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oni · Sep 13, 2006, 03:15 AM

Hi all I havent seen this posted anywhere else but I am having a bug with itunes 7 and party shuffle.

I have party shuffle set up to display the last 5 songs to be played and 0 upcoming songs. This worked fine in all other versions. Since upgrading party shuffle will no longer play any more songs. It gets to the end of the song currently selected and then stops, skipping is also broken.

Can anyone else replicate this?

Cheers

- - e r i k - - · Sep 13, 2006, 04:40 AM

Confirmed. Does the exact same thing here.

peeb · Sep 13, 2006, 11:16 AM

yep - me too.

Stradlater · Sep 13, 2006, 12:13 PM

why not just let it display the upcoming songs? (isn't that the point of party shuffle? if you want a complete shuffling surprise, just turn shuffle on in the main library or playlist of your choice)

chabig · Sep 13, 2006, 01:05 PM

I don't see this as a bug. If you tell iTunes there are no upcoming songs, it SHOULD stop upon completing the current song.

Chris

oni · Sep 13, 2006, 05:41 PM

Im not telling it that there are no upcoming songs, just not to display them! I do it this way so that i can easily queue up the songs i want in the order i want without the 5 or so randomly chosen songs getting in the way. This has worked with all previous versions

chabig · Sep 13, 2006, 06:51 PM

You always could queue up the songs you want in the order you want by dragging them into the Party Shuffle list in the order you'd like them to play. Put them above the random songs. There is no advantage to setting the display to zero songs.

Chris

porieux · 04:07 AM

...

pvw · Sep 27, 2006, 08:22 PM

iTunes 7.0.1
The bug still exists
If I have 0 recently played and 15 upcomming songs
It only plays 1 song and stops

If I change the recently played songs to 5 it works as expected.

oni · Sep 27, 2006, 11:49 PM

doh, does anyone have the link for where you can submit bugs in itunes to apple?

TETENAL · Sep 27, 2006, 11:52 PM

The link is in the iTunes application menu.

Apple - iTunes - Feedback

pirsquared · Sep 28, 2006, 11:08 AM

Thanks, TETENAL for the feedback link.

I can confirm the same bug. How annoying!

And yes, it is a bug (at least, I hope so). As has been mentioned previously, the entire point of party shuffle is to allow iTunes to dynamically generate random songs and collect them in a list which can be actively tweaked by the user, along with its display properties. There is no reason for that generation to stop simply because I've chosen a display option which hides upcoming tracks. Certainly, doing so provides advantages in being able to tack on desired tracks to the currently playing song. I suppose one could use the "play next in PS" option as opposed to "add to PS", but then you would have to add multiple songs in reverse order, something that is unintuitive, to say the least. If I wanted iTunes to stop playing when it reached the end of a list, I would use a regular or smart playlist (if it must be random), not party shuffle. Why would Apple intentionally add a display mode which breaks the functionality of a feature?

chabig · Sep 28, 2006, 11:36 AM

I think you're making this too hard. All you have to do to put songs into Party Shuffle is drag them there. It's easier if you open Party Shuffle in its own window. Then just drag songs there from your Library or other playlists.

Chris

pirsquared · Sep 28, 2006, 11:45 AM

Coming from a Windows environment, it's much faster and equally as easy for me to add tracks through a right-click context menu than by executing a drag-and-drop. Regardless, though, of whether or not it could be done by dragging and dropping, there's still no reason for party shuffle to have been broken by a single display option.

chabig sucks · Sep 28, 2006, 08:21 PM

There most definitely is an advantage to setting the display to "0 songs". This would be the fact that you don't have to manually position them in Party Shuffle to place them in the desired order. It makes no sense to eliminate that functionality.

I have no idea how you can justify calling this an improvement by saying "You don't have to do that much more work with iTunes 7 to achieve the same results that you would have automatically with iTunes 6".

Blows my mind.

Gee4orce · Sep 29, 2006, 03:32 AM

will it really kill you to display a few recently displayed songs ? I mean, it's not like you have to actually LOOK at the list, if you don't want to !

In any case, I find it useful to see the recent songs because sometimes I want to listen to the same song again, in which case I can just drag it back into the upcoming list, and other times I just plain forget what I've just listened to, or want to give a song a rating.

wataru · Sep 29, 2006, 05:10 AM

Whiny user prefers buggy implementation due to quirky usage habits.

Right, I'm sure Apple will be falling over itself trying to fix this one.

pirsquared · Sep 29, 2006, 08:12 AM

Gee4orce, if you took a moment to read oni's initial post as well as others, you'd realize that this has nothing at all to do with the recently played songs. That still works fine. It's when the number of upcoming songs displayed is set to 0 that party shuffle stops playing.

Wataru, tell me, what was buggy about party shuffle continuing to play when upcoming songs weren't displayed? That was the point of party shuffle, to generate random tracks. As you can tell by its label, the "upcoming songs" setting is a display option, nothing more. It doesn't say "prevents party shuffle from playing additional tracks", and why should it? What would be the point? Once again, having a finite list of songs is what normal and smart playlists are for.

chabig · Sep 29, 2006, 09:14 AM

OK. Playing devil's advocate here...

We all know that Party Shuffle is not like a regular playlist. Regular playlists stop when you reach the end (unless you set it to loop). But Party Shuffle is different...Party Shuffle plays forever.

Now picture yourself at a party. You're having fun, but then it comes time to stop the music and make an announcement. What do you do:

1. Just stop the music in the middle of the currently playing song?
2. Stand at the computer and wait for the song to finish before you stop the music?

I think the fact that Party Shuffle stops when there are no upcoming songs displayed is a feature, not a bug. It's useful in the exact situation I described. When you want the music to stop after finishing the current song, you just set the display option to zero. If there is a bug, perhaps it's in the terminology Apple chose for that menu.

Chris

Bayleaf · Oct 3, 2006, 03:17 PM

I too had the problem of Party Shuffle stopping, but mine stopped after every track!
Resolved by ditching all the preference files and restarting iTunes.

YMMV

Bayleaf

Grrrrrrrr8 · Oct 5, 2006, 04:12 PM

Found this forum because I have the exact same problem with iTunes 7.0.1 on my PC with 5 previous songs displayed and 50 upcoming displayed. It plays a song or two and then hangs at the end.

oni · Oct 5, 2006, 10:52 PM

sorry dude that is not the same problem at all! This problem is in relation to having 0 upcoming songs displayed and then itunes not selecting another when the song is finished

Grrrrrrrr8 · Oct 11, 2006, 11:28 PM

OK, it's not the EXACT same problem. I've had the other problem before and tried it with other settings. You know, as an experiment. thanks for the quick dismissal, though. Shows real analytical skills that are lacking so I'll try my luck elsewhere.