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I have been carefully curating my playlists since the early 2000s when I went off to college. All music I owned was ripped to a series of laptops and put into playlists based on my own personal preferences, which were then loaded onto an mp3 player. Some of these playlists are fairly short; some are thousands of songs long. When I play them, I want a shuffle that is truly random, where I have the same chance of hearing everything on the playlist. It wouldn't be ON the playlist, and I wouldn't be playing THAT playlist, if I didn't want to hear it! I don't want the algorithm trying to figure out what I want, because it always goes "she's listened to these twenty songs in the last week, so obviously they are her favorites and she should hear them again."
When I listen to music on my phone, here's what happens. Say I want to listen to my musical theater playlist. The phone says, "aha! she listened to Hamilton yesterday, so when she puts on the Musical Theater playlist, she doesn't want to listen to all of it, she mostly wants to listen to Hamilton!" and cycles through the Hamilton songs with the occasional other show tune thrown in. Which, no. If I wanted to listen to ONLY Hamilton, I would be listening to the Hamilton playlist. I would not be listening to the musical theater playlist! So instead of putting the phone on shuffle and just driving down the road bopping along to my favorite show tunes, I have to worry about skipping through the stuff I just listened to yesterday.
Alas, I have not been able to find a music player app for android that doesn't do this. And since my old MP3 player isn't really functional anymore, and I don't want to buy a new device for something my phone can do quite well, I'm frustrated. I know that I am an old fuddy-duddy, and most people don't manually curate their own playlists anymore, just let the app do it for them, but I do--I've got twenty years of music exactly how I want it, and it's super simple to keep in order as I add music to it. There has to be an app somewhere that will do what I want, where "shuffle"="random shuffle through the playlist" and not "let me try to read your mind and horribly fuck it up."
When I listen to music on my phone, here's what happens. Say I want to listen to my musical theater playlist. The phone says, "aha! she listened to Hamilton yesterday, so when she puts on the Musical Theater playlist, she doesn't want to listen to all of it, she mostly wants to listen to Hamilton!" and cycles through the Hamilton songs with the occasional other show tune thrown in. Which, no. If I wanted to listen to ONLY Hamilton, I would be listening to the Hamilton playlist. I would not be listening to the musical theater playlist! So instead of putting the phone on shuffle and just driving down the road bopping along to my favorite show tunes, I have to worry about skipping through the stuff I just listened to yesterday.
Alas, I have not been able to find a music player app for android that doesn't do this. And since my old MP3 player isn't really functional anymore, and I don't want to buy a new device for something my phone can do quite well, I'm frustrated. I know that I am an old fuddy-duddy, and most people don't manually curate their own playlists anymore, just let the app do it for them, but I do--I've got twenty years of music exactly how I want it, and it's super simple to keep in order as I add music to it. There has to be an app somewhere that will do what I want, where "shuffle"="random shuffle through the playlist" and not "let me try to read your mind and horribly fuck it up."
