iPod Random play not so random?

[Eric S.]

There used to be an iTunes option to adjust the degree of "randomness" in shuffle mode, by setting a probability that the next song would be by the same artist as the previous one. But now I can't seem to find that in iTunes (8.2.1). Is it still there somewhere and I'm just missing it?

The reason I'm wondering is that I was playing a playlist in shuffle mode and I got 3 or 4 songs in a row by the same artist before it switched to another artist. That's the first time I've ever seen that and I don't know what prompted it. Not that the effect was bad, but it was unexpected.

 

[StruckANerve]

I am interested in this also. Mine repeats artists every so often and I would like to make it as random as possible. I almost exclusively listen to my iPod on shuffle lately so this would be great if I could fix this.

 

[Eric S.]

The weird thing is that I used to try to enable this non-random behavior through the iTunes option (which I can no longer find), but I was never able to get it to work. Then I wondered if it only affected playback on the computer and not on the iPod. But now the behavior shows up out of the blue, and I haven't updated iTunes for a while (still running 8.2.1). Maybe I just never noticed it but that's hard to believe since I've listened to playlists in shuffle mode many times.