OT: appropriateness of "random" for playlist generation (was: random doesn't feel very random)

[Jeremiah Dodds]

Ivan Kanis <address@hidden> writes:

> I am using random for generating music play list. I have found that it
> is not random enough. It keeps playing the same tracks.
>
> I have even wrote a cache of recently played tracks so that it tries
> harder. Obviously it's a band aid.
>
> Yes I am just talking about "feeling" here. I don't know how to prove
> that random does not work. Is it even possible?
>
> On a side note are we using /dev/random?

FWIW, I've never found even "good" random algorithms to be good for the
purposes of playing music, especially when your collection is large. 

I like to listen to albums as a whole, and in particular I'd like to
listen to random albums that I haven't heard before, if any are
present. A lot of times, this can end up with you hearing multiple
artists in a row.

I actually went so far as to write my own little mp3 player that uses
an algorithm that can be summed up as "play me a random album from a
random artist that was not the last artist played", which sounds a lot
more "random" to my ears, but is technically much more stable.

-- 
Jeremiah Dodds

blog       : http://jdodds.github.com
github     : https://github.com/jdodds
freenode   : exhortatory
twitter    : kaens