Allo. It’s Passover/Ramadan/Easter/the 10-year anniversary of Thatcher’s death and I’m not working today. That said, the problem with the kind of work that I do is that even when I’m off the clock aimlessly scrolling on TikTok, it’s inevitable that I will see something work-adjacent that compels me to get up and either call someone to talk about it or write something.
Earlier tonight I saw this TikTok posted by Miriam Tinny about the all-powerful shuffle button on music streaming platforms. The video provides commentary on this recent article from The Verge by Natalie Weiner reflecting on the history of the shuffle button and its impact on music consumption. As some might recall, to shuffle or not to shuffle was the question in 2021 when Adele publicly critiqued Spotify for auto-enabling the feature whenever a user pressed ‘play’. Adele felt strongly that her new album ’30’ should be heard in the intended order, tweeted about it, and, Spotify complied with a heaping dose of PR flourish.
Back in 2021, I also wrote about this episode for The Conversation. At the time my focus was on the long-foretold death of the album (which has yet to come) and the influence superstars like Adele continue to wield in the era of platform power. Seeing this TikTok and reading this article made me spare a few thoughts on shuffle that I’ve decided to write down and share here so I don’t forget and to force me to form complete thoughts. Three things stood out to me in the conclusion of Weiner’s article: that shuffle affords or constrains control over musical choice, that shuffle is the easier and preferred mode of consumption, and that the ability to turn off auto-shuffle is (or was) a premium feature.
(Un)Controlled
Weiner makes the point that control is more important than content for listeners, “information itself is not as valuable or costly as the ability to control how you take it in.” Major music streaming platforms offer essentially the same content. What sets them apart is how they deliver that content to users, an idea that has gained considerable traction in discussions of music platforms over the years. Writing nearly a decade ago, Jeremy Wade Morris and Devon Powers argued that music streaming platforms offer the illusion of control to users while ultimately selling them a carefully curated musical experience (paywalled). Subsequent research explores various aspects that shape (and are shaped by) control on music streaming platforms. For example, on the user side, Eric Drott expands on the psychological expectations associated with curation and recommendation to explain ‘why the next song matters’ (paywalled). On the industry side, Ben Morgan details the expectations, enthusiasms, and concerns of music professionals with regard to popularity and promotion of music (open access).
From these perspectives (along with many other excellent articles) a spectrum of ‘control’ emerges. On one extreme are users who prefer to choose what to play. On the other extreme are users who let the platform take the wheel with discovery feeds and playlists created by human curators and algorithmic recommender systems. The latter has garnered significant interest in recent years (for example my MUSICSTREAM colleagues recently published a massive literature review on the topic available here open access). When we think of algorithmic recommendation on music platforms, we tend to think of the various complex systems that make calculations using a dizzying array of factors to match new music to our taste. We tend not to think of shuffle, even though shuffle is absolutely a form of algorithmic recommendation. Returning to the spectrum of control, even users who prefer to choose their own artists, albums, and playlists (rather than those fed to them by platforms) may still be inclined to queue up their selected tunes, hit shuffle, and let the music play.
Shut up and Shuffle
Weiner mentions that Spotify’s decision to fuse the shuffle and play buttons followed a decades-long trend supported by user data, “35 years or so after the introduction of the shuffle button, people had grown to prefer listening that way.” Is that true? I’m genuinely curious to know what others think because it’s certainly the case for me… most of the time. I almost exclusively listen to my music on shuffle when listening to Spotify. It was the same for my iTunes library before that and my Discman before that. Quoting from Retromania by Simon Reynolds, Weiner asserts that relying on shuffle is easier because it alleviates the mental strain of having to choose what to play next; something Eric Drott labels a fantasy that is packaged and purveyed by music streaming platforms. Over time, the appeal of that fantasy has seeped outside of music consumption to other forms of consumption and platforms, such as Netflix and HBO Max, both of which added shuffle features in the past two years. Even Airbnb has a feature that resembles ‘shuffle’ allowing users to select a geographic region and date range, then the platform suggests some holiday options. It may appear easier, novel, or exciting, but it would not take long for users to revert back to choosing a song, or show, or a holiday home.
As an algorithmic system, it is nearly impossible to know what exactly is happening behind the scenes when we press shuffle. One thing we do know is that it is not purely random, by design. Though there is some mention of the longer trajectory of shuffle in Weiner’s article for The Verge and my article for The Conversation, if you’re curious to know more Devon Powers published a fascinating critical history of shuffle in 2014 (paywalled). Others have chronicled the evolution of shuffle from something truly random to something that feels random. The developmental journey towards an enhanced shuffle was crucial for music streaming platforms because, at least for a time, shuffle was the only option for a sizeable chunk of music streaming users; namely those who opted to remain on the free tier of their chosen platform.
Costly Choice
“We’ve handed Spotify and its competitors the reins in exchange for a whole universe of songs, and now we’re stuck begging (and paying) to take back some semblance of control” writes Weiner to conclude her piece. In 2021, when it came to shuffling albums, Adele ‘begged’ and the Spotify ‘listened’. But, crucially, they only offered that ‘semblance of control’ to premium subscribers; in other words, you had to pay to play Adele 30 in the order the artist intended.
At this point it’s worth noting that I am currently working on a project with my MUSICSTREAM colleagues that takes a close and critical look at the interfaces of several popular music streaming platforms, which involves setting up fresh accounts on the platforms we already use and exploring platforms we’ve never used before (sidenote: please DM me if you use Deezer or Amazon Music). Because of this, I had a quick look at my Spotify to see if and where the ‘shuffle-play’ button still existed. To my surprise, I saw that Spotify had removed it from playlists in addition to albums (a change that apparently was made last August according to Music Business Worldwide but, again, only for premium subscribers). I swapped over to my recently created free Spotify account to see if there was any difference and it didn’t look like it; the play button still played songs in order for playlists and albums, unless I manually selected shuffle.
This stood out to me because I still remember when I first started using Spotify over 10 years ago and I was unable to select specific songs on the free tier. Even though the vast majority of the time I was listening to music on shuffle, the fact that I COULDN’T choose a song, if or when I wanted to, partially motivated me to pay for the premium subscription. Fast forward to the present, I recently opened a free Deezer account for research purposes and it only two weeks of listening to the same ad over and over again every ten minutes for me to breakdown and pay for premium. It was as annoying to listen to ads and it was inconvenient to listen to my own music solely on shuffle. Even the iPod Shuffle, a device manufactured and marketed for shuffle play, had a switch to turn it off….
What a Kerfuffle…
Shuffle is so ubiquitous that we don’t think about it. Every music streaming platform (or at least the ones we’ve explored for our project) has a shuffle and a repeat button on the play bar. It’s one of those things that we don’t notice unless it was removed. That tendency to fade into the background is what makes shuffle so interesting to me (and why I’m grateful to Natalie Weiner for writing about it and Miriam Tinny for bringing it to my attention today).
Shining a spotlight on shuffle reveals contradictions inherent to our experiences listening to music on streaming platforms. Users who desire greater control over their listening may do so by selecting specific albums and curating their own playlists but then they divest that control back to the platform as soon as they press shuffle. Shuffle may be the (ostensibly) easier or more preferable option but platform developers recognize that at some point users will want to turn it off, and would even be willing to pay for that privilege. Shuffle is integral to the musical experience on streaming platforms but it is at its best, literally and metaphorically, when available as a toggle. As exhausting as it would be to follow prophetic wisdom of LMFAO and be shufflin’ everyday, I’d wager that nobody, not even Adele, wants to live in a world completely devoid of shuffle.
There’s much more to say on this, but I don’t want to make this too long or structured because 1) I’d never finish it, 2) this is supposed to be a space for fun, shitty writing, and most of all 3) I’m not working today. This started as an email draft but I’m glad to have written it as something like this. Not to get too deep into the meta-commentary I apparently love so much, but doing this has been extremely helpful to help me manage my weird thoughts. After writing the last one I put a bunch of ideas into a notebook of things I ‘could’ write about but ultimately didn’t because I don’t work that way. I’m more about spontaneity and can get distracted easily. Doing this felt productive and generative but not like I was forcing myself to do it. So I guess, in sum, do what works best for you and don’t work too much. And if you’ve made it this far and you read the epilogue, I hope the next song that plays on your shuffle is your favorite one. Thanks so much.
Music right now: Triumph of the Gods by Psychemagik (shuffled with a bunch of other weird stuff, obviously)
Game right now: Vampire Survivors on PC (BAFTA winner btw!)
Where's Bondy? 