I have a 1st gen iPod shuffle which has given me excellent service over some years. The way I like to use it is to fill it with random content from iTunes, but have it play in non-shuffle mode, which plays in the order the songs were in iTunes, which in my case is chronological.
But suddenly a few weeks ago this stopped, and the songs now play in random order. I can see two possibilities:
the switch on my shuffle is broken and it’s in random mode all the time
iTunes has changed its behaviour, and now downloads the songs in random order rather than the order they are in the library or in the iTunes list I download from.
So 1st Q is, is anyone aware of such a change in iTunes? Can anyone think of a way of diagnosing this problem? Thanks all.
(no “stop using iTunes” or Apple-bashing posts please)
I have a 2nd-gen shuffle. iTunes has always put songs on it in random order, as far as I can tell. The shuffle setting just randomizes this random list.
What then would be the point of the shuffle/non-shuffle switch?
In any case that’s definitely not the case here, the songs unquestionably played in chrono order until recently, now I just cannot get that to happen no matter what. When anything like this has happened previously I’ve discovered that my source list was sorted wrongly, such as artist name by alpha or whatever. But I’m sure that’s not the case this time.
Well, you can put stuff on the Shuffle manually in whatever order you want, in which case the non-shuffle setting plays things in that order. I do this for listening to podcasts–I load up the Shuffle with podcasts, and then have iTunes add music to fill it up to the end. I have to use the non-shuffle setting to keep the podcasts from getting mixed up with the music.
With the shuffle, the order in which you sort the songs in the iTunes window actually changes the order in which they play. I like to just keep them grouped by album, because I’m boring. But one day I was looking for a specific audio file in the list (podcast) and sorted by title. I didn’t realize it would freeze things that way! It made for some very strange listening.
So if you drag them in there in a specific order, it should play them through in that order … unless you sort them afterward. (I think.)
Indeed. Last night I sorted my iTunes library, my sync-to-iPod list, and the songs already on my iPod, all by date ie year of release). Then I did the Autofill function, which (supposedly) wipes my iPod then fills it with a random selection of songs. Played it on the way to work, again they are in no perceptible order despite having the switch set to non-shuffle.
But.
I’m now thinking there’s a bigger problem because, I think, the Autofill seemed to put the same songs on I had there yesterday. So either the checkbox that allows iTunes to delete the current contents of the iPod first has somehow become unchecked, or there is a deeper fault somewhere. I did see the songs sync down again, but maybe they just overwrote the same song with the same song. Will check into that more deeply tonight.
Also, check your Autofill Settings (“Settings…” button at bottom of the window). It’s possible those settings are affecting the randomness of your fill.
I wiped all the content of my iPod shuffle, then synced down the random collection of sings using the autofill. It definitely put down a different selection of songs from my Library this time.
Then I played the first song, and skipped to the second song (which definitely went backwards in time). Then I went back to the first song, flipped the switch on the iPod to Shuffle, the skipped to the second song - a different one. Back to the first song, flipped the switch to non-shuffle, skipped forward again - the same song as the first time. So I conclude that my shuffle/non-shuffle switch is not broken. Instead there has been a change in behaviour of either the iPod or iTunes; possibly the recent update to 8.1 was it.
I’ll buy that, Ji. Updated iTunes to v 8 today, and the whole podcast syncing process just up’n barfed.
I listen to podcasts from many sources, by release date. I download WAY more than my 2nd generation Shuffle will hold and I’m about 4 months behind, but before today it wasn’t a problem; I would just clean out the Shuffle, make sure it sorted by release date, then copy everything in my Podcasts list to it. During the sync iTunes showed pointers for all the podcasts in the iPod screen, but it would only sync what would fit. And this is key: it would sync the oldest ones first, because that’s how the iPod was sorted.
Today, iTunes syncs in the order of appearance in the Podcasts list, which insists on grouping them by ‘album’. So I’d get all my ‘All about taxidermy’ podcasts for the last eight weeks and never get any ‘ZZZZ Bedtime Stories.’
I was about ready to hang it up, but typing this post was like thinking out loud. It just needs one more step: copy all the podcasts to a secondary playlist, then sort that playlist by release date an copy all of those podcasts to the Shuffle. The play count syncs back to both lists.
This is close to the solution I was going to post. I think what you want to do is create a smart playlist. The smart playlist should select a specified number of the most recent unplayed episodes of each desired podcast. The playlist should be sorted by release date. As you listen to podcasts and re-sync your shuffle, those episodes will no longer be marked as unplayed, and therefore drop off the playlist, to be replaced by the next one.
If this is still too many podcasts for your shuffle, you could create a smart playlist as described above, then a second smart playlist which grabs a specified number of the most recent playlists from the first playlist.
Smart playlists are cool; you can use all kinds of criteria to refine your selections, and still have them update dynamically. Before I got around to stringing Cat-5 to the living room, I used a similar process to sync the oldest unwatched episodes of selected TV series to our Apple TV via Wi-Fi. For example, I had it queue up the three oldest unwatched episodes of Lost. So the playlist initially had episodes 1-3. As soon as we watched episode 1, the playlist dynamically updated to include episodes 2-4.
I had a first-gen Shuffle which I miss dearly. It always played in the designated order. The nice thing about the current Nano is that it has a screen, and plays in order, although I hate how it treats audiobooks (I lie and turn them back to Music with their own genre). I still dearly miss the USB-stick aspects of the Shuffle.