Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR Spotify has been building new options for controlling randomness during shuffle playback.
Listeners will have the option for random playback, irrespective of what was played before.
They’ll also be able to reduce repeats, by taking recently played tracks out of the running.
People have a problem with randomness. We don’t understand it, we have trouble recognizing it, and we often don’t even use the right words to describe it (no, your roommate’s friend’s dog walker is not a “random” addition to your party — they are there expressly because of those existing relationships). This is as true as ever when we’re talking about shuffling a media playlist. While a capital-r random order could include every song alphabetically, the same song over and over again, or not even change the playback order at all, when we say “random” what we tend to actually mean is “different and new.” And now it looks like Spotify is working on some new tools intended to help give listeners just that.
If you’ve felt frustrated that Spotify’s not giving you enough variety when shuffling its playback, you’re far from alone. But has it been getting any better? We’ve seen a few comments from users over the past few months expressing that shuffle playback seemed to be pulling up more pleasantly unexpected tracks, and now we might just have an idea about what the company’s up to.
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Looking into the new 9.0.84.1313 beta release of Spotify for Android, we’ve uncovered a number of strings that discuss changes to the app’s shuffle behavior:
Code Copy Text Pick your preferred Shuffle style. %s about how Spotify Shuffle works. Turn on personalized recommendations to use this Shuffle style. Randomizes while remembering recent plays, making songs you just heard less likely to repeat soon. Fewer repeats Shuffles tracks in a random order; every track has an equal shot, even if that means you hear some tracks more often than others. Standard Shuffle
So far, the app has offered linear playback, a regular shuffle mode, and smart shuffle. It looks like the new options we’ve found will apply to the standard shuffle operation, while offering users more control over just how random the output really is. We suspect that Spotify has already begun deploying this behavior, and will soon just start giving users explicit control over it.
Listeners will have the choice between an actually random playback order, and all the uncertainty that comes with that, or one that’s probably more what they’re looking for, where recently played tracks have a lower likelihood of coming back up.
Frankly, this is the kind of change that’s been a long time coming, and while some users might be a little intimidated by having too many shuffle options at their disposal, we appreciate just having the choice at all.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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