iPod Randomness Question..
 

This is clearly a trite question, but so what.

Has anyone else noticed that the "random songs" feature on an iPod is not really random? The same sequences of songs are played regularly. Some songs never appear. Some appear with incredible frequency. Some albums appear to be favoured. etc

Anyone know what accounts for this?

Tis the nature of randomness.

Yes, shuffle is truly random unless you specify otherwise.

http://www.cnet.com.au/itunes-just-how-random-is-random-339274094.htm

Roulette is random but still some numbers come up with greater frequency.

No idea.

I've had three songs come up in shuffle mode in the same sequence they're in on the album. I onlt have around 800 songs, but still, three like that?

I've also popped a CD out of the player in the car and the radio had the exact same song on and in the exact same place in the song.

I used to be frustrated by the "shuffle" mode. I have several playlists on my iPod. With 1200 songs, I have a Jazz pl, Classic Rock, classical, etc.... A couple hundred songs each works well.

Anyway, I used to be frustrated by shuffle because I noticed that it was the same order every time.

I then discovered that I was using it wrong. I eventually got pissed and did some Internet sleuthing to figure out my problem.

If you have a playlist, and you click the center button to enter the playlist and then hit play, you bypass the shuffle feature. I assume that it's the same if you go into "artist" or "genre" or whatever. If you highlight the category that you want to play and then hit play, you actually get a random sampling in a random order. With a little over 400 songs in my classic rock playlist, listening in the car and at work (about 10 hours), I don't think I normally hear the same song twice.

Yeah, I think the problem is more about the control surrounding shuffle being counterintuitive than the shuffle feature not actually working well.

It's not just Ipods even my cheap zen 16gb mosaic w/ ~2200 songs just playing on random tends to favor albums and certain songs. I would happen a guess that it happens on most mp3 players in general because no matter how "random" it claims it's still based on a formula.

i don't have an ipod, but i do use itunes on my PC. the shuffle feature does not seem very random. i'll hear three live versions of the same song, sometimes, in less than a couple of hours. especially when i have the clash stuff in the mix.

however, my zune really mixes it up.