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:
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