Hello. My name is Ben Smith and I head up Product Management for Experience, Software, and Developer Programs at Sonos.
I wanted to get more feedback from you all on your expectations for Shuffling tracks in your queue. I have reviewed the feedback on ask.sonos.com and received e-mails from a few of you (via our CEO John MacFarlane), but I wanted to get a better sense from those of you who use Shuffle, how your really want it to work.
When you select shuffle what do you want to happen? What don't you want to happen?
Thanks!
Ben
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I agree with your statement Edward, but this doesn't explain the duplications and the fact that it selects some artists/albums more than others does it? In other words if you have a list of 1000 songs - even if if the shuffle order is pre-determined, there should not be any duplicates.
Is part of this problem our interpretation of the repeat button? On my ipod, repeat allows my playlist or what ever I'm playing to start over once it is finished. This works with the shuffle feature on as well. Doesn't repeat work that way with Sonos as well? Or is it possible that the repeat function allows songs in a playlist to be repeated during the shuffling/randomizing? I'm playing over 2600 songs non-stop in one group with the occasional pause then play again and I'm constantly hearing songs from the same albums and the same songs and it's a very small subset of the whole. There are many albums I'm not hearing anything from. I'm turning off repeat to see if I notice a difference although maybe I need to reshuffle now.
Looking forward to improvements.
Looking forward to improvements.
Looking forward to improvements.
Well that didn't take long, I just heard a song for the third time since Friday (three days ago). Total play time since then was maybe 30 hours at best. That was with repeat now turned off so I have reshuffled the deck. Now of course it will be harder to recognize dupes again but I'm still listening for songs from all the albums I'm not hearing.
It's pretty straight forward....play tracks in a given playlist randomly without repeating a track until all tracks have been played regardless of how many times you switch off or change to another playlist. How many Sonos customers do you need to repeat this simple request? Enough "threads"....time to write some code!
They asked for feedback 3 months ago. Historically about every 3 months is their release cycle (although we have had a few more lately interim updates working on interface improvements).
Updated Shuffle Play has been announced in Public Beta 5.4
Hello, We just rolled out the Public Beta of our next update and it includes an overhaul of shuffle. Most notably, we made it so that you can see the shuffled and reshuffled order of the queue by selecting, deselecting, and reselecting the shuffle option. The shuffle algorithm is a standard card deck shuffle with the exception of the currently playing track which keeps playing as the first track in the shuffled order. New tracks added post-shuffle are appended to the queue. Looking forward to hearing what you have to say through the Beta. I also want you know that we fully acknowledge that the shuffle experience has been a broken experience for some time. It's our fault for not being more responsive. While we might not get every individual’s desired behavior for shuffle into this release, we have heard loud and clear that shuffle is an important part of the ultimate home music experience and we are committed to making it better for you. Thanks! Ben Smith
A+ observation. 🙂
This is great news. Now if I could only get into the Beta program so that I can use it. When can we reasonably expect to see it's normal release?
That's good news Ben! I was wondering what changes were made to the algorithm, and I personally like the new shuffled queue view much better! Visual confirmation of a real shuffle. I hope in the future many more of the forum ideas are implemented, there are so many simple requests like these that shouldn't be that difficult to do. In the meantime, thanks for the shuffle update, it's much better now! (needs album art tho...)
Ben,
First off, thanks for getting some traction to this. One thing I'd still love to see, which I don't think should be too much more complex, is if I long press on an artist, playlist, album, genre, etc. I'd love to see "Shuffle into queue" or something there, where I could say, "Hey I feel like some random Jazz" and with one long-press I've got it playing.
First off, thanks for getting some traction to this. One thing I'd still love to see, which I don't think should be too much more complex, is if I long press on an artist, playlist, album, genre, etc. I'd love to see "Shuffle into queue" or something there, where I could say, "Hey I feel like some random Jazz" and with one long-press I've got it playing.
User35102 it is a public beta. All you do is sign up in your account online.
this is great news!
not seeing the Windows version available in the Downloads section, only Android. Anyone else had this? Might be me 🙂
not seeing the Windows version available in the Downloads section, only Android. Anyone else had this? Might be me 🙂
FYI - Turns out I was wrong on one detail here. When you add tracks to an already shuffled queue , they will be shuffled in the order using a mini-card shuffle. They are not added to the end.
We didn't change the algorithm in this release. We are experimenting with other more sophisticated algorithms (like shuffle-merges) but haven't found one that both produces superior results and can handle large track sets (>1000 and >10,000) quickly.
Not just you Jay, I can only see the Android version as well in the Sonos Beta Download section.....Ben, is there a Windows or iOS version please?
The changes to shuffle are actually on the players, not in the app, so if you are in the beta and have updated the firmware on your players, you should see the shuffle change in all of our controller apps. If you don't, please submit beta feedback.
After sign up beta go into current desktop app and check for updates.
Got it. Thanks Chris and Ben.
Just to clarify one of the challenges I have with the current system (though I like many aspects of the new shuffle), let me run you through a sample of my real world usage yesterday. After listening to the news for a while on a TuneIn station (so not utilizing the queue), I wanted to listed to a random mix of some music from a particular genre. I click to replace the queue with all tracks from that genre, but the player was not set to shuffle, so it begins with the first song in the first album in that genre. I click over to the player part, click the queue, then click shuffle, then click fast forward to switch over to a new track (having heard that first track too many times already since it always used to start there). At this point it's working great. Then my wife comes home from a long day at work, and so we want to switch over to listening to a string quartet album. I replace the queue with the album we want, except that now it begins playing that in a randomly shuffled order, so I click over to the player, click the queue, turn off the shuffle, then start it playing again from the first track on the album.
What would be terrific is if there was a "Shuffle and replace queue" item that turned on the shuffle at the time you add the tracks to the queue, while "Replace queue" would replace the queue with the album/tracks/whatever in order with shuffle turned off. "Add to queue..." would maintain whatever shuffle status currently exists on the player (Allowing me to listen to another string quartet after this one, or to add some more shuffled tunes to my current shuffle).
What would be terrific is if there was a "Shuffle and replace queue" item that turned on the shuffle at the time you add the tracks to the queue, while "Replace queue" would replace the queue with the album/tracks/whatever in order with shuffle turned off. "Add to queue..." would maintain whatever shuffle status currently exists on the player (Allowing me to listen to another string quartet after this one, or to add some more shuffled tunes to my current shuffle).
Thats a great idea Jason. And also, like you, I dont like how the first track keeps playing even when you hit shuffle. Id like it to stop that track and start the first one in the new shuffle instead.
Jason - thanks for taking time to describe your daily use. It's helpful. I will have the team deselect shuffle when the queue is cleared. This only makes sense. Nick/Jason - On continuing to play the track that is playing, this is one were reasonable people will disagree on the desired behavior. I respect both POVs. For us at Sonos, it's a principle that music never drops or stops, so have an chosen to keep playing the playing track when the queue is shuffled and unshuffled.
The problem of having track keep playing can be solved by just having there be an option to turn on the shuffle when replacing the queue (my "Shuffle and replace" example above). If that happens, such that it doesn't start playing the same first track every time until I go elsewhere to turn on the shuffle, then the music never needs to stop/drop and will always start with a random different song.
How about just hit forward button to next tack.
More settings options would solve a lot of disagreements we have as to how it should operate..
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