A Non-Game Design Spec

I talk about a design spec for...a music streaming app!

Videos I reference:

[joaolimaoyt]

Hi Tim, I passed your feedback along to the Google Assistant team. I hope they consider it. Love the channel.

[kyoujinko]

Love the dog in the background, it's quickly becoming part of Tim's channel

[MFKitten]

The Spotify shuffle function generates one "shuffled" play order for every playlist, and it has a limited number of songs it can keep in a shuffled order list. So in big playlists it will keep repeating the same set of songs, while the rest will be forever buried.

[Bee]

Holy crap. The album playlist idea is so simple and crazy good. I never thought of that. That is exactly what music platforms should have. Why don’t they? That’s so weird.

[seckblue]

One thing I wish there was in music software is:
"if this song has been played x times, now put it at the bottom of the list and give priority to the others"
Because sometimes a song can be a hit, but other times it can have been repeated so much that it "sickens"

A bit like when there are certain assets in a video game.
Perhaps it happens that the same ones are always used while others that would be even more suitable are not chosen because they do not appear and one does not always remember that they exist.

[deonmurphy]

I like classical music and the services I’ve tried completely fail to handle it well. So I just gave up on them. Classical pieces symphonies, concertos, operas should play as a unit, not shuffle movements as if they are pieces.

[PTFilms]

I volunteer my spare time as a community radio dj and have been invested in collecting records for the past 8 years. You are talking straight to my heart on this subject. Why are streaming services so frustrating to use?

You spoke about the issues with just simply getting a streaming service to play a certain decade or genre of music. As someone who's favorite genre is jazz and traditional pop ofvthe 1940s-50s, it's infuriating how incorrect streaming services dates are for songs pre-60s. They usually list the date of when the track was remastered or pressed to CD, rather than its initial release or recording date. Also, they tend to lack a lot of music from that era in general.

It's also frustrating how lacking their genres are. They'll list Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, and Billie Eilish as all pop, although I'd argue there are massive differences between the genres of those artists. While they have the data there, a lot of it is inaccurate or not specific enough for the ai to properly pick from and shuffle the music.

It's why I've stuck to mostly keeping with my digital files and listen to eclectic radio stations to find new music. Can sort everything by album, genre and decade as I see fit. It just takes so much time to organize. Would love for somebody to correct these services and the data they have on these files.

[deadclicks]

Something I’ve wanted from music software is to be able to specify “please always play these chain these songs together” for any songs designed to be listened to back to back

[moonhowler]

Youtube does that if I let my playlists shuffle for maybe 10 or 15 songs. It'll get stuck in a loop of two or three of 'em. Can't stand it.

[talideon]

4:10 - I'd put money on it using naïve randomisation rather than a proper Fisher shuffle.

[onesky]

"Hello Google, please stop snoring." 🤣

[PXAbstraction]

My other complaint as a YouTube Music user: When I thumbs up the copy of a song that's on a Greatest Hits album versus the real album, thumbs up both so that they aren't being weighted seperately. It's literally the exact same track, just on two differently titled albums.

[RobotWithHumanHair.]

oh my yes about the album thing! If I wanted to listen to the album all out of order I would have clicked shuffle!

[KeiNovak]

I find that a lot of these big tech companies no longer operate like they used to and things are just added but done in such a half-assed way if it's not part of their core experience (i.e. the money maker). Even that qualifier isn't guaranteed nowadays... like Netflix's recommendation algorithm.
(For example, it'll have a bunch of shows under the "You'll Like These" category, and they are shows that I've already watched and given a double thumbs up, so duh I liked them.)

[nVinter]

The playlist not being random is by design. I work in radio software development and songs are weighted by a bunch of factors. When you ask it to play "random music from X artist" or "random music in Y genre" the algorithm picks up "the hottest" songs from that, which doesnt necessarily mean the most popular songs in there but most likely will.
Today's software is made to be the least specific possible for the most part becuase you clearly know exactly what you want, but most people do not.

[lighthaze]

i watched this with headphones and at one point i held my breath to see if it was me breathing that loud. not kidding

[md.]

I think just some additional customisation options in the app or interface should allow for Tim's preferences. Like how the preferences menu was in fallout. That was so cool. I loved the dials to adjust stuff.

[AllTanuki]

I've always thought it would be cool if a shuffle feature could connect with a car's computer and inform its next decision based on your average speed over the last couple of minutes. Taking it slow through a sleepy neighborhood? It picks out stuff with a lower BPM, tends more towards chill genres. Doing 70 on a highway? Fast, energetic tunes!

[bloodmime]

This has got to be the most unintentionally hilarious video me and my partner have ever seen. Every single thing you said about music streaming apps and those devices is a strong agree from us. ESPECIALLY about the albums. I never thought of the device detecting whether im in the shower, desk or otherwise but that would be a game changing feature. I do make playlists, but sometimes I wish I didn't have to so other music could make it on.

[ThomasAndersonPhD]

These are really sensible feature-requests. Very thoughtful!