Shuffle algorithm not appropriate for Artist page

Support
1

Issue description:

Hi, as I understand it, the shuffle button on headers of pages throughout the library is designed to cause as little repetition of artist and album as possible.

When it comes to using this on the artist page, it causes less than desirable results.
Basically, a very high proportion of tracks with a different album artist will appear early in the shuffle (until exhausted). This includes tracks from the appears on section (often remixes), and also tracks from collaborative albums with multiple album artists, and then the latter section of the shuffle being almost exclusively regular album tracks.

This of course ends up providing a very unbalanced shuffle and not feeling very random at all, which is not the purpose I know you are trying to achieve with the button behaviour. When shuffling an artist, there is not the expectation for there to be constant difference in album artist.

When selecting the artist’s tracks list via the button on their page, and using that shuffle header button, this appears to be way less of an issue, and the shuffle much more random - is it because it doesn’t take album artist into account?

I hope I have explained the issue clearly.

Logs:

Upload description: tobyburton96artistshuffle

Additional information:

 

 

Reproduction steps:

 

 

Media provider:

Local device

Screenshots:

     

2

Provide screenshots of the said album page and the results.

3

I will upload a video since the artist page has a very large population

4

I have uploaded a video titled tobyburton96 shuffle.

I have highlighted how the album type sections when scrolling the artist page feature albums with different /additional album artists. The normal ‘Albums’ section tracks just have Four Tet as an album artist.

The easiest way to visualise this is to see the distribution of the tracks labelled (four tet remix) or something similar in the queue, since these all have different album artists, though these are not the only tracks that do, just easy to spot.

5

Hello tolriq, thanks for the fix on the new version. It is definitely improved. However, I do still notice groups of tracks with different album artists being bunched together. By different album artists I mean different from the artist being shuffled. The groups are more distributed along the list though.

I.e.

Before:

Album artist b

album artist c

Album artist d

Album artist e

Album artist f

Album artist a

Album artist a

Album artist a

Album artist a

Now:

Album artist a

Album artist a

Album artist b

Album artist c

Album artist d

Album artist a

Album artist a

Album artist a

Album artist e

Album artist f

Album artist g