Random Play is Broken, Long Live Intelligent Play

ragdoll:

Have you ever met someone whose claim to fame is that they’re completely random? You know, someone who can’t take a serious photo, is prone to shouting bizarre phrases in the hallways, and writing even stranger things in their Facebook status updates? Someone who relies a little too heavily on the caps lock: “Marsha Crandall is FLYING A BURRITO PLANE though your hairpiece!” Probably into theatre.

Are they as awesome as they seem to want to be? Or are you like me and find this annoying? A little spastic, often grating.

Another random thing I find annoying are random playlists. When I listen to my music, I want to listen to a variety of bands, and random is they best way of queueing up several songs from several different artists. There are two big flaws that ruin random play for me, though:

  1. Too much repeat. Random is actually pseudo-random, and often noticeably so. Depending on device, I’ll hear the same artist twice in an hour, or even as often as every other song, in one instance. I have hundreds of artists in my collection. Yes, statistically speaking, I could hear the same artist twice or more in a row, but that should be once in like forever, and my point is, even that is too often. I just don’t want it to happen at all.
  2. Too random. Too often I’ll be lulled to sleep by the chirping of múm, only to be be jarred awake by some hardcore Rancid punk right after. Or, I’ll be shaking my head happily to Bomb the Music Industry! only to be completely bored, in context, by Prefuse 73’s chillout hip-hop.

What I need is a better random play. In fact, what I don’t want is random play at all, I want intelligent play. I like hanging out with my intelligent friends, because they make sense. Intelligent play would also make sense:

  1. Assuming you’re using the same broken random above, an addition should be made to the code that says: If this artist has been played in the last sixty minutes, try again.
  2. Better yet, get a music analyzer that actually compares the sonics of each song, and then choose a song based on the previous song. múm sounded close to Prefuse 73, so we’ll play some of that next. Prefuse 73 was more upbeat, like this Bomb the Music Industry! track, so that goes next in line. BtMI! went a little punk on that track, so lets crank out some Rancid.

Predixis has created a plugin that kind of addresses #2, so I know this can be done. The problem is, it only works as a standalone, or with Winamp, which I don’t use (MediaMonkey Gold, ftw). Also, it only makes playlists based around one song. I don’t mind listening to The Dead Kennedys and Rilo Kiley in the same half hour, as long as the music can bring me up or down to those levels first.

Additionally, I should be able to instantly make, say, an after-party mix that plays harmless pop songs and degrades gracefully into soothing lullabies. Or, by contrast, a snooze mix that wakes me up slow and then sharply turns up the volume after a few minutes, and I should be able to do this without thinking about it, or being worried that Monty Python’s “Lumberjack Song” will come on when I’m getting my favorite kind of play: IRL play.

It’s time to ditch your random friend and find someone more intelligent.