On listening to a playlist on shuffle

Most listeners hit shuffle. Most playlists are made assuming an order. The two facts have been at odds since shuffle existed, and curators broadly fall into two camps: those who design for the shuffle, and those who design for the order and hope the listener doesn't shuffle.

The rooms here are mostly in the second camp. The order matters — the first track sets the tone, the long ambient piece in the middle is the room's centre of gravity, the closer is the closer. Hit shuffle and the playlist still works, but a little less. The pulses are in slightly the wrong places.

This is a hill I'll defend lightly. There's a real case for designing for shuffle: it's how the listener actually uses the playlist, and pretending otherwise is a kind of dishonesty. The argument against is that ordering is a small but real piece of the curator's craft, and abandoning it gives up something the listener might never know they had.

In practice the playlists here are tested both ways. They have to work shuffled or the room is fragile. The order is a small extra layer for the listener who chooses to keep it. Both audiences are real; the order is built so that one isn't punished while serving the other.