument.
What I find laughable now is that there are modern recording "ahh-tistes" who use that exact same argument Think about it: Pink Floyd. The Who. The Beatles. Brittney Spears. One of these things is not like the others... (cue theme music)
I haven't heard of any really recent albums that deserve to massage the feet of, much less rival the caliber of, the greats. (Maybe I'm just culturally disadvantaged. Anyone got counterexamples of recent music which actually belongs in album format?)
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Every old generation seems to refer to the young generation as being somehow inferior. The odd thing is that the younger generation tends to believe the reverse.
Ahhh for the good old days where you were lucky to live to 30. They had life so much simpler. No generation gap, no technology to worry about, & the only off-shore worries were when the vikings game a calling.
Probably since the iPod and all digital music players except the Rio Karma can't play back albums without inserting a gap between songs that should flow together.
Who wants to listen to Dark Side of the Moon with a gap between each track?
I use the random shuffle sometimes. Back in the days of recording to cassette tape (don't forget 8-track and reel-to-reel before that), I could only listen to the songs in the sequence in which they were recorded. After so many plays through, I knew exactly which song was coming next -- and the entire recording got old. Ditto for listening to a CD from beginning to end. Having the option to randomize the order in which they are played gives them some new life and me some more variety. Admittedly, I wouldn't try to listen to Pink Floyd's "The Wall" in random order, but I would for Linkin Park's Meteora album.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
I consider myself an "old fart" that the guy in the article refers to, but I enjoy listening to my big collection of songs placed on shuffle most of the time.
I DO enjoy listening to whole albums when I'm in the mood to actually sit back and just relax and listen to the music.
But when I'm playing music in the background as I do something else...which is most of the time...it's like my own privatly programmed radio station with all different styles of music.
I like transitions that range from "Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida" to "My Favorite Things" from the Sound of Music soundtrack to "Who Was in My Room Last Night" by the Butthole Surfers to...well, you get my point. My tastes are all over the road.
But I do NOT have drain bamage!
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
So we usually put a tape on. Aftera while you would know exactly wich song come on next. It was so bad that if I heard the song on the radio and it was then followed by a different song it would startle me.
So long live my Nomad Zen and its shuffle. Keeps the playlist intresting.
Braindamaged? Isn't a sign of brain damage that you can't deal with change? Just try upsetting the routine of a down syndrome person and enjoy the fireworks.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
now I gotta look up Greendale) It depends on if you like Neil Young in his retro electric-grunge-Crazy Horse mode. It is his first concept album, as far as I know.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I like shuffle. Especially when dealing with (ahem) downloaded music, it's a nice way to discover music I didn't even know I had, or liked.
I think a lot of it has to do with the difference between music that I've downloaded and music that I've bought the CD of. When you download a song, you do just that and download a single song. If you're feeling lucky, perhaps you'll try two or three songs by the same artist that you haven't heard. (I did that just the other day with the Violent Femmes) You just want to hear this single song, and you don't have the other ten or fifteen from the album, so you put it on shuffle and get this single song, followed by some other song that is the only song you have by some artist.
However, if I have a ripped CD of MP3's, then I know all the songs and want to hear them together, for the most part. I have found that if there is a song on an album and I don't like it when it comes up in shuffle, if I have been listening to just that album or just that artist, then I like it better. Perhaps it is different for different songs, and they sound better out of the context of the album.
Strangely enough, I have been thinking about moving from shuffle to a more playlist/album-centric style of listening recently after getting tired of having to forward through so many songs that I am not in the mood to hear that come up on suffle.
he seems be be one of those "fluffy" marketing-scientists (i.e. in no way a real scientist), so i will disregard everything he says. but how about this as food-for-thought; when radios first came out... EVERYONE was listening to shuffle, weren't they? i suppose that was also a braindead generation by this rationale?
Anyone got counterexamples of recent music which actually belongs in album format?) How about Tubular Bells 2003 :)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Some albums are designed to be listened to as a whole (The Wall, stuff by Yes) and some pieces often cover several CD tracks (symphonies and in fact most "classical" music). Overall, as many have pointed out, this is a small portion of the total music most people have in their collection.
In addition, I think that the majority of us, the majority of the time, put music on as an accompaniment to other activities (I'm listening to DJ Shadow as I read the news and type this response). So, this is a normal musical experience, where I'm not so much "staring with my ears," as I am enjoying the musical atmosphere like a nice scent: it's there, I check in, and I enjoy it off and on. Order is not important as I'm not there for the deeper meanings and the bigger structures.
Like many in this forum, I like the idea of having a set of music I like, but no idea what's next.
Finally, here's where shuffle improves things: with playlists. I have my "top 100" and "top rated" and many other playlists that are auto-generated by iTunes. I find that if the songs are in a set order, I bore quickly of the playlist. However, if they're shuffled, I keep going back (this is probably because I don't get through my top 100, and so if I always start the playlist would hear the same 3-10 songs every time).
So, for most people, most of the time, shuffle is a great enhancement.
The only factor binding a listener to playing an album from start to finish is old technology. You'd be hard pressed to play a vinyl record in random order. Get with the times, my friends. These days it's all about options.
And 'found porn'...
You always get good songs until you try it in Vegas.
Extreme's third album, III Sides To Every Story, from the mid-1990s, definitely had a meaningful sequence; the album was divided into three parts, the first 6 called 'Yours', the middle 5 called 'Mine' and the last 3 (which were longer tracks) called 'The Truth'.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
I always listen on shuffle. When Anita Hill's 'Ring My Bell' or Bobby Brown's 'My Prerogative' comes on I can deny that it's mine and blame someone else, usually someone I don't really like. "Oh that must of been on that one CD I got from so-and-so". It works.
It's also good when the music is not the focus of your attention. I (and a lot of other people) don't ever spend any time *just* listening to music like the authors seem to think is required to appreciate it properly; we just have it going in the background while doing something else.
I grew up listening to albums, so I'm not impartial, but...
When I got my iPod I did have a great time listening to my entire 2000+ song collection on shuffle. There was certainly something about it that seemed cool and fresh. Certain songs popped out and other seemed less engaging than I thought.
After a few months, though, I got sort of tired of it. There was something unsatisfying... like watching a bunch of movie trailers instead of watching a movie. There is something to be said for a well constructed album that takes you on an extended journey. Even if I end up skipping one or two songs, listening in album or near album format does have a sort of depth to it you just don't get listening to singles collections.
Going back to albums was a bit uncomfortable at first -- I would find myself getting impatient for a change. But what's with that? Shouldn't I be able to relax and have someone tell me a good story? It took some time to get over the attention span deficit, but once I did, I did find myself able to get a deeper enjoyment from music again.
Just my thoughts.
.. and earlier didn't have that option for most practical purposes. Ya laid a stack of records on the spindle and played them in order. Two generations earlier they had squat to play "artificial" music, you played an instrument or sang or listened to someone else. I know if we had had it, we would have used "shuffling". Closest I can remember is clicking ahead on 8 tracks.
As to the younger generation stupider? OF COURSE, that's the ONLY thing has been handed down over the millenia, every culture. BOTH the younger/older both think the other is stupid and nuts and doesn't know anything and versey visa. That's from the "what else is new?" department....
"Them *(&*^% kids nowadays, buncha lame brain degenerate weirdos, dress funny, too!"
My dad laid that on me heavy, UNTIL my aunt, his older sister, showed me a picture of him in a FREEKIN ZOOT SUIT. That shut him up!
That's why I pay no nevermind to earrings and green hair and whatnot now, because I remember ME in a Nehru shirt and "head boots" and I remember all the girls looked like one of three things, indian gypsy princesses, mary tyler moore lookin squares, or greaser big hair gals popping gum!
No, I think that the radio and MTV format has a hand in this, too. I still listen to a lot of albums that are designed to be coherent wholes, and in a lot of cases the songs on them just don't stand as well when played out of context. If you want a great example, try listening to that Pink Floyd greatest hits CD sometime.
The music industry knows this, and knows that most folks buy albums because they heard one really great song from that album on the radio, so they have started pushing artists to work on doing CDs with the now-common "2 hits and 13 pieces of filler" format.
Artists want to make money, just like everyone else, and they want to get signed, so they go for it.
So yeah, everyone has a hand in this trend, but I don't think it started with the recording artists. Of course, I also don't think that it started with radio. Most people had radios long before they were doing much in the way of buying recordings of music, and long before the vinyl LP format that gave us the albums we know of today existed. So if album production were really as radio-controlled as folks complain it is, I imagine that good solid albums would either never have become popular, or they have always been this popular and folks are just getting all nostalgic.
I think maybe people who think boy bands are a new phenomenon haven't heard of Motown.
Let's say it takes only five minutes to rip a CD to a lossy format like MP3 or Vorbis. That would take over 34 days of continual ripping, not counting the time it takes to remove the CD from the collection, popping it into the tray, taking the CD out when the rip is complete, and eventually putting it away.
CDs generally cost somewhere between $10 and $18, so let's be generous and say his average is $11. That would be $110,000 in CDs alone. In other words, this person should take out a nice insurance policy for his CDs.
Your friend is fortunate, indeed. Lots of money and free time.
It's exciting not knowing what the next track will be!
You really need to get out of the house... you know that?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
i'm a big fan of listening to an album from start to finish. listening to a single is like reading a chapter out of a book, or watching a scene from a movie. sure, it may be good, but you really don't get a full idea of what the artist was doing at the time unless you listen to the whole thing. then again, i rarely listen to "pop" music -- i doubt there's a lot of theme/structure to a brittney spears album or what have you.
Where else would every CD player made since 1988 have gotten the idea to have a 'random play' button? Apple invents every good idea. At least that's how it's reported on /., and they wouldn't lie or exaggerate.
Shuffling sucks when you have too big of a collection.
/music/emo/death_cab_for_cutie/we_have_the_facts, it would take it an absolute minimum of 3 shifts to get out of the emo directory, and it happening in 3 would be patently unlikely.
Plain old "pick a random N, play song N" shuffling is annoying as hell when you have multiple genres in the playlist. Would it kill people to set a maximum relative depth in the FS that their shuffling algorithms will reach? Or at the very least to limit genre changes to once every 10 songs?
This has been bugging me for weeks.
If you could just set it to shuffle within the current directory, parent directory, and the parent's immediate children, then in a sanely organized collection, it'd keep the genre limited to the point where it would ALMOST sound like a radio station with non-shitty music. However, by allowing it to reach the parent directory, you also allow it to get to the absolute parent, and start crawling back down to the other directories.
Like, if you started at
Brilliant, eh? Now if only I was competent enough to implement it.
With media player, you can navigate to a folder in windows, right click on it, and say "play".
IMHO, Mr. Bull is full of it. His statements certainly belong to the annals of worst generalizations of humankind. He deserves to be shot and hung to dry above an electric dryer. He makes me think of Alzheimer, conformism and dried tobacco leaves. He smells of wretch and I hope he hasn't spawned.
I sometime like listening to concept albums in the original order though. Does that mean I deserve to be shot and hung to dry above an electric dryer? Certainly not.
HAD
Exactly. RIAA artists stopped making albums - one single, one half-decent track, 50 minutes of filler.
DJs started making albums when RIAA artists left off. It's hard to do it at home with CDs, because you'll be shuffling discs every 5 minutes. But if you have a few thousand MP3s to choose from, the art of the mix is a lot of fun.
Who would have thunk that you could put Ice-T's "Body Count's In The House" (rapper) with Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Two Tribes" (80s dance), Front Line Assembly's "Mindphaser" (90s techno-industrial), Ministry's "NWO" (hard guitar-based industrial), and KMFDM's "WW III" (industrial) and ends up with Timbuk 3's "Assholes On Parade" (laid-back, acoustic, funny-serious) Weird Al Yankovic "Christmas at Ground Zero" (happy, funny-haha).
There's an ordered progression from slow rhythm to fast thrash, and a release of tension towards the end, and it tells a story that starts the urban chaos of that fateful dust-choked morning, builds to a climax of rapid-fire mechanistic war, and gives a denouement that pokes gleeful fun at the inevitable end of the world as a result of human stupidity.
No single artist would be likely come up with that (no way to cross genres so radically). No DJ on commercial radio would be able play it, even if a Clear Channel "DJ" had enough twisted humor to invent it in the first place. That kind of warped genius can come only from someone with half an hour of spare time and a lot of MP3s on the hard drive.
Having a large collection of MP3s is like being able to come up with an instant concept album for any mood that strikes you.
Random Play is a tool you can use to find juxtapositions of style that you'd never have otherwise guessed. You can also use it to discover sampling sources you'd have never pieced together in a million years.
A riff from metal band Slayer's Angel of Death appears in industrial band KMFDM's guitar riff in Godlike (subsequently covered by Birmingham 6, and also appeared in rap band Public Enemy's guitar riff in She Watch Channel Zero. Speaking of techno-industrial band Birmingham 6, the ominous repetitive sound sampled Birmingham 6's Birmingham 6 track... started life as the happy teasing laugh of the ditzy chick (after she unzips the singer's pants) about whom hair-band Motley Crue sang She Goes Down.
And that's a mix set in that'll truly fuck with your head. Imagine, if you will: "Zzzzzzzzzzzip(giggle!)"-Motley Crue, Slayer, Public Enemy, KMFDM, Birmingham 6, the playlist loops back to Track 01, and *kaboom*, the listener's head explodes.
I don't have a 'play all' shuffle on my iPod that includes every song, but my 2 favorite playlists are 'Favorites' and 'Oldies'. 'Favorites' are all songs with 4 stars or greater, shuffled of course. 'Oldies' has the same criteria, plus an additional one to only include songs that I haven't heard in the last 30 days.
I bought an iPod for my wife. She loves it but she never listens to complete albums. She has 600+ songs in her favorites list. When she get to the end, she shuffles again and starts over.
What if the Hokey-Pokey really is what it's all about?
I currently use a smart playlist in iTunes to make sure that I don't hear my music too often. The list is 100 songs that haven't been played in the last 4 days that have the lowest play count. The songs also have to have a rating that's 3 stars or better.
However, I'd like an option to have a weighted random shuffle by rating. If I rate songs from 1 to 5, I'd like the song that are rated 5 to be played most often, and the songs that are rated 1 to only be played occasionally. Songs that I don't want to listen to ever are deleted. I'm USUALLY not in the mood for the songs that I rate low, but I like hearing them every once in a long while. It would also give me a better usable range of ratings. Right now, I rate songs that I basically never want to hear either 1 or 2, and populate my smart playlists with songs rated 3 to 5.
I love shuffle songs. I use it on a 20GB iPod with a 95GB music collection.
What I would like though is a button that lets me stay in the album that the random choice came from, when I am done with that album, then, one button to resume the shuffle.
For example, Breathe comes on from Pink Floyd DSM, you might want to stay in the moment and continue the album, but instead, it pops over to Jay-Z.
Hedley
I'd be brain damaged. Wouldn't you think belonging to a demographic that needs a PDA to get me home when I'm drunk would suggest short attention span/brain damage?
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
There seem to be two camps of people here: Those that appreciate the shuffle, and those that would rather listen to full albums the way they were recorded. I myself firmly fall into both camps. A lot of music that I like nowadays can be shuffled quite easily, and it doesn't lose much of it's meaning. On the other hand, there are a lot of albums that are definitely designed to be listened to in sequence. Some of the first CDs I ever listened to were like this: Pink Floyd - The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon. Depeche Mode - Music for the Masses. Definitely mix CDs where a DJ is beatmatching music should not be shuffled.
Well, the iPod and iTunes can shuffle individual songs, and complete albums. I found it useful to put mine on the Album shuffle, that way I still hear every album all the way through, in the order it was intended, but I also hear random albums, so I get a chance to hear music I haven't listened to in a while.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Everybody Hates Marketing.
When I noticed his title, my immediate response was "They have professors? Mankind is DOOMED."
I have a 400 disc CD changer at home that is now gathering dust, but from about 1996 through to 2000 it did one thing and one thing only, and that is play part of my CD collection in random mode. Lots and lots of my friends had the same kind of hardware, too. In fact, the first peice of independent commercial software I wrote was a database GUI specifically to control these types of CD jukeboxes.
Part of the reason people don't care about album order any more is very, very few people know how to make an Entire Album any more -- they make a couple of good songs and a bunch of filler. The last real Album I bought was Black Crowes' Amorica back in 1994.
When Cobain offed hisself I thought their music must rock and I went and bought all his albums. What I found was the typical disease -- a couple of good songs, with a lot of crap surrounding it.
For me, purely random shuffle is nice if done within a genre, but what if your collection covers many types of music? Randomly jumping around is fun for a bit, but for slightly more consistant playlists I use generators such as gjay (http://gjay.sourceforge.net/). It incorperates user classification in a multi-dimensional space, as well as using crude bpm and frequency finger-print matching. Its not perfect, but it sure keeps you from jumping between ambient and death metal (or something equally as bad). And its got more depth than some '5 star' ranking system. I'm curious if anyone else has a prefered smart playlist generator?
Maybe not short attention span or brain damaged, but merely good old fashioned lazy. I can't decide exactly what I want most of the time so I just toss the iPod on random and skip until I find something I want to listen to at the moment, then I skip until the next thing that suits the mood comes on. If something really kicks me in for a particular band/album then I'll usually just put that album on and turn the shuffle over to "album" rather than "song".
I still have a great deal of respect for the album as a form of artistic expression and am by no means the sort of person who just likes singles and bemoans the vast amount of filler on albums (if it's all filler it's probably not a good album... or a good band for that matter) shuffle is merely a randomized decision making tool.
iTunes actually only shuffles the songs the first time, then always plays them in the same shuffled order.
How do you make iTunes reshuffle each time through?
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Damn, I'm better than I thought.
The best part of the 'net (fuck RIAA) is that even if you've never heard of any of these songs, you can probably assemble this mix for yourself by searching the P2P networks for the individual tracks.
ohh my god.... pink floyd.... i'm gonna cum.... oh god
Oh yes, I must agree that the integrity of the album should be preserved. Random shuffling totally detroys the artistic stricture of the song sequence. Try it yourself: cue up track 15 - "Stone Dead Forever" on the No Remorse album and it will totally make no sense, man. You know why? 'Cause you didn't listen to track 6 - "Killed By Death" and Track 10 - "Dancing On Your Grave" first! Listen to those two and you'll totally get it, man. Like, shuffling is totally detrimental to all albums, man.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Shouldn't be too hard, right? Just whip up a quick script to read the songs and their weights, then play them without a GUI. Then you can do all sorts of fun stuff like weight according to the day, whatever.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Yeah, the iPod started the whole idea of shuffling music. That's precisely why the first CD player I bought in 1986 had a shuffle mode.
If any one thing can be credited with starting the "shuffle movement," shouldn't it be radio? Or do only brain damaged people with no attention span listen to the radio?
And if you don't want to count radio, then cassette tapes started it. I seem to remember making "mix" tapes in the early 80's. That's as close to shuffle as you could get until the advent of digital music.
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
That's why I like random shuffle. It's much easier to skip tracks I don't feel like listening to at the time than sit down and try and make a playlist. [sarcasm]Wow, it's like radio, but with a greater variety and no commercials - who would have thought something like that would be popular?[/sarcasm]
As for the comment about the brain-damagedness of listening to individual tracks instead of complete albums, it sounds like flamebait or the blathering of a pissed off RIAA executive because people are buying a few $0.99 tracks instead of $17.99 albums.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Any Nine Inch Nails album (not single or remix collection) has a very good focus. Marilyn Manson also has a focus on a few albums (notably Antichrist Superstar, which was unsurprisingly enouch produced my Mr. Trent Reznor).
Really, there are artists that produce albums, you're just not listening hard enough.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Are mac people truly this out of touch that the shuffle feature is novel?
Wait til we show them the 2nd mouse button!
Always been curious about these pseudorandom number generators. My guess is a LCG initialized by current time. Thermal noise would be more elegant.
-I am an elective eunuch.
My favorite 3-song combination: Lady Marmalade - Con Te Partido (sp) - You Spin Me Round (by dope). Pop-opera-rock.
I do security
Weighted random shuffle for Winamp
:)
http://www.robodj.org/
Best plugin ever
Bryan
I must say boo to the "brain damaged" conclusion, as it seems to assume that everybody just listens to pop. I usually listen to my music on a random playlist, but the mean track length of my random playlist is probably at least 6 minutes (that's averaging out 30 minute tracks and 3 minute tracks, as it were). I have many full albums as single mp3s on my playlist. I have full symphonies and full live sets and so forth.
To me, shuffle is mostly just to make it so I don't have to take too much time to pick what I want to listen to. I know I like most everything on my playlist, and if I don't like the song that comes up I have the "next" button hotkeyed. And yes, there is an element of that "magic" of the random playlist as the article discussed, but I'm not so melodramatic about it: it's just random, and sometime funny coincidences happen when things are random.
But this article and these critics saying it's the "future of music", well... like most critics and most article writers perhaps, they need to just shut up for a second and consider things from a variety of perspectives. Not everyone who uses "random shuffle" is a 15 year old MTV-watching pop-music-listening airhead. And I'd be willing to bet that old farts stay away from features like shuffle, not because they truly appreciate the aesthetic values of the full album any more (as I said you can easily get around that by just having full albums as single files), but simply because they're used to what they've done their whole life. It's human nature to avoid unnecessary change. Old habits die hard. Yada yada.
The rio karma does something similar. Random shuffle depending on genre, most often played, never played, certain years, etc. Mighty cool stuff.
J
... but I thought this was going to be about the random_shuffle() functor in the STL.
--
E_NOSIG
I go out a lot and I do agree with the random thing being exciting !!
Actually, even if 99% of the guys here dont belive me, I get to have sex most nights, WITH A GIRL !!
am I brain damaged ? I do think so
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
If someone doesn't listen to all of their music the way I listen to my music, it's because they're brain-damaged.
Yeah, that's a really credible statement. As others have already opined, it depends on the music -- some is clearly meant to be played in order (Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed comes to mind), but I believe the majority of music -- commercial or independent or hobby -- is not sequence-specific or even mildly sequence-sensitive. And even some music that can be sequence-sensitive, such as live albums (or, for a Free music example, I would consider the ML EP published by Loca Records to be moderately sequence-sensitive) can be removed from its sequence without really "breaking" anything. This is even true for sequence-specific music, as popular radio airplay of various isolated tracks from the aforementioned Moody Blues album helps demonstrate.
"Those kids these days..." Yeah, whatever. I'm sure that not listening to albums from start to finish is a new thing and doesn't have any historical precedent in radio... :-/
No Laughing Allowed!
James Kellaris is a moron. Merely because he likes listening to music in some predetermined order does not make those who like shuffling "brain dead."
It's a simple fact neither side to the non-issue is correct, as we can do both. They are NOT mutually exclusive.
I went through my music collection (in MP3 format) and reduced it to playlist which lasts about 4 1/4 days. It contains everything from John Coltrane to Brujeria to Puffy AmiYumi to Husker Du. It's like having my own personal radio station, I come in the house, click on my Remote Wonder, and I have music in nearly every room.
However, I'm still perfectly free to listen to individual albums whenever I like, I do that quite often.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Somethimes this place is too scary!
The topic is music and how the order in which songs are played affects the phsyche and the soul, and you guys have likely turned it into a 50-100 post discussion/argument/rant on the proper statistics to apply in various and sundry situations.
My advice to everyone reading : Leave before its too late!
Regarding the brain damage and shorter attention span, there is evidence to show that a combination of popular media and drugs (vaccinations, etc) will affect your attention span (creating ADHD, etc), and many drugs have been linked to long-term minor brain damage. Unfortunately I'm not making this up.
For popular media, consider cartoons: 22 minutes of mayhem. When I was a kid, some twenty years ago, cartoons had a single story that continued through the entire show, and thanks to the teretial TV station where I lived (RTE) they were shown without advertisement breaks. Compare that today with the two and three ad breaks that are shown during the show, and how the cartoons themselves have been broken up into multiple 4-8 minute segments, and its now wonder.
Damien
This generation seems to like their music that way, and according to one of the authorities in the article, it's because they are likely 'brain damaged' and have lower attention spans. Ouch."
This is a bunch of crap.
Having an iPod is like making my iLife into and iMovie. It's the soundtrack of my iWorld.
Come on, you are a professor of *marketing* and some guy from *Wired* calls you up about a pop-culture issue (that if you think about it, is going to be on slashMac (or Macfilter) the day of online publication).
Wouldn't you be *really* tempted to troll a bit?
I'm surprized that *anyone* gives Wired reporters a straight answer...
-- I browse at +5 with stripped sigs
Brain not I'm damaged! Talking what they are about?
that don't allow you to permanently group a bunch of songs togheter (say from a well sequenced album) so that they don't get too seperated in your rotation. So you can have the best of both worlds.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Fuck Kellaris and the horse he rode in on. I'm 42 years old and I like my music shuffled all over the place. e.g: Carmina Burana followed by Chill-Out Brazil followed by anything by John Digweed followed by Jan Garbarek. That just rocks my day. James Kellaris can go stick his linear phonograph and 8-track tapes up his academic ass.
To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.
Their is a project called "IRate"
http://irate.sourceforge.net/
And it does basicly what your asking for.
downside/upside is its all legal free music. So no nirvana, britney spears, or Metallica.
its free to try out, and works on windows and linux, and i think mac too.
I don't know which one of my ailments contributed more, but I had to re-read the post a couple time to get that it was a joke. To me, it made perfect sense the first time around!
/. be your browser's home page)
Now, what was I doing again? (the drawback to having
Individual experiences do not a trend make.
We're all braindead, because we get tired of listening to our music one album at a time.
Personally, I'm of the school that thinks endless repetition kills your creativity.
Maybe we like having to adapt to a new sequence every time we listen to our music. That doesn't sound braindamaged to me.
Machine9dotNet
Shenanigans! if (!$proof) $is_lie++;
...
The lunatic is on the grass.
The lunatic is on the grass.
Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs.
Got to keep the loonies on the path.
The lunatic is in the hall.
The lunatics are in my hall.
The paper holds their folded faces to the floorAnd every day the paper boy
brings more.
And if the dam breaks open many years too soonAnd if there is no
room upon the hillAnd if your head explodes with dark forebodings
tooI'll see you on the dark side of the moon.
The lunatic is in my head.The lunatic is in my headYou raise the
blade, you make the changeYou re-arrange me 'til I'm sane.You
lock the doorAnd throw away the keyThere's someone in my head
but it's not me.
And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one
seems to hear.
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunesI'll see you on the dark side of the moon.
"I can't think of anything to say except...I think it's marvelous!
HaHaHa!"
==--==--==--
That been sang,
Can you shuffle PF Darkside? Yes.
Can you shuffle PF The Wall...NO!
Can you shuffle Genesis Selling England....Yes.
Can you shuffle Genesis The Lamb lies down...NO!
Can you shuffle Beatles Abbey Road....Yes.
Can you shuffle Beatles Sgt. Peppers....NO.
Can you shuffle The Who Tommy....NO!
Can you shuffle Beethoven IV...NO!
Outcome: Inconclusive.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
Hmmm. Sounds like people need to make MP3 players more configurable--Python scripting would be nice--along with ways to sense the listener's mood and more metadata about the songs. Some things want to be shuffled, some don't. If you're an athelete, then you may want rousing songs when your heart rate is over 140; if you're a heart patient, you probably want something relaxing (and a call to the ambulance?) in that state.
Then, too, what some folks call "random," I call "eclectic"; I lament the loss of the days when I could listen to a fellow on KFMG who started one evening's show with "O Fortuna" followed by "Sombre Reptiles" (or whatever off-the-wall thing he played second). Death to playlists; up with choice and the chance to hear the unencumbered selections of people whose taste we trust.
I've been doing this with winamp and xmms for years. This is *not* an ipod phenomenon. It's not even new.
... what's up with that?
All of these articles lately about how ipod is changing the way people listen to music
-monique
And the rest of those nights? WITH A? .... (insert your favorite male name/animal/object/nickname for rosey palms and her 5 sisters here?)
Funny, I could have sworn it was mindless copying that killed the album.
If you agree with any of this, feel free to repost it in the future.
(1) I don't personally believe in copying CDs illegaly-- but I think we should
avoid using unkind words like "piracy" to describe those that do -- instead, we
should describe it as an "infringement", much like a parking infringement.
(2) I don't believe in the record companies emotively abusing the word "theft",
but I do believe in emotively abusing words like "information" and "sharing".
(3) I believe that piracy is driven by "overpriced CDs" even though CDs have
dropped in price over the years.
(4) I believe that piracy is driven by overly long copyright duration, even
though most pirated works are recent releases.
(5) I believe that illegitimately downloading music is giving the author "free
advertising". I don't buy any of the music I download, of course -- but lots of
other people probably do.
(6) I believe that ripping off the artists is wrong. The record companies
always rip off the artists. Artists support P2P, except the ones that don't
(like Metallica), and they don't agree with me, hence they're greedy or their
opinion doesn't count or something.
(7) I believe that selling CDs is not a business model, but giving away things
for free on the internet is.
(8) I believe that artists should be compensated for their work -- preferably
by someone else. I mean, they can sell concert tickets (which someone else can
buy) or sell t-shirts (to someone else) or something. As long as someone else
subsidises my free ride, I'm coooooool with it.
(9) I believe in capitalism but only support music business models which
involve giving away the fruits of ones labor for free.
(10) I believe that copying someone elses music, and redistributing it to
my 1,000,000 "best friends" on the internet is sharing. Music is made for
sharing. It's my right.
(11) I believe that record companies cracking down on piracy is "greed", but
a mob demanding free entertainment is not.
(12) I believe that it's not really "piracy" unless you charge money for it,
because, receiving money is wrong, but taking a free ride is fine.
(13) I believe that disallowing copying and redistributing music over Napster
is the same as humming my favourite song in public. Because when I hum my
favourite song in public, everyone likes it so much that they run home, get
out their tape recorders and once they've got a recording of it, they aren't
interested in hearing the original any more.
(14) I believe that when illegal behaviour destroys a business, it's "free
enterprise at work".
What I find amusing is that the pirates seem unable or unwilling to distinguish between creative activity and brainless copying.
Since a lot of the people here are GPL/OSS advocates: the "OSS way" applied to
this domain is to learn how to play an instrument. Or how to sing or whatever.
Then get together with a bunch of other people who can also play music, and
make some noise.
One of the unfortunate things that has happened to the OSS movement is that a
lot of the loudmouth advocates for it don't understand what it's really about.
They view it primarily as a means to get free stuff, and then they turn their
eyes from the free stuff to the non-free stuff and think to themselves "maybe
I'm entitled to get that one for free too". The noble ideals of grass roots
participation in the creative process, and/or supporting it in a principled
way (namely, boosting the "free foo" movement by preferring free foo to
nonfree foo), or for that matter, any other form of moderately principled
codes of ethics, are completely lost on them.
I think it's a shame that these leeches use OSS, but there's not a whole lot
that can or should be done about that. But I'd be much happier if at the very
least, they wouldn't confuse the OSS movement (free as in freedom) with the
Napster driven movement (free as in "loader")
I know, short attention span, like that's really... hey, did you watch Apprentice last night? I was surprised that... I gotta turn off the... oh, hey, an IM from...
You can call me a freak if you want.
But one of my favorite music artists is Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.
Most of his major albums ( Pretty Hate Machine, The Downward Spiral, The Fragile ) were written as a continuous "story" or "fantasy" and are a flowing atmosphere.
Most music is in the "2-3 minute radio song" format, and for those types it really does not matter.
But yes, there *are* exceptions.. But not necessarily a requirement either.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
The human mind is incapable of generating a truely random order. It constantly seeks to find a pattern, create a pattern, form some sort of order in things. True randomness is annoying.
When I listen to music and I am in a mellow mood, I don't want to hear Queen followed by Prodigy. I want Hendrix, or Zepplin, or any of the Floyd Albums.
When I was in college and actually had free time, I spent HOURS on end sorting and re-organizing my music playlists to get a nice flow between the mood, context and general transition between different songs.
The thing is, it's hard to qualitatively seperate songs into only one category, because the Beatles "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" can easily fit into a mellow mood, an angsty mood, an upbeat mood and also a poetic "best of" mood.
Once I get a playlist with a specific theme and general flow that I like, I just hit "reverse" or move a few tracks around to keep it from getting too repetitive.
So I settle for listening to the local classic 60's/70's radio station, or one of my old sorted playlists to give me a fresh order of songs, but still keep to a theme that won't bounce between my many different musical tastes!
Computers are useless. They can only give answers. --Pablo Picasso
Shuffle and serendipity are definitely the way to go for me. I used to use a minidisc player - 1 album / 15 songs or so per disc. I could shuffle those, but I still had to choose which particular disc to play. Once the disc was chosen (even if it was chosen randomly) I was tied into a limited set of tracks. Now my iPod has around 8000 tracks, and as I come across archived or free stuff on the web that looks interesting, I just throw it on there without giving it too much thought. I can check it out using a 'recently added' playlist, but mostly I enjoy setting the iPod to shuffle and letting all manner of new (and familiar) music stream through the 'phones. An hour's walk on shuffle is entirely different from an hour's walk with a set playlist, and I'd hate to go back now.
If that makes me brain damaged, whatever. I mean, add it to the rest of the evidence....
Incorrect. The Apple solutions (iTunes/iPod) both allow you to shuffle based on songs, albums or playlists. This means I can shuffle based on albums (assuming I'm listening for several hours as I often do in the art studio) and it will play a whole album through, then randomly pick another and play it through, etc.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Lateralus apparently has the most clever track listing I've ever heard. If you're not aware, there are a lot of references to parabolas, cycles, and so forth throughout the songs.
Halfway through the album are two tracks, back-to-back called Parabol/Parabola. Apparently, doing things like splitting the track listing there generates some interesting results. But the most interesting is as follows.
Someone on the Internet posted about an alternate tracklisting for the songs that seems to have been intentional, and throws a whole new tone to the entire record.
I'll quote it below:
To me, Tool's Lateralus is the most amazing piece of music ever
composed. I think Tool deliberately wanted to give their fans something
truly amazing, but wanted them to find it on their own. "Recognize this
as a holy gift..." At first, I thought that the song Lateralus was
about tripping acid - discovering true color by seperating the body
from the mind. At first listen, I imagined the bending envelope as an
intense visual. After becoming more familiar with the track, however, I
had reformed my interpretation to something broader: think deeper.
Lateralus, perhaps because it is the album's "title track", serves as
the central clue for a puzzle that a friend of mine had read about
somewhere on the internet. "All I know is that there is a different
order for the songs - something about two spirals. Oh yeah, and
thirteen is in the middle." After scavenging through endless google
search results, I gave up on finding more about this 'alternate order'.
Intent to figure the album out, and very curious about the spirals - I
put on the proverbial 'thinking cap'. I understood how the spirals
could have a lot of significance, in that the album's title track
offers the inspiring, "swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be
a human..........And following our will and wind we may just go where
no one's been. We'll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where
no one's been." In my internet scavenging, I had read one review,
written by a drummer, who mentioned that Danny Carey's drum beat formed
a fibonacci sequence during the song Lateralus. A drummer myself, I
decided to get out the graph paper and follow Danny. I can't play like
he can, but at least I can hear everything he's doing, and thus was
able to construct the drum tabulature. Sure enough, Danny repeats a
Fibonacci sequence through the number 13: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13. After 13, he
starts again with 1. Bringing in my Algebra 2 knowledge of the
Fibonacci sequence, when the equation for the Fibonacci sequence (which
I don't actually know) is graphed, it forms a sprial whose vertex
depends on the number at which the sequence begins. Coincidence? I
began to think not. I had already known of Danny's obsession with
sacred geometry and am familiar with Bob Frissell's book, Nothing in
This Book Is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are , so the
significance of what I had stumbled upon had actually begun to settle
in. This is where I just had to play with Lateralus. I had doodled a
few spirals in the corners of my graph paper, and in doing so made the
first important connection to Lateralus. I knew that if the tracks were
in fact intended to be heard in a different order, "Parabol" and
"Parabola" would have to go together. In drawing my spirals, I had
begun with a vertex and 'spiraled' outwards. After writing the numbers
1 through 13 linearly, I could immediately see that Parabol and
Parabola would have to be the middle of my spiral (in that 13 / 2 =
6.5). I drew a simple arrow between 6 and 7 and then pondered the next
pair. At first, I actually drew a spiral connecting pairs of numbers
whose sum equaled 13 (the number of songs on the album). This, however,
left the last track in the same position and without anything to
connect to. At this time, I had used my copy of La
FWIW... my mp3 player uses Media Player underneath (sorry but I started writing it years ago and it was my best bet at the time). That said, it does a lot of what you guys might want - mainly, you set up rules and it uses them to create your playlists. It's not in great shape yet but it's usable. Right now, the main functionality is driven by setting up DJ's. Each song gets a diff rating for each DJ. Then, you just pick the one you're in the mood for - e.g., Happy DJ, Angry DJ, Workin' DJ, whatever... stupid plug, I know, I just get excited about this topic. Sorry! I promise to work on something linux-y next... :P
Don't mod this up, or my little server will be toast...
Random shuffle is nice and all, but wait until Apple (or somebody) comes out with the next step: software that automatically analyzes your song collection, does beat matching, etc, and figures out which songs can be blended into other songs in a smooth/pleasing way. Enable this feature and enjoy a custom mix, auto-mashups, etc...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
been doing this on my 10 disk changer for years. Yeah, so iPod scales higher, but the concept is identical.
This "Professor" is an idiot.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
Nice to know that professors feel random shuffle is liked by people with "short attention spans". What does he propose we do with 3000 songs? Only listen to them in specific album orders to get the most out of them? Or only listen to the same songs over and over? I like how he made it out to be a problem that people listen to things on shuffle. Like we're taking something away from the music.
Radio stations have been "shuffling" music for years. Why so much shock and disdain for people who do it at home?
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
I like to decide what song to play next based on my mood or what song I've just listened to. Unfortunately no player makes this all that easy. I have a hack for xmms that lets me pick the next song to play, but it's not exactly standard xmms interface (the xmms play list window is too big, so I have it on another desktop).
My hack is a one-line high xterm-based curses/perl/xmms library glueball that lets me page/scroll through the playlist then hit a button to designate what to play next. This window is on my screen at the bottom of the monitor and follows me around my virtual desktops.
I think "play this next" would be a neat feature to add to the players, esp. the iPod. It's great when you want to mostly have it shuffle, but occasionally play a certain song after the one that's playing finishes. I need to add the ability to add more than one song to the queue.
This way I can play Disc Jockey, choosing a playlist as it's playing without disrupting any song that's currently going.
if every song on an album didn't sound the same... yes Metallica, that includes you!
Never underestimate the ability of this Wired writer Kahney to write any amount of portentuous material and tie it to an iPod:
"Why The Entire Population Of New York Cast Aside Their Old Religions And Now Worship A Giant Wicker iPod" by Leander Kahney
Da Blog
With good musical artists its more like reading a chapter in a book. You want to read the book in the order presented because the author meant it to be read that way. With much "popular music" though there is less cohesion so random is more fun.
Flaming Lips? Worth checking out, huh? I never could get past the name and ignored them up until now. The name made them seem like a Rolling Stones tribute band.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
From the article:
Attests? I think not. Try the link, 'cause I don't think they did.
But Winamp always seemed (before I switched to Linux) to "remember" which tracks I played manually the most when I selected all my mp3 collection to play randomly.
My cheapy Sony discman (nothing special, it just plays ordinary audio-cd`s and is particularly choosy about CD-R brands) seems to do that too - when I keep on skipping after the first seconds of a track on random shuffle, it`ll show up less and less - to the point where it doesn't anymore.
I haven't devised a way to test this in a controlled environment, but I've felt that effect really really strongly over the years with winamp and my discman. Could be some amusing side-effect of pseudorandom generation, could be FAT disk fragmenting, shit, I don`t know. Could even be old-fashioned placebo effect, but I don't think that's it.
Or perhaps I'm schizo. Anyone ever had that impression?
Winamp just followed the Pixies' "Stormy Weather" with Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35".
Winamp is a Brilliant Genius!
Art Schools Dietzilla
I set my iPod on Alphabetic, by song name. That way I can listen to a sort of random list of songs but when my iPod turns off I don't have to worry about hearing the same song again for a while. I started with the "A"s (0-9 really) in July and finished the "Z"s in December.
It forced me to listen to every song without having to say "Geez, I'm getting sick of this band".
On the downside, all of your re-mixes will be in one bulk group. So, for a disc like "Front 242: Headhunter 2000" you'll have to listen to 20 mixes of Headhunter in a row. That was cured by renaming the entries "a - Headhunter, b - Headhunter, etc." Not easily found by song, but quite easy by artist.
-Me
--JLockard - "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." - Emo Phillips
Tool is just Limp Biskit for angsty teenage goths. Soulless cash-in drivel.
Sasha has always contended that the riff in godlike was not sampled and just happens to sound a whole hell of a lot like Angel of Death. Whether or not you believe him is another story.
Not all RIAA artists have quit making albums. Radiohead is on Capitol, and I wouldn't say that their albums are filler. The Flaming Lips are on Warner Brothers and there albums are definately works of art (I mean one of them requries 4 freaking CD players to play the discs simultaneously). The Polyphonic Spree is on Hollywood (a division of Sony). Wilco is on Nonesuch (a division of Elektra/Warner). They all put out full albums. The problem is that people look at the past with Rose Colored glasses. They remember the Beatles, and the Who, and The Doors, and Led Zepplin, and Pink Floyd; but they forget Donna Summers, Bobby Day, The Surfaris, or Carl Douglas. There was just as much crap then as there is now, but after 20 years the cream floats to the top. 20 years from now people will be making the same arguments but saying XXX is hardly Radiohead.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
A professor, of MARKETING, who voluntarily lives and works in OHIO (or Northern Kentucky, but it's all the same really), is saying I'M brain damaged!?
Whatever you say there, hoss. *snicker*
I think of it as Meldroc Radio - all the songs I like, all the time, without obnoxious ads or babbling DJs.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
I used to work for a distribution company and I was able to buy new music LP/CD from $2-$5 as well as buying used cds from bargain bins at Amoeba (which I have found to have new releases by well known indie-rock bands (Dolour, Kind of Like Spitting). As such, I have about over 25,000 songs from my own record collection.
Being that there are so many songs to listen to I am not going to want to listen to them all in album format. I will typically* listen to three-five songs per artist in a random order. Why random? I like the element of surprise. There are many bands where I don't mind listening to the whole album (Spinanes, Blonde Redhead and so forth) but other bands are kind of spotty (Enon, Beat Happening). I do not have a short...what was I talking about?
*Sometimes I queue songs based on what key they are in or what chord progression they are using to make one song flow into the next in a interesting manner.
I've been a random-shuffle fan for a while, but I've found myself sticking to whole albums lately.
I tend to be in the mood for a specific type of music, and nothing scratches that itch like an entire album devoted to it. Sure, I could tag each song with its specific genre and style, but that would require me to come up with a genre and style for each.
It also gives me a broader view of the artist to whom I'm listening. I never would've gained a healthy appreciation for Nirvana or The White Stripes if I hadn't listened to their albums all the way through.
And, well, listening to Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory from start to finish just brings me back to freshman year of college when I couldn't get enough of it.
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
Like several of the posters, I do not belive hard coding songs together is a good thing. On a related note, Queen's "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions" is considered one song in the U.S., but was origonally considered two tracks in other nations (U.K.?) I believe Queen had considered them two seperate works, but because of the short pause between the two, we now have lumped them together.
i sent an email to this guy asking him how the could make such a broad statement without taking into effect advances in technology. he responded with what he actually told the reporter. i think this guy was just mis quoted. his email is below: Patrick, Thanks for your note. The reporter misquoted me. Here is exactly what I told him (via email): "I've no particular wisdom to share on this topic - my own research does not speak to it. The only thought that occurs to me is that the feature should appeal to "variety seekers" with a "low need for control." (Random shuffle is a control freak's worst nightmare.) Also, I wonder if it could have a (deleterious) long-term effect on attention span. Adult attention span has been decreasing over time. Random shuffle may be a manifestation of this M-TV generation phenomenon." Ciao! -James
I had almost forgotten the day those tweedlin' robins that used to inhabit MacArthur Park were wiped out by kung-fu-fighting. And now you... you bring... all... of this... back. May God have mercy on your ears, you heartless bastard.
Especially when the last 4-5 songs all segue into each other (You Never Give Me Your Money->Your Majesty, ditto side 2 of Dark Side of the Moon). I hate hearing anything form DSOTM on my local "classic rock" station, because it just feels wrong when the song ends, and the next doesn't immediately start. They usually don't even fade out, so it just stops. At least they usually play Brain Damage and Eclipse together.
I don't want to fit in, I just don't want to stand out
I've got about 10k songs in my database and we listnen to it on random almost all of the time. It's like having your own radio station. The weird thing is that the player seems to get into moods where it only plays songs of a certain genre or flavour. It's pretty cool and no doubt just our own perception of what is being played. Has anyone else experienced this?
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I enjoy songs as part of an album. It's sad that the mind numbing majority are getting their way with random shuffle. No one will ever create a Dark Side of the Moon or Downward Spiral again.
It's difficult to argue against someone who just insulted you by calling you "brain damaged". Best to take a deep breath, count to 10, and ignore the fucker and go back to surfing while digging them phat beats.
[o]_O
I listen to my iPod more during the week and less during the weekend. I find that it loses it's place after sitting over the weekend and I start over I know that it's random so it shouldn't matter, but I find myself thinking that there are certainly songs that I never get to listen to becuase I can't make it through the whole collection.
Maybe it's just me though.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
The result is that it does a damn good job of playing unique playlists of music that are thematically grouped--they "go together." It's like having a REAL DJ who knows a lot about music pick your playlist for you.
You can pick any song, artist, album, or arbitrary "style" and MoodLogic will create a playlist for you on the fly with songs that fit that selection.
I can't emphasize how much of a difference this has made to my music listening - I used to listen to whole albums or make my own limited playlists because the random shuffle was TOO random. But MoodLogic actually exposes a WHOLE lot of individual tracks I normally don't listen to. Very nifty.
They've recently released a version of their software that will siphon music to your TiVo as well, if you have the Home Media Option installed (check TiVo's website for this download). Instead of playing albums straight throguh, you can build themed playlists on the fly with your TiVo interface from another room. Brilliant.
This is where things will head, I hope.
Its a little time consuming, but i put all my discs (CDs and DVDs) into my Amazon DB. You log into your account, surf to the item, then click a checkbox "I Own This" then it gives you an option to rate it. I havn't bothered to rate anything, but the "Your Recomendations" page is really usefull now. It'll recomend movies that are already on my list to buy, it'll let me know about new releases from artists i have, and if it reccomends something to me i've never heard of i'll download a few songs or listen to the samples on amazon and a lot of times buy the album. Its really kinda freaky how well it knows my tastes. And a lot of the recomendations are cds and movies that my sister has already that i borrow a lot. Its a little time consuming, but inputing everything to amazon is definitly worth it.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
When I purchase an Album, I usually play the whole thing in order a few times, then dump it into my MP3 Collection.
Certain Songs which are good, and an Album which is Cohesive (like The Fire This Time.
Also, with certain Electronic and Instrumental Tracks, I like Playing the Track in Reverse (with SoundPlay), just for the variety. I get better Milage out of a track, because it always sounds like a completely different track. About Half the time they sound as good, or better than the original Track...
I had no idea someone has made something like this! Thanks for posting it. I can't wait to experiment with this.
It is easy to shuffle a massive amount of music and get shocking coincidences that will make you question the shuffling algorithm (Why does it play clusters of artists or albums? ). Statistically, it's the principle of equal a priori probabilities, so that there is an equal chance of a shuffle to create the exact same order that it started with.
Also, we humans are just too good at creating patterns where they don't exist. Combine our pattern matching skills with the Law of Truly Large Numbers, and we get an explaination for our common experience of listening to a random shuffle of music, "It's not random".
IMO, the best implementation of shuffling is done on my Empeg (Rio Car MP3 Player).
The 'real' solution for listening to music is to have different suffle modes and fancy heriarchical playlists... well um, read the FAQ!!!
Perspective is to Science what Interpretation is to Religion. Obama + Paul FTW
Ive used random shuffle for years, its the only way to save you from boredom with the albums they make these days. Im jus supprised that when a mac products starts using it people start to notice it.
um no, how about the fact that if you didn't have it on random it'd start at the same song every time you load the thing. and for those players who remember last track, since when does radio go through their playlist alphabetically, or since when do people take the time to record enough info in their collection to even have chronological ordering of release. people think they're smart becuase they publish articles. the guy probably doesn't even own one
ack!
It takes me just about 30 minuets
Is that faster or slower than 30 waltzes?
You misunderstand - he drives on really icy roads with bad tires.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One feature that I asked for on the iPod repeatedly and they released a while ago is the "Shuffle by Album" mode. So you can get random albums, and enjoy them as a whole...
I do use song shuffle a lot though as many times I just want a radio-like effect. Most often if I want an album I specifically select it and turn shuffle off altogether.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you only wanted fans to listen to whole CD's, then why would you sell this?
I just ripped the songs I wanted from a friends CD until they wake up and smell the moola. I buy pretty much everything I can online but fake aloofness like this makes me angry.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am sure there are plenty of iPod owners on /. you know who you are. How many of you actually use track shuffle on you iPod? Out of those who do, how many move more than 10 feet from a power socket whilst listening to music?
I love my iPod, I listen to it a hell of a lot, and for that reason I never use track shuffle, for the simple reason that it totally murders the battery life. Listening to complete albums or fixed playlists I get about 8 hours of battery from my iPod, more than enough to get me through a day. With it on track shuffle this is cut by more than half, and there is nothing more annoying that it dying halfway through a great song when you still have 2 miles to walk home.
This isn't a criticism of iPods, there are reasons for it that are pretty obvious to any tech-savvy person (random tracks means near constant spinning up of the hard drive for you non tech-savvy readers). I knew this when I bought it and it doesn't bother me. The reason I bring it up is they mention iPods 6 times in the article. It seems so strange to use the iPod as an example when the battery drain of shuffling is in my view one of the only things the iPod doesn't have cracked.
Saying that, of course when I have my iPod hooked up to the sound system in my living room power isn't a concern and it shuffles to its hearts content. Throwing up some truly bizarre selections. There really is no words to describe the effect of having Radiohead's 'No Surprises' fade out and be replaced by Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries'!
My girlfriend listens to her iTunes playlist on shuffle too, but every time she finishes a song, she fast-forwards at least ten times to find one she likes... I asked her why she doesn't just delete the bad ones, and she said because she enjoys the process of rejecting them :)
Random shuffle is your friend. It wants to help you. I just wish there were a way to quickly switch out of random to play more of that particular artist or album.
._/ (go canuckleheads!)
Click and hold on the centre button doesn't seem to be used for anything when a song is playing. I'd love a mini-menu to pop up:
- play more of this artist
- play more of this album
- play more of this genre
A couple of times, I've forgotten to turn on random shuffle. The songs were playing in alphabetical order, but it seemed pretty damn random to me until I noticed the pattern...\
"short attention span"... "listen to the album as the artist intended."
May be all well and good for opera and other types of music, but pop albums have plenty of crap filler tracks, which means you get all sorts of worthless stuff.
I took the time (yes, it was a PITA) to rate EVERY song in iTunes, from 1 to 5 stars. One star songs don't even make it to the iPod -- they're music I REALLY don't like. 2's are fair, but I'd never choose to listen (I may just choose to skip). Then I have playlists of 3+, 4+, and 5+ songs (about 2700, 800, and 80 total), that I usually play on random.
Works great for me, and I don't want to have to scroll/search for albums, I just get to choose a large number of songs to have as background, including many I haven't listened to in a long time.
So who's he to tell me I have a short attention span? I mean... I typed this whole hey look there's a fly over there!
This thread raises one of my ongoing pet peeves with the IPod and similar devices: the random number generators used for shuffle play tend to be very low quality. They tend to exhibit a substantial amount of serial correlation.
This is evident when you shuffle a group of approximately 2^n songs. There is a distinct tendency for the shuffle list to revisit specific parts of the song list at regular intervals. Thus, if you hear a song by a certain group or artist, there is a high probability that you will hear another song by the same artist/group shortly thereafter.
There are simple ways to reduce serial "non-random" behavior of pseudo-random generators in code (take a look at Numerical Recipes for a few good algorithms), but nobody seems to be aware of the problem: all pseudo-random generators are not created equal!
I listen to a lot of trance music. DJ sets, live mixes, mix discs and so on. Any track that is off *any* mix disc will have a cross-fade on either end of the track. You put two tracks from different mix discs end-to-end and you will hear two clashing snippets of other tracks as the next one starts playing. Sure I could go converting entire discs to just one audio file, but that doesn't make the file any more usable than an audio tape for finding stuff. I purposely rip discs as individual tracks so I can take advantage of the "random" access nature of computerized audio playback. This is how I build a playlist:
;-)
* load playlist with singles that don't have crossfades, and the odd full mix discs that actually are individual files
* use Winamp's (Options:Sort:)Randomize List option. It's like shuffle in its ability to randomize tracks, but you keep a linear playlist and can easily rearrange upcoming tracks
* continue loading playlist with mix discs that are broken down into indivual tracks
Failing that, I may also just listen to Digitally Imported or TranceSphere instead.
One of my favorite 'smart playlist' criteria is one I call 'Have you heard this lately?'
I have it compile all songs that have not been played in the past month or two weeks into a playlist that is ever-changing and filled with great things that sound fresh and new. I also remove a genre or two (Classical and Jazz for example) so that it is more upbeat.
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
This article is a load of Bull.
I shuffle not because I have a short attention span. I can listen to Ravel or Debussy for hours on end. Why? Cause its not the same tune all the way through the album. Same goes for real jazz music. It's not the same song all the way. Its different.
However, I can't listen to one album by some pop tart all the way through because after ten minutes I'm really over hearing the exact same song played in a different key.
-
Yay, first ever troll rating.
I feel somehow fulfilled.
Given that I mostly listen to my iPod at work, if I played just my Mike Oldfield stuff "in order" (whatever that means these days) I'd be listening to just his stuff for a day and a half. Vangelis, Jarre and Dead Can Dance would all be a full working day of eight hours. Now, I like this stuff, but at the end of a long day of programming I'm going to be a bit bored.
The artists don't have total say on what order songs go. The label usually says 'put this one first because its the most popular'.. Actually it seems the tracks I like are most often on track 3 or 7. In any case, i doubt it's very often, except for small labels, that the artists preferred order, or even songs, make it onto the final track. I'v heard of artists who've been forced to leave songs they like off because 'it might not sell'. God forbid music just be music and not dollar signs on staves.
http://www.lns.com/papers/playmp3s/
Wikipedia:Minuet. It doesn't say what the standard tempo is, though, which precludes comparison with the English waltz (25 bars / min), the Viennese waltz (50 bars / min) and the many other styles of waltz (the St. Bernard's, for example is somewhere in between the English and Viennese).
Actually, the shuffling of music is probably due to the increasing popularity of singles compared to albums. People seem to rather hear single songs by themselves rather than a whole album.
Theres a pattern to being random
He should listen to my songs and send me money.
I will try to keep this very brief
Fans of Nine Inch Nails should try this experiment: Listen to "Wish" from Broken and dance around like a DDR player on Crack 300. (If you have installed the free StepMania dance simulator on your PC, you can set this up with the "Maxx Wishful" simfile available here.) Immediately afterwards, listen to "Piggy" from The Downward Spiral sped up to 1.7xmusic and dance around like a hamster. Your brain's emotion center will have become so utterly confused that it'll have to reboot and choose a new random mood. You might just get the mood you want.
I listen to music at home and on the go with my ipod. I have yet to set it to play random tracks.
Then again, I do not listen to 120bpm, mindless, crap-pop top 40 music.
How's random shuffling of a music collection much different from just listening to a radio that has presets?
I have my Dell Digital Jukebox set to random shuffle, but its not because I think it's "magical." I just got bored with the same order of songs over and over, so I listen to the songs in whatever order the random integer generating function decides on.
Evidence of my thesis (see subject) can be derived from this quote: "Temporal order is an important element of how a work unfolds dynamically over time, an important factor underlying the aesthetic effect."
What the crap is this guy talking about? Is he on pot? It sounds to me like this guy is the one with "brain damage" because his primitive brain can't comprehend music playing in a different order.
68.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Now, what if WinAmp could random-shuffle playlists?
Hmm... that would be nice. Much better than ripping entire albums into one MP3 file.
Truly random shuffle sucks, especially if you have a large mp3/ogg library that does contain music you don't really like (e.g. it's a library shared with roommate/wife/etc) or you only like for some occasions, or has a great variety of moods. Nothing fries your brain as much as speed metal following a slow, sensual classical song.
There are a lot of tools now that improve on random shuffling. One I can recommend is imms, an add-on to xmms.
It improves random shuffling by adding a "preference memory". Songs you manually select from the playlist get scored higher, songs you skip get scored lower, etc. - at first it's random. After a while, the stuff you like comes up more often, but there's always a chance for some of the "class B" stuff also getting played.
Very cool
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
not much different or not much different than listening to someone elses audio collection where they stage the tunes and you listen or not much different than another persons conversation when they talk without a script or not much in general
put a little mystery into life for gods sake...
two of the kids on my block have a purposely unbocked wireless LAN in their basement which they stream their audio tunes thru 24/7. does this make them a noncleanchannel station? they insert their own .wav verbal snippets at times to add a personal 'flava' to the production.
their friendsliving near enough can listen since the LAN signal is bridged/amplified and carries quite a distance nearby.
their next project is a 12VDC wireless LAN for their cars to do that same thing at their local parking lot get togethers.
this is so much fun!
mod me troll, but what i said its true !!, I can probe it
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
Did you know that you are one?
Also, while I have 2000+ songs on my iPod, it sure seems to select Pavement songs (about 20 of them) often, so whoever did the random shuffle algorithm I think must be into Pavement.
Maybe I am classifying myself as an "old fart" here, but I seem to recall a revolution where a bunch of guys and gals with guitars and basic talent created raw albums because the recording industry was littered with art bands making long, boring rock opera albums! This happened 25+ years ago. Artists and critics stuck on requiring the listeners to "appreciate" music in a particular way have not learned the lesson from punk (and jazz and rock and grunge and blues and ...).
I don't recall Elvis Presley creating rock opera albums (or even ones that required being listened to in order). I don't recall having to listen to great blues tunes in order to get that special feeling. I don't recall even the record companies demanding this ... after all, the record companies have released "singles" for radio play for decades (although singles used to have tunes not on albums).
If artists or critics want to demand that listeners only hear albums in a particular order, then they will watch on the sidelines as the next "punk" revolution happens. I personally think that there are two "punk" aspects happening right now:
1. It is very easy for a single person or bunch of friends to fire up instruments, fire up a computer, and create songs and albums themselves. It may not be as polished as a studio album, but blues, punk and garage bands never were polished yet offered some of the music with the most intense feelings. Music distribution for these band "start-ups" is still tricky, but it is much much easier now with the Internet than before. Hopefully this will have an impact on music as a whole (much as "college bands" in the 80s, who got distribution on college radio stations, forced their own way into the U.S. music scene).
2. The ability to have large digital music compilations (legal or not) is letting listeners dictate how they want to buy and hear music. I think the cost of the technology is still a little high to truly infect all corners of music, but that will happen over time as costs come down and digitally-stored music (on hard disks) becomes ubiquitous. Hopefully this will also have a big impact on the music industry.
It will be interesting to see how music will be created and listened to 10 years down the line. Rock, punk, college rock, grunge (and many other minor revolutions) changed popular music. Given how stale pop music once again seems these days, seems like we are ripe for another revolution.
ChrisL