Q: Randomize a playlist

Start a playlist then turn Shuffle On or Off. It's only a tap on the icon.

I know I could just select/de-select 'shuffle' on the iPod or on the stereo but this is awkward/dangerous if I'm driving.

Don't do it while driving. Pull over. Or use Siri (Play rock playlist shuffled).

How often are you changing playlists and wanting to turn shuffle omn/off while driving?

How about when you are not driving?

Then it's not awkward/dangerous at all?

I understand wanting some playlist shuffled/some not and not wanting to turn it on/off but because it's awkward when driving?

Suggestions here -> http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Goksteroo wrote:

 

Thanks for your reply, but.... It's not a tap on the icon if the iPod is in the glovebox and an iPod Classic doesn't have Siri.

Okay.

Still, you change playlists that often while driving?

Are you a truck driver/long haul driver?

Suggestions here -> http://www.apple.com/feedback/

The whole point of this feature was that you could have a "random" playlist which you could play from start to finish without repeating any of the tracks. Let's say you're going on a long road trip over 3-4 days -- Oklahoma City to Sonoma. You want to use your iTunes/iPod to create a playlist to accompany you on the long drive. You get about 300 songs on this list. In previous versions of iTunes this was trivial -- just a few mouse clicks as Goksteroo describes in his first post, and you've got a nice random playlist that doesn't bunch up all the songs off one album or by one artist. When you start your trip you pull up the playlist, press play, and you're off on a wonderful trip where you get to be surprised by what song comes next, but you know it'll be one you've selected and you'll get to hear each song exactly once on your trip.

But the new iTunes destroys this wonderful feature. Getting an even distribution manually without a lot of artist/album "clumping" takes hundreds of clicks and a good hour. Trust me, I've done it in desperation, makes your wrists hurt and makes you start to hate your iPod rather than loving it as part of what makes life fun.

Now I know you're thinking, "okay so just plug in your ipod and select 'Shuffle' and let the device randomize as you drive". But that's no good, because:

1) If you're playing audio through the headphone jack into your car's aux cable, the new iPods don't "remember" where you were in the list once they go into sleep mode. This is a problem if you stop along the way to hike up to a scenic view in the mountains or to spend an afternoon in a quaint antique town. Even if you don't do those things it will hit you after you stop for the night. Enjoy all those songs on Day 1? Well guess what, On Day 2 (or later the same afternoon if you took a long break somewhere) when you pull up your carefully selected road trip playlist, whichever track you start with will become the "first" track by the Shuffle software, and it will go back through your entire list again. So now there are songs you've already heard are coming back up; meanwhile all the other songs you still hope to hear are put back in the queue and some of them fall to the back of the line behind the repeated songs. By Day 3 you are going to have heard some of the same songs three or four times already. BUT THAT'S WHY MUSIC LOVERS HAVE PERSONAL AUDIO PLAYERS -- we can get endless repeats of limited playlists on corporate radio stations. We buy an iPod for its combination of portability and control.

2) If you're connecting your iPod/iPhone to a newer vehicle through the usb cable and using the "shuffle" option on your car stereo, you end up with the same problem of starting over, but even worse!. Because most car stereos don't waste battery power "remembering" where they were playing your synced device, Once the iPod goes to sleep, it's like you disconnected it. So if you stop at a fast food place to pee and grab a sandwich, guess what? 20 minutes later when you get back in your car, it activates and reads your iPod contents as if it were the first time. So now when you hit Shuffle on the stereo you could very easily hear within an hour at least two songs you just heard in the hour before you stopped. Again -- I can get that treatment from corporate radio. Avoiding it is why I pay for iDevices and iTunes access and iCloud accounts. If you could take the simple step of randomizing the playlist in iTunes and then making it the new default play order, if your car resets the connection when you stop, you can pretty easily just pull the playlist up on the stereo and scroll down to the last song you heard, press play and voila! Happiness throughout the land!

Here's the answer you want. No snarky comments about why on earth would you want to do it that way, just the answer you want:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2019783/itunes-11-whats-missing-whats-changed.ht ml

Now...for what it's worth, one extra thing you may have to do when you finish creating this list is to make sure that it's not inadvertently sorted by anything. Mine came up automatically sorted by Artist, but simply clicking on the top of the first column solved all that. After that, you just drag the contents of your Randomizing Smart List into a static list, and you should be all set.

And as for why some of us would want to create a static random playlist, and not just let iTunes shuffle it for us on the fly...that shouldn't even be a question. Do I ask why you buy Corn Flakes and put sugar on them rather than just buying Frosted Flakes? They're very different in certain ways. The main advantage of a static randomized playlist is the ability to play that same list in the same order first time, every time. As the one who creates the playlists for long family trips in the van, this is wonderful. I've even modified the smart list so that it doesn't choose any song that's been played in the past 30 days.

I know this is an old thread, but Keith Gatling, I SO appreciate your answer. I have exactly the same issue as the OP Goksteroo, and came here looking for an answer. I am so tired of this "you don't really want to do that anyway" or "if you knew how to use the program you wouldn't even ask" kind of answers, which are condescending and not helpful. We use programs differently, and I'm a detailed technical user coming from Winamp trying to make iTunes work the way I want, and by golly static random playlists is something that I had with Winamp and I want with iTunes.

Here's why I want it:

I set up playlists on my iPod Nano, randomize them, then connect that iPod to my car stereo. I set the car stereo to NOT shuffle, i.e. play straight through. Now, two GOOD things happen:

1. When I play a playlist, leave the car and come back later, it picks up where it left off with no duplication. With Shuffle turned on in the car stereo, I'll hear some of the same songs I just listened to, which I don't want.

2. If I switch over and play an album instead, I don't have to ALSO turn off Shuffle, since it's already off. The album plays straight through without issue.

Every time I add music to my iPod, I re-randomize the playlists to vary the order. I do that often enough that I seldom get through the playlist before I re-randomize. Consequently I almost never hear the same song twice during a short time period like I do with shuffle mode in a car.

This is a reasonable function to include in iTunes, and I also don't understand why Apple took it out.

jgsouthard wrote:

 

1. When I play a playlist, leave the car and come back later, it picks up where it left off with no duplication. With Shuffle turned on in the car stereo, I'll hear some of the same songs I just listened to, which I don't want.

Of the iPods I use, this only happens if you "re-set" the playing. In other words, if I leave my iPod Classic (or Touch) connected to the car stereo, when I come back to the car and turn the iPod back on, it continues from where it left off, even in Shuffle mode. (I use my Classic this way all the time.)

The two reasons why that doesn't happen:

1. A different song (within that Playlist) has been manually selected to play. So in effect, the Playlist has been restarted.
2. The iPod's battery has run down. This can happen if the outside temperature is very low (and therefore, both the car's internal temperature and the iPod's temperature also drop too low). A battery has less power when cold, and if the iPod's battery gets too cold, the effect is that it can no longer run the iPod and the "remember where I was" feature is reset.

Here's a suggestion - try creating a Smart Playlist that contains your preferred Playlist, but only if the song hasn't been played for x days/weeks/months (according to the size of the list). Use the Smart Playlist to play your songs; once a song has been played, it is then excluded from the Smart Playlist until the time last Played has passed. The larger the original Playlist, the longer gap to leave before that song is included back into the Smart Playlist in order to minimise repeat plays.

This method does rely upon a couple of things though:

1. Neither of the two points I mentioned previously occur.
2. A Sync of the iPod with its iTunes Library takes place every now and again. Large Smart Playlists don't always update on the iPod as they should, (especially on a Classic) because the iPod's processor isn't powerful enough. Syncing the iPod with its iTunes enables iTunes to fully update the Smart Playlist, which in turn, copies onto the iPod.

Here's an example of a Smart Playlist that adds and removes songs automatically:

 

 

jgsouthard wrote:

 

1. When I play a playlist, leave the car and come back later, it picks up where it left off with no duplication. With Shuffle turned on in the car stereo, I'll hear some of the same songs I just listened to, which I don't want.

 

Of the iPods I use, this only happens if you "re-set" the playing. In other words, if I leave my iPod Classic (or Touch) connected to the car stereo, when I come back to the car and turn the iPod back on, it continues from where it left off, even in Shuffle mode.

Fiend,

I have a Nano that is only for car use, and it works exactly as described by jgsouthard.  When the car is turned back on, it finishes the song it was on, but the Shuffle has been reset, and is quite likely to replay songs that were played on the first part of the trip.

Since your question is related to the iPod nano I suggest you create a new thread of your own in the iPod nano forum.

the fiend wrote:

Since your question is related to the iPod nano

ed2345 did not post (nor have) a question.

Since your question is related to the iPod nano I suggest you create a new thread of your own in the iPod nano forum.

Since the question is related to the iPod nano I suggest someone who wants to address this issue creates a new thread of their own in the iPod nano forum.

Hi Phil,

I suspect ed was trying to add some more information relevant to the subject at hand in this one. No doubt he will drop in at some point.

tt2