My sleep/wake button suddenly stopped working. Is this a common occurance in ipod nano's 6th generation?

Recently I was listening to my music, and when I went to change to a different song, I wasn't able to wake my ipod with the sleep/wake button. It's like it's not even there anymore. And when I shake my ipod I hear this rattling sound, which i'm pretty sure means that it's broken. But why is this happening, it's happened to a couple of my friends ipods, and I haven't even had mine a year. Is there anyway that I can fix this?