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

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.

尽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真正改变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.