I can’t figure out a basic feature of this thing and it’s driving me batshit.
How do I choose an album/artist/playlist and have the shuffle feature pull songs ONLY from within that selection?
Example: I choose A Perfect Circle, in which there are 4 albums, and I want to shuffle all of those songs but I don’t want any songs from other bands.
I can get it to shuffle the entire Mini but not one band/album/playlist.
Help!
Assuming the menus on the mini are the same as on the regular iPod, go to Settings and select shuffle songs (if you click on shuffle, it will rotate through songs, albums and off). Then just play the band/album/playlist you want to listen to.
Let me first state that I have never even seen an IPod mini so take my words with a grain of salt.
In all that I have read about them, they cannot do what you describe. They can only play the songs in the order that you loaded them or play the entire playlist randomly. There are no other features and it was designed that way on purpose for both simplicity and so it wouldn’t cannabilise regular IPod sales too much.
Disregard that last post. I was thinking of an IPod shuffle and not the Mini.
Shagnasty, I think you’re thinking of the iPod Shuffle. A mini is a regulare iPod with less capacity.
Negative. This doesn’t work. When you have the shuffle set to Songs it will randomly pull tracks from across your Ipod. When it is set to album it will shuffle the albums. Meaning it will randomly choose an album, play the entire album, then randomly choose another album.
I just confirmed this before typing the post.
I’m pretty sure you can’t shuffle within a playlist. It’s unfortunate, because I’ve wanted to do the same thing several times. I think it’s either you shuffle everything, or you choose a band (or album) and have it play everything in order.
If I’m wrong I’d love to hear how to make it happen too.
Really? That’s weird - it definitely doesn’t work that way in my iPod photo. I wonder why they’d make it work differently?
Definitely weird. I’ve got the U2 iPod, so it seems to be full-size vs Mini issue. I’d be really annoyed if I couldn’t shuffle within playlists, so it seems like a strange feature not to have. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help Stinkpalm.
It works on my second generation iPod too (although I think it’s the same hardware as the U2 version without the sexy black and red case).
I wonder if it differs with firmware version. Stinkpalm, are you running the most current revision on your mini?
Ok I went over to iLounge and looked through the iPod mini section of their forums; there are several threads there of people asking this question and the answer always given is what Ms Macphisto said, so it seems that the mini should be able to shuffle songs the same way we’re seeing in the full size iPods.
One thing, are you setting the shuffle mode to songs before starting your playlist or after? I think if you start a playlist first and then set the shuffle, it will shuffle the whole iPod, but if you set the shuffle mode first and then start your playlist, it will just shuffle the playlist.
After reading this I thought maybe the disconnect is that I have one huge playlist that has all of my music in it and I want to be able to shuffle within an album within the playlist. So I created a new playlist on the Ipod of 5 songs, saved it, and started playing that playlist. As soon as I hit the shuffle mode it went back to the main collection of music and played songs that weren’t in my 5 song playlist.
Something tells me I may not be going about Shuffling correctly.
Here is how I do it:
I start playing an album.
Then I back all the way out to the main menu and click on “Shuffle Songs”
Then it plays any of the songs on my Ipod.
Is there a way to make it shuffle WITHOUT going back to the main menu?
Maybe when it says “Shuffle Songs” it really means “Shuffle ALL Songs”
I’m missing something I think
Update: I have figured it out. Someone above was correct when they said that you have to turn on shuffle BEFORE you start playing the playlist. I was turning on shuffle after starting the album and it would default to shuffling the entire Ipod!
Thanks for the help gang!