My iPod Shuffle (Gen. 2) won't play. Help!

Hello.

I have a 2nd generation iPod Shuffle, which I've had for a few years now. All has been going well with it until today.

After deleting all of the previous songs from my iPod, I loaded it to capacity with a bunch of new ones. Everything went fine during the process. After it was done, I had to go out. So I shut down my iMac, leaving my iPod on the charger dock until it turned off. Once I was on my way out, I plug my earphones into the iPod to hear my new playlist. Flick the power switch - all is normal here, green light comes on momentarily. I then press the play button and something out of the ordinary happens... The light blinks very quickly 6 times from green to yellow (e.g. 1 green, 2 yellow, 3 green, 4 yellow, etc.). Also, no music. So I had to wait until I got back to see what was going on. I get home and put it on the charger again and open iTunes to view the contents... It didn't show any of the songs I loaded onto it, and it also seemed to be full (I think?).

So, I then decided to restore its settings altogether. Starting from scratch. After that was done, I then loaded the same songs onto it a second time. Once finished, I ejected the iPod normally. But when I went to test it with the earphones again, I got the same result as before.

What's going on? Is this a sign of my iPod dying? It's rather annoying.

Thanks in advance.