cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14571229
A simpler time
this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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Winamp, from a time when random meant random.
I've been on a road trip for the last week, and have well over 3000 songs on my "library" in Spotify. I was hearing repeats of songs within 3 hours (before my first fuel stop). When I hit random I expect each song in my Playlist to be put in a random order then navigated through. Spotify however creates a Playlist of a a subset of songs (this size has changed, at one point in time it was 20 tracks, but IIRC it's up to 50 now). As each plays, the last track in the Playlist is "randomly" chosen for that last spot with no context of recent listening history. And I seriously wouldn't doubt that there's a weighting due to popularity, your listening frequency, and several other factors due to some bean counters.
I miss using Winamp.
I miss using Winamp, but I don't miss the awful experience of acquiring music back then.
Being able to bring up one of any many tens of thousands of songs on a whim is an infinitely better experience than the absolute hellhole that was searching through Limewire/Kazaa etc etc. where, if you were lucky, you would find what you were looking for 50% of the time, and for it to be in good quality was even rarer. If you didn't get a radio rip, music video rip, or a recording that could only have come from grandma's hearing aid, you got Bill Clinton instead.
And if you wanted to go the legal route, you had to buy CDs that had maybe 1 or 2 songs on that you actually wanted.
Yeah, I'll take today's music streaming services over having to live through 2005 again.
I had been pirating MP3s since the 90s and was acquiring them from usenet & irc before Napster became a thing. Usenet & IRC never had a fake song in my experience. Napster/Kazaa/Etc were easier to use but had the mislabeled tracks all-over.
I haven't pirated music in years though, so I'm not sure what thearket is like these days.