Q: Randomize a playlist

Hi Steve, yes, that I understand. But I fail to understand precisely what point Chris was trying to make, six weeks after my post.

The original post concerned an iPod Classic, despite being posted in the iTunes for Windows discussions. My response attempted to address the concern about the way the Classic behaves because (and perhaps I'm mistaken but), I do not believe that iTunes is the cause of the OP's issue. Subsequent posts continued to implicate iTunes and then divert the discussion to the iPod nano. At that time, there was no indication that the nano behaved in a different way to the two iPod models with which I'm familiar and so, not unreasonably, I attempted to assist that contributor as well.

Ed's post (and experience) made it clear that the nano does behave differently. Personally, I regard the reported nano behaviour as illogical but since the original discussion concerned the Classic, I don't use a nano, and the community rules say keep on topic, I felt the logical thing to do is for someone with a nano to start a new discussion in the nano forum, hence my suggestion. That way, perhaps it could be established whether enough people using the nano find its behaviour unsatisfactory. In that event, perhaps a bug report might be in order.

Since Chris appears to have misunderstood my contribution, I sought to (hopefully) clarify my suggestion to his, or her, satisfaction.

Phil

turingtest2 wrote:

 

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

The thread got a little confusing since there were additional questions thrown in after the OP.  At least one of them (jgsouthard's) was in fact about the Nano, which is what I was addressing.  However, I am fairly sure that Phil realized I was not actually asking a question. 

ed2345 wrote:

 

I am fairly sure that Phil realized I was not actually asking a question. 

 

I did.

Thank you thank you thank you, and thank you. I bought am iPod classic for long roadtrips in my truck, playing it through a deck that has a terrible menu interface. When I use it's shuffle feature, it mixes podcasts n with my music, and the next track button does not advance through a podcast (not sure if that's the iPod or my crappy deck). I keep clicking shiffle while driving and cussing at it.

So I created a smart playlist using media that's not Podcast and Genre that's not podcast. But alas, until I read this post, no way to get a random order of songs. That used to be so easy.

But I just randomized the smartlist using Keith Gatling's suggestion, and it did it! based on 2700 songs (although I have 2696, it seems to not freak out).

Now I feel like driving across country again.

YES!  hot the nail on the head.  Why remove functionality that works and saves the user hours... literally.  I have a 90's playlist I've worked on... and I moved like 15 Nirvana songs into it as well as STP and Pearl Jam etc... Now I have to manually move them around in order to randomize my list and avoid clumping.

Apple employees need to use their brains before removing valued controls from their devices and programs. I don't see the reason to remove something like this, that is simple and adds so much to the richness of the user experience.

Yet another reason why iTunes is running on a PC and not a MAC.

Avoid i(insert quirky yet minimalist word here) devices as much as possible.

Without making an *** of myself, I will give you the answer that best worked for me (aside from changing to an older version of iTunes or just finding another program altogether).

• Make a "smart playlist"
• In the fist prompt setting, select "Playlist" (in the drop down) menu.
• Select your playlist in the following menu
• set the limit of songs to something higher than the amount of songs you have in there... (this can be adjusted in the future if you add more songs in the future)
• then sit back and allow itunes to build a randomized playlist for you.

This is the best and simplest option I have found.

Best of luck...

PS I know that this an old post. I am just trying to help---I just found this post.

Here's another reason why this was a good feature - and Smart Playlists won't cut it.

When I go for a run, I like to start with a few certain songs and end with a few songs, but I don't much care what's in the middle..

So I can randomize a list, add the three songs to the top, figure out where the one hour mark is, add the two songs at the end,move it to my iPod and voila.

And then next run, re-randomize, add the songs back, and voila.

The songs are still alphabetized by artist, so they are not "randomized." Is there a way truly to randomize a playlist so that it stays randomized and shuffled? WHY is this once-easy feature gone and what the **** was Apple thinking? So much discussion about this and I still can't get it to work right!

Thanks, so, for getting us closer.