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iPod Ipod Classic's "Shuffle Songs" feature is not random at all..same artists often
- Thread starter Siciliano611
- Start date
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Yeah I've had a studio version of a song play and then the live version (or some other coincidence like that) on more than one occasion. I never rate songs. I almost started a thread like this once because I was curious. Who knows. Maybe it is a user error such as accidentally rating a song or something.
I guess it looks at the number of plays of a song. In my case, the iPod registers a lot of plays of jazz songs, so from that moment on the iPod will playback jazz till the end of times 
I see 2 solutions:
- reset all plays in iTunes (but apparently that's not easy)
- roll the firmware back before the moment people started complaining about the real random play.
I still can't believe I have to invent 100 things to be able to have a simple random playback. In programmers code that's one line of code.
I see 2 solutions:
- reset all plays in iTunes (but apparently that's not easy)
- roll the firmware back before the moment people started complaining about the real random play.
I still can't believe I have to invent 100 things to be able to have a simple random playback. In programmers code that's one line of code.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Easy solution to the jazz songs problem:
Any whines about the randomness of shuffle isn't going to move Apple to go back and rework an algorithm on a dead product line. And all you are going to get here is the fans making you out to be the problem ("it's working exactly as it should", etc) vs. a few others chiming in some "mine too and it's frustrating." So just work within the system that you can control. The playlist approach will eliminate having to hear the songs that you hear all day but are excluded (by you) from that new playlist.
Or if you do want to hear a subset of jazz favorites, drag them as individual songs into the playlist. If the bias is real, they may play more frequently than what random implies but you can always boot them back out of this playlist if you tire of them.
If it was me, I'd probably create 3 playlists: Work, Home, Combo or Hybrid. Work songs in Work. Non-work songs in Home. A little of both (hand picking favorites from both pools) for Combo or Hybrid (for when I am willing to hear some of the songs at work at home too). Then, just select a playlist & shuffle accordingly.
- Create 1 new playlist in iTunes perhaps called non-Jazz.
- Drag ALL of the songs you sync to your iPod EXCEPT the jazz songs you hear all day at work into that new playlist.
- Sync the new playlist to your iPod so you can access it.
- When you get home, shuffle play the songs in that new playlist.
Any whines about the randomness of shuffle isn't going to move Apple to go back and rework an algorithm on a dead product line. And all you are going to get here is the fans making you out to be the problem ("it's working exactly as it should", etc) vs. a few others chiming in some "mine too and it's frustrating." So just work within the system that you can control. The playlist approach will eliminate having to hear the songs that you hear all day but are excluded (by you) from that new playlist.
Or if you do want to hear a subset of jazz favorites, drag them as individual songs into the playlist. If the bias is real, they may play more frequently than what random implies but you can always boot them back out of this playlist if you tire of them.
If it was me, I'd probably create 3 playlists: Work, Home, Combo or Hybrid. Work songs in Work. Non-work songs in Home. A little of both (hand picking favorites from both pools) for Combo or Hybrid (for when I am willing to hear some of the songs at work at home too). Then, just select a playlist & shuffle accordingly.
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