Does Your iPod Play Favorites?

[MacBytes]

Category: Opinion/Interviews
Link: Does Your iPod Play Favorites? (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20050129005515)
Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)

Approved by Mudbug

[mkrishnan]

So does anyone else actually use Shuffle? I used to pretty much ignore it, but finally I've started using it. The only thing I really shuffle, though, is my list of top 200 most played songs (I changed the playlist from 50 to 200). Actually I've found this works pretty well for running accompaniment.

I don't know how random I think it is. It seems fairly random to me.

But I've never really gotten full contents shuffle on a full-size iPod. I never want to switch back and forth between opera and hip-hop and emo on a track-by-track basis. :) Also if I don't shuffle some kind of playlist, it will select a lot of the less interesting tracks off albums....

But shuffle off the most-played or recently-played lists works pretty well. :)

[NOV]

Funny to read this story, because I noticed the behaviour as described by the author too on my iPod.

I have this behaviour with "Aaliyah". She is played so often that I actually checked if "Shuffle" was really on (which it was).

[Nickygoat]

But shuffle off the most-played or recently-played lists works pretty well. :)
If you do that don't you go round in an ever decreasing loop?

[Kagetenshi]

My library is more or less permanently set to shuffle. Playlists vary.

And I know I've experienced severely disproportionate plays for some songs out of a pool of over 3,000.

~J

[nagromme]

I've never grasped why there are TWO shuffle options (on a full-size iPod)... the Shuffle toggle under Settings (by songs, by albums, off) and the Shuffle-all-songs option on the main screen. It's great to have it on the main screen, but it should be the same 3-way toggle! The toggle will shuffle the contents of playlists too--much more useful than the main menu item.

So I took that shuffle item off the main menu. But I DO use shuffle mode in Settings, almost exclusively. I never play in order :)

When I want to shuffle within a category or playlist I can, but most often I shuffle my favorites (by rating). And I've made a playlist that cycles them: it plays only favorites that have NOT been played in the last three weeks. Perfect!

I also have a "forgotten" list I use a lot--it's a random shuffle of the 100 songs I have played LEAST recently... which means every time I play one, it gets bumped for another one (but they play randomly, not in the order I listened to them before). It excludes the "worst" rated songs, but lets me discover stuff I had not rated highly before.

Whether you have an iPod or just use iTunes, Smart Playlists are the greatest thing since bread!

(mkrishnan - suggestion: keep it fresh by shuffling songs NOT played in the last x # days... and then limiting it to the 200 most-played out of those. Luckily I have rated all my songs, so I can find favorites that way!)

[mkrishnan]

(mkrishnan - suggestion: keep it fresh by shuffling songs NOT played in the last x # days... and then limiting it to the 200 most-played out of those. Luckily I have rated all my songs, so I can find favorites that way!)

Hmmm...maybe, that's not a bad idea. I should've explained that it doesn't get stale (the descending loop Nicky mentioned) because I usually don't use shuffle. So shuffle mode isn't the primary predictor of what my top songs are. ;) I should make a custom playlist like you describe though, and see what's in it.

[Wonder Boy]

my ipod is quite fond of radiohead. a lot more than i am. it will play 2 or 3 radiohead songs in a row while on shuffle. kinda defeats the purpose of shuffle mode.

[Mainyehc]

my ipod is quite fond of radiohead. a lot more than i am. it will play 2 or 3 radiohead songs in a row while on shuffle. kinda defeats the purpose of shuffle mode.

Ooooohh... I'm a great fan of Radiohead. Do you wanna switch your iPod with mine? :D

[Wonder Boy]

Ooooohh... I'm a great fan of Radiohead. Do you wanna switch your iPod with mine? :D

if yours loves to play Phish, then absolutley.

[Mainyehc]

I've never grasped why there are TWO shuffle options (on a full-size iPod)... the Shuffle toggle under Settings (by songs, by albums, off) and the Shuffle-all-songs option on the main screen. It's great to have it on the main screen, but it should be the same 3-way toggle! The toggle will shuffle the contents of playlists too--much more useful than the main menu item.

Hmmm... I'm very disappointed by hearing this. I was thinking of selling my 3G 20GB iPod and buying a 4G one to replace it, because of the obvious reasons (battery life, clickwheel), but also because I was convinced that the "Shuffle Songs" was actually a shortcut for toggling shuffle. I know it's not a great reason to buy new gear, but you know, I use the shuffle feature a lot, but I also like to listen to albums very often, so I have to toggle shuffle one too many times...

Now, I'm not the least bit sorry for having kept my iPod. It's much sleeker than the 4G, and when the battery dies, I'll only have to spend 50 bucks to fix it (and I'll get one of those new batteries which last more than the original :cool: )

[swingerofbirch]

I think the author of this article on MSN misunderstands, or perhaps expects something more out of "random" than he should. It seems like he believes random equals excellent variety and that similar songs aren't played close together. That would be quite planned and quite the opposite of random. But at the end of the article he does note that it is human perception more than the logistics of random that make the difference.

Did anyone else think twice about the fact that this is MSN (microsoft) writing about an Apple product? Here are some words that are used in the article:

exile
jumbled
devil
exiled
waiting
concerns
insisted
Oliver Stone
conspiracy
profess
double-check
flatly
reverified (this actually isn't a word)
question
important
supposedly
disturbing
phenomenon
amiss
unlikely
waiting (2x)

Wasn't this article overly serious? It made Apple's "randomness" sound defective more than his original article which was more curious.

[pbook15]

I havn't experienced this much but I rarely set my entire music collection on shuffle, often I'm listening to a playlist of 100 songs or less (on my 15GB 3G). With my iPod Shuffle it seems to mix the list up quite a bit but i've only been using it for a couple days now and rarely for more than 45 minutes at a time (for both iPods)

[Applespider]

I thought that 'Shuffle All Songs' shuffled their positions within the Library so that if you were playing songs in linear fashion (with Shuffle Off), you would get a different order. I've done this on occasion where I was trying to save battery power so turned 'Shuffle Songs/Albums' off but didn't want to start at the top of the library again.

My iPod definitely has some odd tendencies though - it goes through phases of picking out one artist for a while. It went through a thankfully short Madonna phase yesterday which since I only have 20 tracks out of 2500, i found a little alarming! Today it seems to be in an Elliott Smith (33 tracks) and Michelle Branch (10 tracks!) mood.

It's iTunes on the Powerbook that alarms me more - I swear there are times it reads my mind as to what would be appropriate! ;)

[pbook15]

I do find it odd reading about Apple products on MSN. There was another one a few days ago reviewing the Shuffle and Mini from a different author. The review was very positive also which was surprising but welcomed. Unfortunately the reviewer mentioned that Apple no longer sends him product for review and noted that it could be because of the company he is employed by. Either way, it's good publicity.


...
Did anyone else think twice about the fact that this is MSN (microsoft) writing about an Apple product? Here are some words that are used in the article:
...
Wasn't this article overly serious? It made Apple's "randomness" sound defective more than his original article which was more curious.

[kerb]

my iPod loves At THe Drive-In and Mogwai

[deral]

I always believed that Shuffle based songs with the knowledge of ratings in mind--cuz I hardly get songs that has zero or one star on them.

[rikers_mailbox]

if yours loves to play Phish, then absolutley.

right on. I'm up to 5.3Gb of Phish . . . how much do you like them? :D

[Kagetenshi]

That isn't very much Phish if you, say, store your audio in AIFF or something :)

~J

[jbembe]

As previously mentioned, this schmuck just needs to learn how to use automatic playlists. The possibilities are endless, INCLUDING PLAYLISTS THAT REMOVE ANY SONG YOU PLAYED from that playlist sincy you decided to start shuffling through given subset of songs. Random isn't good enough for me either, that's why I build parameters into how its done.
:rolleyes:

[Doctor Q]

I read this column in Newsweek. He doesn't seem to know that it may actually be more likely than not that some songs by the same artist, or even off the same album, are likely to show up next to each other, depending on how many albums and songs you have. And playing songs in a randomized order, and then playing them again in another randomized order, can put the same song in two nearby positions.

As I've done before, I'll recommend a great book: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0809058405/) by John Allen Paulos. You don't have to have a math background (or even like math in school) to appreciate Paulos' commonsense descriptions of how people make false assumptions in everyday life based on math misunderstandings.

In this case, when we notice a certain artist showing up in the playlist more often than another artist, we sense a pattern where there is none except randomness.

[Wonder Boy]

right on. I'm up to 5.3Gb of Phish . . . how much do you like them? :D

wow. sadly, ive yet to put everything on my ipod. ive seen them 13 times or so. i was at the 4th to last show at mansfield. it was great but 4th row in nassua with destiny unbound is my favorite show. god i miss them.

[rikers_mailbox]

wow. sadly, ive yet to put everything on my ipod. ive seen them 13 times or so. i was at the 4th to last show at mansfield. it was great but 4th row in nassua with destiny unbound is my favorite show. god i miss them.

I hear you on the Nassau, wasn't there myself but I have the recordings. An oustanding show. A definite highlight for me is the NYE Miami run. It was a ridiculous 4 night party. ;)

That isn't very much Phish if you, say, store your audio in AIFF or something :)
~J

732 mp3s encoded at 128 kbps. It's a start.

[pulsewidth947]

I'm glad i'm not the only person thats experienced this "not so random" shuffle.

I combatted it by setting up a playlist to play songs i've rated 3 stars or above, that i havent heard in the past X months.. works nicely.. especially when i hear a gem that i'd forgotten about.

my ipods favorite is In Flames..

[Yvan256]

It's iTunes on the Powerbook that alarms me more - I swear there are times it reads my mind as to what would be appropriate! ;)

Maybe there is a RDF after all... Reality Detection Field. :D

[Yvan256]

In this case, when we notice a certain artist showing up in the playlist more often than another artist, we sense a pattern where there is none except randomness.

Or, in short: people see patterns where there is only coincidence.

[shamino]

These observations are nothing new, and they are not unique to the iPod.

Back in the 70's, I used to play backgammon against an Atari 2600 game console a lot. I found that it would seem to always get 'lucky" rolls of the dice at the worst possible times. I was certain that the game was cheating. But then I found that the same "lucky" rolls happened when playing against another human being, and it didn't matter if I was playing white or red.

While I never dissected the Atari Backgammon program to find out for certain, I found similar things in programs that I wrote myself. I wrote a blackjack program for my old Apple //c, and it would also seem to get incredibly lucky. In this case, however, i wrote the program and I know I didn't write any code for cheating.

People have selective memories. You try to find patterns where none exist. When you find data that doesn't fit the perceived pattern, you ignore it. When you find data that fits the pattern, you remember it. Which reinforces the perceived pattern.

In the absence of any statistical study of iPod behavior, I would come to the same conclusion - that people are seeing patterns where none exist. For instance, when I shuffle my iTunes collection, I get a lot of Yes and Pink Floyd songs. But that's also because I have a lot more songs by them than by other bands.

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that there does appear to be a bias. This in itself may not be too surprising.

Computes do not generate truly random numbers. It's not possible without specialized hardware. Random number generators are actually sequences generated by a mathematical formula, such that the distribution of numbers appears similar to what one would expect from a truly random sequence.

Left to itself, a random number generator will generate the same sequence every time you run the program, because the initial state of the program will be some fixed value (typically with all the internal registers set to zero.) For things like simulations, this is good, because your program can generate the same sequence every time, allowing you to repeat your simulation and get the same results.

But with something like a shuffle-play mode (or a game), you don't want this. You want it to generate a different sequence each time. The typical way to do this is to "seed" the generator with a value based on the time of day. Since you won't start the program at precisely the same time every day, you won't get precisely the same sequence.

But over time, this does introduce a bias. For instance, if you start shuffle play every morning when you drive to work, it will be approximately the same time every day - say, within a 5-minute window. If the seed has 1-second granularity, it means it is getting one of 300 possible seed values out of a range of 86,400 (number of seconds in a day.) Depending on the nature of the random number generator, this may be enough to introduce a noticeable bias in the sequence.

Heck, even 86,400 possible values may introduce a significant bias if the seed function is taking a 32-bit integer (range of about 4 billion values) as its parameter.

[narco]

I've noticed this even back when I had the 3G 40gig. Sometimes I would shuffle my entire library, then I'd get back-to-back songs from the same artist (on the same album even) out of 11,000+ songs. It always seemed a bit odd to me, but was never that annoying. Definitely not in a way to write a blog entry; or an article on MSNBC.com (probably scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find bad things about the iPod).

And to the guy wanting to know about the other Shuffle feature in the settings, I use both all the time. When I create playlists, I just throw songs into a playlist. By doing that, they're either in alphabetical order, or sorted by genre. If I use the shuffle songs option, it'll automatically randomize the chosen songs within said playlist.

When I don't know what I want to hear, I just use the main shuffle option. However, I wouldn't dare using this option when I'm around other people in fear that they'll hear my secret songs from Abba and Vinalla Ice.

Fishes,
narco.

[hob]

my ipod is quite fond of radiohead...

I often suspect my iPod is trying to make me kill myself... It can really put me in the wrong mood with its depressing music choices...

But yes, I also notice a bias with the shuffle feature. I rarely ever hear Smashing Pumpkins (my fave band) on shuffle, despite having about 300 tracks out of 4200... iTunes shuffle seems to be a little fairer...

Hob