This is it. What people think random is vs what it really is are often different.

The same song in a row three times is random etc. Randomness includes clumping. But most people think clumping isn't random. We think shuffled is random.

The button isn't even called random anymore. It's called shuffle.

The book Fooled by Randomness is the best book on the phenomenon I've read. Taleb kills it in this book and it might be worth your time if this is interesting to you.

Vlc, atleast on android does randomly ordered sequence for music. The list is generated when you shuffle and it also shows how many tracks are remaining and total time for thoose tracks. No track repeats till a full sequence is over and i belive that is the best way of shuffling songs. But still you shoukd be removing thoose specific songs from your pkaylist by yourself

It was only playing the same song twice if people have the same song twice in their library or playlist. The only other possibility with either shuffle software is if you have it on shuffle repeat all, and it just so happens that the last song in the first shuffling is also the first song in the next. This can still happen today, but it is increasingly rare the larger your playlist is.

The issue back then was how it would randomly play the same artist twice in a row, or manage to play songs from an alum sequentially. Truly random shuffling.

Steve Jobs coined the term “less random” because the then-new shuffle would intentionally avoid playing the same artist or songs from the same album twice in a row.

They use some special shuffle algorithm that (they claim) weighs the songs based on how recently they were played, but you can change it in settings somewhere for true random

Part of my theory is my very specific tastes have strong armed the algorithm. I have a playlist with every genre i listen to in it and I abuse the shuffle button until something comes on that fits my current vibe.

Yes I've had similar experiences. Even with smart shuffle on those new songs are the same. Another annoying feature is whenever i add a song from smart shuffle to the playlist it queues it up right away forcing a repeat listen.

Having multiple songs by the same artist play after each other, or the same music style is also perceived as not random.

And once you factor in that, you are at what Spotify is doing now.

Then it's per definition not completely random.