The “random” mode on my Sansa Clip plays the same songs in the same order. Why it thinks that going to song 43 then 157 then 82 then 11 etc every time it’s on random mode is random, I don’t know. Why can’t it pick 42 and 158 and 10 some times? There are a lot of songs that are skipped every single time it’s on random mode, no matter how long, because it goes back to the beginning of the “random” pattern at some point and plays it over again in the same order as before.
I have a Droid as well and the random is absolutely horrid. There’s been times when I’ve just skipped through songs and out of, let’s say 20 songs I’d skip the same one three times.
Quite welcome. Figured that would help somebody.
Yeah, but you guys are ignoring the most helpful sentence from that link: However, if you turn iPod off by pressing and holding the Play/Pause button it will not remember the random order or the selected playlist. And from my experience, the same holds true for closing iTunes; anytime you close it (i.e. turn off your computer for the night) the random shuffle starts over the next day.
That’s the problem, if you ask me. If I restart iTunes or turn my iPod back on, it should be able to remember where the shuffle left off (in an ideal world). 9 times out of 10 that’s why people don’t think it’s truly random; they’re looking at the big picture and wondering why they’re hearing the same songs over several days… well that’s why.
This – you can fix. Right click on the song title in iTunes, choose “Get Info” and then the “Options” tab. You can specify to a fraction of a second how far into the track it will start playing, so you can make it skip over dead air or oddball intro stuff like an emcee introduction. You can also truncate the end of the song the same way.
BTW, this is for the Windows version of iTunes.
I love shuffle mode, particularly when I’m working out.
The only thing that bugs me is when you only hear just one song of a one-two punch.
For example:
McCartney’s Venus and Mars / Rock Show
Boston’s Foreplay / Long Time
Queen’s We Will Rock You / We Are the Champions
And don’t get me started on the Abbey Road medley.
mmm
This – you can also fix, maybe. If you have the original CD, when you load (or maybe reload) the songs, you can link multiple tracks on the CD so they play in order, even if you have Shuffle turned on. Look up “Join CD Tracks” in iTunes for details on how to do it.
Wow, I had no idea you could do that. Thanks, Boyo!
mmm
What if I like Motorhead?
It really annoys me that there isn’t a “Shuffle Artist” choice, so I can listen to everything by one group before going onto the next. I got so annoyed that I overwrote the album titles of all 4,000 songs with the names of the artists. So now when I shuffle albums, I’m really shuffling artists.
Why didn’t you just create a Smart Playlist that says “Artist contains _______” and then shuffle within that Playlist?
If you want each song to play once and then not again until you have gone through the entire list, just go to songs and hit play.
For example on my iPhone I just did that and here is where the list starts:
Abortion doctor from hell! David Cross
Accents Craig Shoemaker
Accidentally like a Martyr Warron Zevon
Aces High Soundtrack Longest Day
Acid Queen Soundtrack Tommy
The Actor The Moody Blues
You have to admit that is a pretty random selection genre wise.
Because I don’t know how to do that. I still don’t. How do I make a rule that tells iTunes to play all songs by one artist before shuffling to another artist, regardless of what playlist I’m listening to?
I have something like 500-1000 artists.
Well now you’re asking something you weren’t asking in your previous post. You can’t make iTunes automatically go to the next artist after you finish that artist’s catalog. But you can make a Smart Playlist (which is probably the coolest thing about iTunes). Just go to File>New Smart Playlist… A dialogue box pops up and you can pretty much tell it to create whatever you want. If you want to create a playlist by purchase date, you can do that. If you want to make one by year, you can do that too. In your case, you would choose “Artist”, which I believe is the default choice, then “Contains”, and then type in the artist name. That will create a whole new playlist of just that artist. So then you can shuffle within that playlist and it will only play songs by that artist. But once you’re done with that artist, you’ll have to delete it (if you want) and create a new one for the next artist. There’s no way to do it without creating a playlist for each artist, as far as I know.
Semantic satiation: artist.
Why would I need to do this? In iTunes I can sort any list by artist and play it, except I hardly ever listen to my music directly from iTunes. I listen on my iPod where I don’t have an option of resorting my list. On my iPod, I can listen to any artist by going into the list of artists and picking one.
But I already have a bunch of lists made by music types, and I wanted an additional Shuffle option for those lists beyond what iTunes makes available. That is what I meant to say in my post.
Look, you asked how to shuffle by artist and I told you. You can do what you’re wanting to do. The Smart Playlists will copy onto your iPod when you sync it. Turn on shuffle and press Play on the playlist and there you have it: shuffling within one particular artist’s work.
But you’re welcome, and all that stuff.
I’ve made a number of playlists for artists/genres that I like to select and either play or shuffle within the playlist. I find this especially useful for artists like Prince who have about eight different names that show up (Prince, Prince and the NPG, Prince and the Revolution, Prince with X guest star, TAFKAP symbol, etc.). On the other hand, my Sony MP3 player shuffles whatever I’ve selected (artist, album, or songs) if I have shuffle on, which is quite nice.
Except that a Smart playlist doesn’t do that. It might shuffle an artist’s music, but it doesn’t shuffle music by artist. I don’t need or want a separate playlist for each artist, which is essentially what you’re suggesting.
I don’t know of any easy solution for the default setup but there’s an app called Flicktunes that let’s you control your music by one, two, and three finger gestures. One finger up to play/pause, one finger right for next song, two fingers up to increase volume, etc. It’s all configurable. Really nice when you’re driving and shouldn’t be looking at the small buttons on the default player.
Flicktunes can also configure is a gesture for Shuffle Artist. I usually play shuffle all and when I run across an artist I like, I do three fingers up to shuffle just that artist.
As far as the OP, I sort of agree, but I think it’s really random and we’re just picking up patterns. I swear my old 40GB 3g iPod used to be worse though.
My original nano had a setting that you could set the randomness of shuffle - so that songs by artists would tend to bunch together more often. I cannot find that setting on my iPhone. Did they remove it?