Making shuffle very random

Sigh, we've been through all this before. The random feature is random, it is your brain that isn't. Your brain looks for patterns and finds them, even when they don't exist. How many times have you played a dice game and seen the same number pop up twice in a row? Three times? Four times? Just the other night we were playing Monopoly and in quick progression we saw my wife roll a 3, I got a 4, Dad got a 5 and then as we all laughed an cheered, my sister got a 6. The dice had to be broken, right? Nope, patterns happen. So enjoy the Pod and have fun with the patterns that seem to appear. It is random, really, but coincidences do happen.

There isn't any setting that I know of that will eliminate this "problem" other than increasing the number of other playlists it has to choose from.

How many other playlists does it pick from? If there are four other playlists , for instance, then there is a one in four chance that it will pick from the same playlist twice in a row. This is random behavior. It's like flipping a coin, there is a one in two chance that each flip will be the same as the previous one.

You could create another playlist that just chooses from the "great" playlist on a random basis - this should do some additional scrambling.


5G 60GB Black iPod Windows XP Pro

Okay, first, let me repeat that random is random and your brain isn't. In early days we had lot of discussion where people attempted to prove that random wasn't random. Apple eventually added the shuffle options in the Preferences to, in effect, make random less random!

Basically, if you set Smart Shuffle to the Random setting, you get real randomness which means you might wind up hearing four Stones songs in a row. If you move the slider in one direction, you increase the likelihood that the next song will be by the same artist or on the same album while if you move it in the other direction you decrease that likelihood. If you select the Artist or Grouping then an Artist or Grouping is randomly selected and all the songs by that Artist or Grouping will be played one after the other, then a different Artist or Grouping will be randomly selected.

Of course you can also create a smartlist that selects music randomly from your criteria. This random selection isn't influenced by the preference settings so your criteria might be selecting 100 songs from 20 different artists and wind up with 50 songs by one artist. No matter how randomly you try to play that list, your chances of getting three songs by the same artists are pretty good.

I don't want my shuffle to be RANDOM - don't want it to repeat a song I've heard recently.

I created a smart playlist I call "Not in 30" and have it select music that hasn't been played in the last 30 days. I then shuffle that list.

Works great.

I did something similar. Limited to 200 tracks and playcount <2. Once a song's playcount hits 2 it is gone from list. Once I have heard everything at least once I will raise the cutoff to 3.

I haven't counted but I don't think it is that bad. With 400 CDs to pick from I don't worry about it. I do notice artist duplication, have had three in a row from the same artist from different albums (10 possible albums). Can't remember 2 from the same album in a row.

Only thing I would like is for iPod to be able to keep updating list when I am away from computer for awhile. My track limit is 200. I have made it to the end of the list before then had to go to library for more thing to hear.

Since this topic is drifting toward smart playlists, I have a folder called SKIPPED where I want to put songs I've skipped so I can scan the list for things I want to remove manually, but it doesn't seem to be working. I know I skipped a song yesterday while ipodding, but there is nothing new on the list after synching.

I tested it a couple days ago with the iPod attached to my computer (iTunes open) and it worked fine. One thing I've considered is that maybe a song isn't considered skipped if it plays for a certain length of time before skipping or some such thing. I'm usually pretty slow to hit the button as I'm usually working on a hands-on project when ipodding.

Anyone know if there are certain conditions required to meet the "skipped" criteria? My other smart playlists (recently played, not played in xx days) are working fine.