[ad_1]
A few years ago, Adele complained about Spotify. Her complaint wasn’t about the disastrous rates it compensates musicians for, the monopoly stranglehold on the music industry, or the misinformation-spouting podcast hosts it employs. I was dissatisfied with
“Our art tells stories and our stories should be heard the way we intended,” Adele tweeted shortly after the album’s release. 30, was such a massive release that almost no one, even if they wanted to, could escape the story. now automatically shuffle albums for listeners. However, Adele’s wishes turned out to be Spotify’s orders, and the company removed the auto-shuffle feature, but only for her premium users. What was once a feature is now a bug and you had to pay to override it.
Shuffle or random play is rooted in a core element of computing to use a more accurate term that predates the modern “shuffle button”. It’s the automation of randomness, a technically impossible feat. As Andrew Lisson, an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Buffalo, puts it, the only true randomness that “at the quantum level is an equal chance of X or Y occurring” is something like atomic decay, which is found in natural phenomena. increase. It cannot be fully replicated on a computer (at least at the moment). To make the shuffle button completely random, we need to incorporate quantum physics.
To make the shuffle button completely random, we need to incorporate quantum physics.
Instead, computer scientists have long faked it and settled on pseudo-randomness. This allows us to access information in a fast, non-linear way. Computers generate things without input, and generate things that cannot be traced to cause and effect (without significant time, effort, and expertise).
It is not clear who first decided to integrate the new technology of randomness into music. “In the first Philips players, shuffle wasn’t available…Which company came first? I don’t know,” said a pioneering scientist at Philips who studied his early CD players. His Kees Schouhamer Immink told me via email. But shortly after the first CD players were introduced in 1982 and the frontiers of music consumption shifted from analog to digital, random play was touted as one of the device’s best features. (By the early 1980s, there were sophisticated tape players that also had random playback capabilities, but all selections had to be preprogrammed by the user. In addition, the analog nature of tape playback meant that time becomes very important.)
“Do the Sony Shuffle!” exclaimed one of the 1986 advertisements for the Sony CDP-45. “Old CDs become new!” But what anticipated the modern shuffle experience was the introduction of players that hold multiple CDs. Instead of listening to your CDs playing in an unpredictable order, you can combine and shuffle some of your favorites to recreate the lean experience of listening to the radio (or new, live DJ) without hearing anything you don’t like. “Having a Sony CDP-C10 disc jockey in your home is like having your very own disc jockey,” says another ad. “Hassle-free party, background music in restaurants and shops for 10 hours of uninterrupted music enjoyment.”
first issue of Wired features a $12,000 CD player with a capacity of 100 discs, creating opportunities for powerful shuffle and programmable playback, the digital descendant of mixtapes and ancestor of modern playlists. rice field. Playing music at parties and restaurants was nothing new per se, but the idea that it could be personal – completely yours – ultimately changed everything. .
It is possible because it is random
The shuffle satisfied the human fascination with novelty and surprise. Randomness has potential. It makes sense that the first literal shuffle button was in a 70’s handheld blackjack game for shuffling virtual decks. Shuffling your playlist or library can sometimes give you the satisfaction of hearing exactly what you want to hear and not knowing it’s coming.
It’s also easy. In his book, Simon Reynolds wrote of the shuffle feature, “By removing the need for choice and ensuring familiarity, it frees you from the burden of desire itself.” retro maniaThe logical extreme of shuffle as an innovation came in 2005 with Apple’s low-cost MP3 player iPod Shuffle. Select music for the user to play.
The introduction of the idea that media consumption is both personal and passive has had significant ramifications. In the wake of the Napster era and the promise of large, completely unique music libraries, Pandora invented the idea of effectively personalized radio, using technology to promise the ultimate “shuffle” experience. . Make people listen. Spotify, Apple Music, and the like offer both the promise of her Napster-scale range and her Pandora ease. They suggest you can find anything, but why not click this button?
As a result, increasingly precise and invasive algorithms crept under the relatively harmless umbrella of “randomness.”
As a result, increasingly accurate and invasive algorithms sneak under the relatively innocuous umbrella of “randomness”, not just songs with no context, but anything that is novel and tells us what we want to hear. They are giving us information of sorts—usually services that make us buy something. Our social media timelines, YouTube feeds, and video streaming services all use the unscientific pretenses of shuffle and randomness to keep me on track without doing the work of figuring out what to consume. so that we can continue to see and hear.
“It’s basically premised on the idea that there’s no end,” Risson says. “Obviously there is an end, but there is no end that none of us will ever reach.” It’s a luxury to have all this choice, agency, and more importantly, time to choose in the first place.
When Spotify first integrated the play and shuffle buttons, Spotify was moving in line with what its metrics clearly indicated. So, 35 years after the introduction of the shuffle button, people started to prefer listening that way. To their end, playing the album on shuffle made the transition from the album itself to the algorithm-determined song Spotify played immediately after it more seamless (and less noticeable). True (ish) randomness and algorithmically-driven false randomness become one, further blurring the line between chosen randomness and unchosen “randomness”.
But whatever Adele’s complaints were, the problem with Shuffle Default wasn’t that the album should be sacred. Information itself is now less valuable and costly than the ability to control how it is captured. We gave Spotify and its competitors the reins in exchange for an entire universe of songs. pay) and regain some control.
[ad_2]
Source link