A Brief History of Shuffling Your Songs, from Apple to Adele从苹果到阿黛尔：音乐随机播放简史

希拉·费德/文　胡文明/译

Adele’s album， 30， dropped on November 19， 2021， and around the same time， the superstar made a demand of music streaming behemoth1 Spotify： that they stop making the shuffle option the default on album pages.

2021年11月19日，阿黛尔的新专辑《30》正式发布，与此同时，这位巨星向音乐流媒体巨头Spotify提出了一个要求：停止将随机播放作为专辑页面的默认设置。

“Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended，” she tweeted on November 20. The decision was applauded2 around the internet， and it signaled a sea change3 in the way we consume music—from the early 2000s celebration of the shuffle feature to a rejection of it as the default.

11月20日，阿黛尔在推特中表示：“我们用艺术讲述着故事，人们应该按照我们的初衷来聆听。”这一决定受到网民的广泛好评，也标志着音乐消费方式的巨变——从21世纪初对随机播放功能的推崇，到如今拒绝将其作为默认播放方式。

Here’s how that happened， and what that change means for Spotify’s 172 million subscribers.

那么，这一巨变是如何发生的呢？这对于Spotify的1.72亿订阅用户又意味着什么？

What is the shuffle feature？

随机播放功能究竟是什么？

The shuffle feature as we know it today came into the spotlight4 in the early 2000s， with the arrival of the iPod， although music shuffling has been around for a very long time. “Shuffle is a way to listen to music， where you cede5 some of the control of what comes up next to a machine or an algorithm，” says Devon Powers， associate professor at Temple University， whose research focuses on popular music. That means if you’re using a record changer or CD changer， or listening to the radio or even your own collection of mp3s out of order， you’re shuffling music.

盡管随机播放功能早已问世，但直到21世纪初随着iPod的诞生，它才成为我们如今所熟知的播放方式。“随机播放是一种听音乐的方式，你把下一首播放什么歌的控制权交给了机器或算法。”研究流行音乐的天普大学副教授德雯·鲍尔斯说道。这意味着，无论是使用唱片或CD换碟机，还是听收音机，甚至是无序播放你自己的mp3收藏曲目，都属于随机播放音乐。

But it was on January 11， 2005， when Steve Jobs presented the first iPod Shuffle， a screenless device smaller than a pack of gum， capable of only playing music randomly， that the shuffle function became a national sensation. While other iPods came equipped with a shuffle function， this release branded this function as an Apple feature.

2005年1月11日，史蒂夫·乔布斯推出了第一款iPod Shuffle。这款比口香糖还小的无屏iPod只能随机播放音乐，至此随机播放功能才轰动全国。尽管其他iPod也配备了随机播放功能，但iPod Shuffle的发布将随机播放定位成苹果的特色功能。

Even before Apple came out with an iPod specifically dedicated to shuffle， the feature was celebrated. “I have seen the future， and it is called shuffle，” music critic Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker in 2004. In The Guardian， it was called “a radically different way of encountering music.” Noted academic Michael Bull said shuffle turned his devices into “a treasure trove6 full of hidden delights.”

这一功能早在苹果推出专门用于随机播放的iPod之前就备受推崇。“我已经看到了未来，那就是随机播放。”音乐评论家亚历克斯·罗斯在2004年的《纽约客》中写道。《卫报》将随机播放称为“一种截然不同的遇见音乐的方式”。知名学者迈克尔·布尔说，随机播放让他的设备变成了“一个惊喜满满的宝库”。

But there was also backlash7 from music purists. “Personally， and I believe I speak for many old farts here， I appreciate listening to music， be it an opera or a pop album， in the sequence in which the artist decided to present it，” marketing professor James Kellaris told Wired in 2004.

但也有音乐纯粹主义者对此表示反对。“就我个人而言，我相信我代表了许多老顽固，无论是歌剧还是流行专辑，我都喜欢按照艺人设定的顺序来听音乐。”营销学教授詹姆斯·凯拉里斯在2004年对《连线》杂志如是说道。

How did it affect how we listened to music？

随机播放功能如何影响我们听音乐的方式？

The existence of the iPod wasn’t the only thing that made shuffle popular. Amanda Krause， a music psychology researcher at James Cook University， points out that it was actually iTunes that had the biggest effect.

iPod的存在并不是让随机播放流行的唯一因素。詹姆斯·库克大学的音乐心理学研究员阿曼达·克劳斯指出，实际上iTunes才是最大功臣。

“iTunes really changed the way we purchased music， no longer needing to purchase an album， but having the option of buying single tracks，” she says. “That started a change for the dominant way of listening to music， moving away from albums and to playlists.”

“iTunes真正改變了我们购买音乐的方式，我们不再需要购买整张专辑，而是可以选择购买单曲。”她说。“这开始改变主流的听音乐方式，从专辑转向了播放列表。”

Music piracy also had an effect. In the 90s， downloading one four-minute song could take around three and a half hours. By the 2000s， the mp3 compression format had come into being， and the same song could be downloaded in minutes. As piracy began to increase， people downloading music often went for single tracks， because they were quicker to download and add to a playlist.

音乐盗版也产生了一定的影响。在90年代，下载一首四分钟的歌曲可能需要大约三个半小时。到了2000年代，mp3压缩格式问世，同样的歌曲可以在几分钟内下载完成。随着盗版的崛起，人们常常选择下载单曲，因为它们可以更快地下载并添加到播放列表。

Now， we have streaming services， which also encourage random listening， because people don’t even have to own the music they are listening to. Generally， says Krause， we tend to like music less when we become too familiar with it. Some researchers have suggested that shuffling is a way of keeping a music collection fresh， while avoiding the overlistening phenomenon.

如今的流媒体服务也让随机播放更为流行，因为人们甚至不需要购买音乐便可以收听。克劳斯表示，一般来说，对于太过熟悉的音乐，我们往往不会那么喜欢。一些研究人员认为，随机播放是让收藏的音乐保持新鲜的一种方式，同时也避免了过度听歌的现象。

How does it work？

随机播放的工作原理是什么？

Since the early 2000s， people have complained that the shuffle function is not random， often grouping songs by the same singer or genre together.

自2000年代初以来，人们一直抱怨随机播放功能并不随机，经常将同一歌手或同一风格的歌曲放在一起。

Steve Jobs offered a Smart Shuffle function in response to the complaints， a function which controlled how likely you were to see songs from the same album or from the same artist grouped together， saying “we’re making it less random to make it feel more random.”

针对这些抱怨，史蒂夫·乔布斯推出了智能随机播放功能，这个功能可以降低你连续听到同一专辑或同一艺术家歌曲的几率。乔布斯解释说：“我们让它变得不那么随机，以使人觉得它更加随机。”

When the Spotify system was launched， it used the Fisher-Yates algorithm8 for shuffling. It’s the algorithmic equivalent of randomly picking tickets out of a hat until there are none left. But like Apple fans， users began to complain about the function.

Spotify系统推出时采用了费舍尔-耶茨算法进行随机播放。它好比从帽子中随机抽签，直到抽尽。但和苹果的粉丝一样，用户开始抱怨这一功能。

As software engineer Martin Fiedler wrote on his blog in 2007， “the problem with conventional shuffle algorithms is that they are too random. They lack fairness and uniform distribution.” The human brain likes to find patterns and randomness， and will interpret randomness as not really random if the same artist plays more than once in an hour.

正如軟件工程师马丁·菲德勒在2007年他的博客中所写：“传统的洗牌算法的问题在于它们过于随机。它们缺乏公平性和均匀分布。”人类大脑喜欢寻找规律和随机性，如果在一个小时内同一位艺术家的歌曲播放了不止一次，大脑便会认为所谓的随机其实并不随机。

Fiedler created a shuffling algorithm which Spotify tweaked to revamp their own shuffle feature in 2014， making it impossible， for example， to hear five Billie Eilish songs in a row in shuffle mode.

菲德勒创建了一种洗牌算法，Spotify在2014年对其稍作调整，彻底改进了他们自己的随机播放功能。例如，在随机模式下，用户不可能连续听到五首比莉·艾利什的歌曲。

What happens to the shuffle function now？

随机播放功能现在会发生什么变化？

Powers， of Temple University， has been using shuffle since high school. For her， shuffle epitomizes9 the moment when modern technology began to shift the way we consumed music. “Shuffle represents this beautiful mid-2000s moment when people were super excited to have more power over how they listened to songs，” she says， “but it’s also part of all of the things that were happening at that time， like downloading music， and the very， very beginnings of streaming， with piracy.”

天普大学的鲍尔斯从高中时代就开始用随机播放来听歌。对她而言，随机播放是现代科技改变我们音乐消费方式的标志性时刻。她说：“随机播放代表了2000年代中期的美好时光，那时人们欣喜地发现自己对听歌方式有了更多的自主权。但随机播放也与那个时代的其他新生事物相关联，比如下载音乐，以及伴随着盗版而来的流媒体萌芽。”

But Spotify’s change doesn’t exactly herald10 a total shift in the way we listen to music， Powers points out. The era of the album as an art form， which lasted from the 60s into the 90s， is pretty much11 over now， and music singles rule the roost12.

然而，鲍尔斯指出，Spotify的变化并不预示着我们听音乐的方式会彻底转变。专辑作为一种艺术形式的时代从20世纪的60年代持续到90年代，现在几乎已经接近尾声，如今主导音乐市场的是各类单曲。

There’s plenty of research showing that people rarely change their default settings. For example， a Microsoft study found that 95% of users kept all the default features.

大量研究表明，人们很少更改默认设置。例如，微软的一项研究发现，95%的用户保留了所有默认功能。

So this change， from album shuffle as the default to something you have to opt into， means more people may be about to start listening to albums in their intended order， even if they’ll then put those same songs on their playlists in shuffle mode.

因此，从专辑随机播放作为默认设置，转变为用户需要主动选择的模式，这可能意味着更多的人将开始按照专辑原定的顺序来欣赏音乐，即便他们之后会将这些歌曲添加到自己的播放列表中随机播放。

（译者为“《英语世界》杯”翻译大赛获奖者）

1 behemoth巨头。  2 applaud赞许。  3 sea change巨大的变化。  4 come into the spotlight成为公众关注的焦点。

5 cede放弃。  6 treasure trove寶藏。  7 backlash反对。

8该算法由罗纳德·费舍尔（Ronald Fisher）和弗兰克·耶茨（Frank Yates）在1938年提出，是一种高效且公认的随机化算法。它从序列的末尾开始，每次随机选取一个元素与末尾的元素交换位置，然后缩小待选范围。这一过程持续至序列的开始，从而完成整个序列的随机化。

9 epitomize作为……的缩影。  10 herald预示……的来临。  11 pretty much差不多；基本上。

12 rule the roost称雄。