It's been more than a year since I posted this article and every day I go over it, thinking how appallingly amateur it is, and I promise that I'll fix it up to make it look almost legible.
I'll start by explaining what the Android Party Shuffle is and isn't. The party shuffle makes a randomly populated playlist with a maximum 16 songs. From this you have all the options you would with a normal playlist, such as adding and removing songs, changing the queue order, and skipping songs. It differs from a regular playlist, however, because it updates its song list when there are less than 6 unplayed songs in the playlist. This means that basically, the only real rule that the party shuffle follows is that there must be at least 6 songs following the song currently playing in the playlist at all times.
The thing to remember under the song list of 16 is that it is split up into three (uneven sections): already played (10 songs); currently playing (1 song); and to play next (5). The 'currently playing' section is the only constant, as the 'already played' and 'to play next' sections will equal each other out as opposites; For example, if you have two songs in the 'already played' section, then you will, naturally, have 13 songs in the 'to play next' section. If you a song, the skipped song isn't forgotten forever (as would happen with regular shuffle), but put into the 'already played' section (which is, well, uh, yeah...).
For example, if you have 5 songs in the 'to play next' section, and you skip ahead two songs, then the last two songs in the 'already played' section will be removed from the playlist and two new songs will be randomly selected and placed at the end of he 'to play next' section, so that the 'already played' section will still have 10 songs, and the 'to play next' section will still have 5 songs.
This changes a bit, because if you are skipping at the list to the playlist, then the 'to play next' section will always have at least six songs and the 'already played' section will have at most 9 songs, whereas if you are at the song/album art screen, then skipping songs will mean that the 'to play next' section will always have a minimum of 5 and the 'already played' will have at most 10.
Thankfully, I managed to delete the old text that was here. Good day.
