I am in an intense love-hate relationship with Spotify. It makes good mixes for me, I have found a lot of great bands that way. BUT IT KEEPS REGURGITATING THE SAME SONGS IN THERE. I know about Song Radios and Artist Radios, so please don’t recommend those. Smart Shuttle doesn’t cut it, either.
The best thing would be several randomness sliders. One for randomness in bands, the other for randnomness of their songs, one for genres. Please tell me some music service has implemented something like that. I am dying over here.
I have been using https://spotifyshuffler.com/. This allows you to create a shuffled version of your playlist, then you play through that version once with Spotify’s shuffling disabled.
Is the idea that it’ll break Spotify preference to play only certain stuff?
The idea is that you don’t rely on Spotify shuffle at all. A separate app reads your playlist, shuffles it once, and puts that shuffled version into your library. Now you can play this new version with the in-Spotify shuffle disabled. Once you’ve heard all the songs, just rinse and repeat.
It seems most people are complaining about when Spotify plays random stuff it thinks you like, but I’m having the same issue with my actual created playlist. I’ve carefully gathered and downloaded all my favorite songs into a playlist that has about 3 days worth of music on it… Yet it plays the same 100-200 or so songs no matter what, even on shuffle. I’m pretty sure most songs in this list have never been played. Very irritating
That’s because Spotify shuffle by default is not a simple true randomizer as most would expect. It tries to be “smart” and mixes your playlist so similar songs play after another, while avoiding playing songs from the same artists back to back. And some more variables. In theory this is great and works well for some users and focused playlists, but can ruin playlists that cover a very wide range of genres and styles.
You can better approach true randomness by disabling the “Automix” feature in Spotify settings. Not entirely sure if you then actually get true randomness (Spotify loves being opaque), but I hope it helps with your playlist at least.
I would love if they made some enthusiast options available so we could customize our own Automix and shuffle preferences, but that will never happen…
i just preshuffle my playlist using a playlist shuffler website and then go in the order its shuffled. just got to remember what song you left off on, that way every song gets played at least once
I have the same gripe with Spotify, you dare like a song and that’s all you get over and over.
I really miss Google Play Music!
Spotify: hey remember that song you accidentally pressed like on, you know the one you listened to for 5 seconds? Yeah, that’s gonna be all you’ll listen to now.
Songza FTW
Same gripe. I recently requested all my data from Spotify, scraped play counts out of it (thanks for not providing that in the API) and made a playlist of my liked songs in ascending play count order. Shuffling that, I’m hearing songs I love which I haven’t heard in years. Sucks that it takes so much effort
YouTube Music is what I use. You can start a radio from a song, and it’ll play new music. You can also change the Up Next to different styles if you want familiar or new music.
I should also add that with YouTube Revanced you can make the app ad free, which is the primary reason I use it over other music streaming
Man I didn’t even know those buttons existed. I thought I always had to go through the music tuner to land in a “discover” playlist tuned to certain artists. This is so much easier, thanks!!
Also YouTube music will play random tracks uploaded to YouTube that are not licensed on other streaming services
Is it weird that I don’t use any of these streaming services and just use my own library via FTP (if I’m not at home)?
I installed Navidrome for that
I could google that, but I’m in a chatty mood 😂, could you explain what that is?
It’s a self-hosted music streaming service, based on the subsonic protocol. I set it up with an nginx reverse proxy so I’m able to access it from many compatible apps without a VPN, I use Symfonium on my phone and the integrated web UI on my computer.
Mmm, that is actually really cool 👍, I’ll have to look into that, maybe change the way I stream my media from my NAS. Thanks for the info ☺️.
I do it too, just with Plexamp.
The recommendations and radios on plexamp are amazing compared to any other service I’ve tried.
Will have to look into this, I haven’t really optimized around the way I stream my media.
I’m (slowly) working my way towards that too (it’s hell to classify though) but how do you discover new music?
Like I’ve always done, through friends or the internet 🤷.
I don’t have a small collection BTW. Things weren’t always discovered through app suggestions 😂.
Cool!
But if I understand you correctly you have a load and loads of stuff? How do you deal with it?
I mean, awhile ago I shazamed songs I liked and I got everything they ever produced and got cluttered up. It’s not the disk space but I don’t have the time to classify it all (in some perfect way) and I don’t even have a way to classify songs, some are good but only in a party setting, but another is both for a party setting, a long car ride and for outdoor business etc etc.
Any help greatly appreciated:-) !
Oh, yeah, classification takes some time. I classify by style (Pop, Rock, Metal, Techno, etc.). And I have 2 different “classification directories”, lol 😂. One is for albums/compilations. They are also sorted by style, but there are whole albums. The other one is with singles (like single tracks, not singles as in releases, lol 😂). Like, let’s say I like just 1 track from a certain artist and I don’t think anything else is worth it from that album (or EP, whatever). I download the whole thing, then delete everything else and just keep that 1 single track. So, let’s say this artist is a pop artist. I have a folder named Pop + Hip-Hop + House + Etc. and I just put it in there 😂. There’s like thousands of tracks there 😂.
So, let’s say I’m in the mood for something specific. I know where it resides, whether it be a whole album or a single track in the “randomness” directories (😂), I find it and I play it. If I’m just in a mood for music, in general, nothing specific, I usually just load the Pop + … directory in the playlist, set random and just hit play. Something I don’t like pops up, I just hit next 🤷.
I hope I helped. Sorting by style is what works for me 🤷. Sure, it’s not perfect, but I really don’t see any other sort style as better than that.
Thanks, that’s a smart way to do it! What kind of soft do you use to classify it, or are you using like disk folders?
I just use directories. Easier if swapping OS, plus it’s easier when I stream via FTP cuz I don’t have to use anything special software wise.
Yeah but I’d forget and end up with dozens of the same song named slightly different in the same folder :-D
But you’re right, if I can’t lay my hands on a soft letting me “tag” music correly I’ll just chuck stuff in the correct bins (folders).
But I think I’ll keep the original albums intact, so I can redo mixes and so.
Where do you get the (new) music from, CDs/albums?
While I primarily use streaming services, I almost always still buy albums on Bandcamp for the day when I need to go back to running my own music. You can save up for a Bandcamp Friday when more goes to the artist. Bandcamp has been the best place for music for awhile. Best to get in before Songtradr continues the destruction Epic started.
I pirate. I buy only what I really really like, and I’d like to have a hard copy (CD, vinyl), not digital download. If there is only digital download available, I pirate it.
https://www.radio-browser.info/
Many, many streaming radio stations from all over the world (some over-the-air, some internet only). Open database, so there’s apps for just about everything.
On Android install InnerTune from F-Droid. Allows you to play Youtube Music for free and no ads.
I was using innertune and will go.back to it when I can convince my wife to stop paying for youtube, but I’m definitely not looking forward to going back to it.
Innertune had issues communicating with Bluetooth and would have loading issues when not on wi-fi.
Also, the app fully breaks and has to be redownloaded if you attempt to use a widget maker for it.
Don’t read unless you remember what burning a CD was or if you want a viable answer
spoiler
A self curated mp3/opus folder with everything sorted into sub-folders, and a playlist folder that you can mess with on the fly
I’m still surprised all my music fits < 1GB by a large margin. Less than 2GB if you include full video game sound tracks.
If I ever want to add anything, I usually use ytp-dlp and download from whatever source (usually youtube). Everything autosyncs to any of my devices with syncthing, which incidentally is also useful for photos.
But tbf this doesn’t introduce you to new stuff. That I just do by random chance by watching yt videos and crap. YT Music is just as bad and will loop the same 3 songs if you let it.
I’m always shocked by how quickly a large music collection seems to get stale for me.
I dislike the way spotify seems to push certain songs, but I love that I hear stuff I’ve never heard a lot of the time.
That is not a lot of music. I had my old 80gb iPod filled to the brim with more on my computer back in the day. And those were just ordinary mp3s, not flac or lossless or anything. Nowadays I have like 10000 songs in my spotify library. I moved away from mp3s because curating and downloading that many songs is a pain and quite time consuming compared to just clicking a heart on spotify. Plus spotify is now primarily how I find new music, so ts just way easier than switching to a browser and manually downloading whatever cool song I just found, and having to fix tags or whatever. Especially since I’m usually doing something else while listening. With spotify I can save a song without even unlocking my phone. I also always listen to my whole library on shuffle and haven’t had any issues with it.
That’s the setup!
Though I prefer the mix of flac/opus.
There are scripts for yt-dlp out there that allow you to automatically download an entire artists discography (yt), which I recommend if it’s legal in your country.
Shuffle no repeat on my 60 gb ipod classic. Also shuffle no repeat using VLC for android on my phone.
I believe it’s Android only, but Innertune quickly became the best way to listen to music. Check it out :)
I’ve been using Deezer for a while and I like its variety. They have a “Flow” button where you can let it play random music with favorites mixed in, but you can also select a “mood” (like Focus, Party, Chill, and others) or genres (like R&B, Alternative, Rock, and others). You can also have Flow lean more towards new music or already favorited tracks, but that’s been inconsistent for me in the past where sometimes it’ll only play my favorited songs when I chose to listen to new music or vice versa.
I’ve discovered a lot of new songs and artists by letting Flow do its thing on my drive to and from work. Although, sometimes Flow gets stuck in a certain style of music, like playing back-to-back-to-back Golden Oldies, and it’s frustrating trying to get it to play anything else without manually selecting a genre or mood each time you launch the app. That’s a small gripe because the variety is typically good, with favorites mixed in.
I love flow but deezer’s music variety is just really lacking compared to Spotify or YouTube music for me, unfortunately. I want to love it!
I’ve been having the same issue. Then I saw a meme implying it’s laziness is a caching issue? I’m going to try clearing the cache daily (or more often if I am using it a lot) and seeing if that helps Spotify be more spontaneous
One of the main reasons I stuck with YouTube Music is that I find the algorhitms superior to spotify. Maybe this is placebo, but I think between the 7 mixes + discovery + artist / song radio I always have something that does not feel the same, and I feel like any intentionally searched listening updates the mixes fairly quickly.
I disagree entirely.
I used the free trial. The algorithm was a whole lot shittier than spotify’s recommendations. It had the same annoying vibe as the regular youtube algo where if you watch one video from Jordan Peterson, you suddenly inherit the feed of an Elon Musk worshipping alt right tech bro.
It was the same for music. I listened to one song as a joke then it stopped recommending good music and just made my whole feed into joke songs. Much like youtube’s algorithm, youtube music algo clearly uses google’s machnine learning tech (which they use for ads too) where it tries so hard to predict what you like without real data, instead preferring to use solely other people’s browsing habits rather than creating a unique profile for that user without it making too many assumptions right off the bat. Perhaps, I’d describe that algorithm as “HIGHLY reductive” when compared to any other recommendatiion algorithm which seem more geared toward slowly discovering the tastes of its users.
This might be a function of low usage time, the shifts were definitely more pronounced in the beginning, now when I listen to new stuff it only introduces the changes in the appropriate mixes (i.e my mix 1-3 is various hiphop (very well segregated into different styles i must add), 4,5 is indie/rock etc) and the amount is a function of how much of said new stuff i listen. On occasion i will use votes and the dislikes especially affect playlists quickly.
I know the youtube behaviour you refer to and it honestly really makes me hate watching youtube, some days I will have a bad mood and start spamming not interested for a few rows and my feed is good again.
But with YTM it seems to be really nice, whereas with spotify, as OP, I found it quite stale.
I do the same with YT Music and tolerate the ads. Then, when they hit on a few songs I’m enjoying, I go to Newpipe and play playlistss or extended version of the songs/artists. I also build my own playlists in Newpipe.
If I discover a song I like IRL (say, on the radio or in the background of a video), I add it to both YT Music and Newpipe (e.g., I’m listening to Chaleya from the movie Jawan on Newpipe right now, discovered when I was out and about).
ETA: Newpipe also offers auto-enqueing, which might lead to more discovery.
Im a disgusting premium user, but I might check out newpipe some day.
I just about lost my mind earlier out of frustration for this. I love listening to rap/hip hop and the algorithm makes multiple mixes with the exact same songs every time.
I just typed in “underground” in search and found so much good shit. Not even all rap. There’s all sorts of great music I have never heard!
