[Proudest Monkey]

My friends on the other side using WinAmp always talk about the shuffle feature and how often they use it. I gave it a try with iTunes and loved it at first. Songs i had not heard in a long time were being played, it was great. but lately, it hasn't seemed so random. Heres an example, i'm going to hit the next button 20 times and this is what comes up:

1.Limp Bizkit - Boiler
2.Led Zeppelin - Good Times Bad Times
3.DMB Live @ Folsom - What you are
4.everclear - i will buy you a new life 5.Rappin4Tay - playaz club
6.sugar ray - every morning
7.DMB Live 9/8/02 - intro
8.OASIS - you've got to hide your love away
9.soul coughing - circles
10.joni mitchell - big yellow taxi
11.beatles - rocky racoon
12.DMB - best of whats around
13.DMB - spotlight
14.KORN - justin
15.eminem - kids
16.beatles - love you do
17.pink floyd - mother
18.norah jones - don't know why
19.doors - people are strange
20.Garth brooks - thunder rolls

this didn't show my point as well, but if its shuffle, i don't think 3 Dave Matthews songs should come up, and a 2 beatles songs. just doesn't seem that random, anyone else ever notice this?

[Moonray]

Looks perfectly random to me. To really test the randomness you'd have to take a few times more samples than you have songs I think.

-

[dampeoples]

I've had mine play what seemed like an entire Blues Traveler album before it went on to another band. It also quit playing one day too after I had the computer up for a while, so I guess the no repeat function works too

[mrgaskell]

Not only is the random not so random, the random song order is often the same in iTunes on my TiBook and on my iPod! I'll get the same three or four random songs in a row and then a different song and then another three or four songs! Kinda wierd...must use the same algorithm for 'randomness'.

jg

[dtriska]

Random means every song has the same chance of being played. What you want, songs that haven't been played in a while being played, is not random. The fact that iTunes will play songs from the same artist or album attests to the fact that the order is random.

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by mrgaskell:
Not only is the random not so random, the random song order is often the same in iTunes on my TiBook and on my iPod! I'll get the same three or four random songs in a row and then a different song and then another three or four songs! Kinda wierd...must use the same algorithm for 'randomness'.

jg

I posted something on this topic a while ago, including a method which gets the "random" order to reverse...

[Toyin]

Originally posted by Proudest Monkey:
My friends on the other side using WinAmp always talk about the shuffle feature and how often they use it. I gave it a try with iTunes and loved it at first. Songs i had not heard in a long time were being played, it was great. but lately, it hasn't seemed so random. Heres an example, i'm going to hit the next button 20 times and this is what comes up:

1.Limp Bizkit - Boiler
2.Led Zeppelin - Good Times Bad Times
3.DMB Live @ Folsom - What you are
4.everclear - i will buy you a new life 5.Rappin4Tay - playaz club
6.sugar ray - every morning
7.DMB Live 9/8/02 - intro
8.OASIS - you've got to hide your love away
9.soul coughing - circles
10.joni mitchell - big yellow taxi
11.beatles - rocky racoon
12.DMB - best of whats around
13.DMB - spotlight
14.KORN - justin
15.eminem - kids
16.beatles - love you do
17.pink floyd - mother
18.norah jones - don't know why
19.doors - people are strange
20.Garth brooks - thunder rolls

this didn't show my point as well, but if its shuffle, i don't think 3 Dave Matthews songs should come up, and a 2 beatles songs. just doesn't seem that random, anyone else ever notice this?

If you really want to impress your windows friends, make a smartplaylist that plays songs with a playcount less than "x" which haven't been played in "y" amount of time. This is how you can get to songs you really haven't listened to in a long time.

[torifile]

I agree with the original poster that there is something about the iTunes random function that doesn't seem so random. I always get songs by particular artists in bunches. Several times, I've had it bounce back and forth between two artists (when there were about 20 in my playlist). I did the math and there was way greater than chance that it should play in that order. And it's happened several times.

[eno]

It's far from random.

I have 4,000 songs in my iTunes library and the same artists keep coming up again and again and again.

It's as though iTunes has its own list of "favourites" that it secretly favours... This is not a case of every song having an "equal chance" of being selected. There are distinct patterns in operation here, and the fact that these patterns exist means that, by definition, some songs have an unequal chance of being chosen.

And so, in order to get a reasonable sample of what's in my library, I am forced to create a "smart" playlist that goes out of its way to choose songs that haven't been played for months... otherwise iTunes just keeps on pumping out its old favourites, again and again and again and again...

[Detrius]

You guys have no clue what random really is.

As far as the complaints about the same artists showing up over and over again:

If you have 4000 songs and 500 are all by the same artists, then on average, 1 out of every 8 songs will be by that artist. If you are just listening to this, it will *sound* like it is favoring that artist. But if all other artists only have 50 songs, then it's not iTunes favoring the artists--it's you that is favoring the artists. iTunes doesn't care.

If you want to verify the randomness, make a playlist and put all of your songs in it. Then tell it to randomize them. Select the column on the far left. Now, LOOK at the list. Keep in mind that if it IS perfectly random, eventually you will get the list in perfect alphabetical order. Yes, sometimes you have two or three songs of the same artist in a row. However, if you take a hanful of pennies and throw them on the floor, sometimes you will get clumps of two or three pennies. This does NOT prove a lack of randomness. Also, showing a small selection of the playlist definitely does not show a lack of randomness.

[Moonray]

To the disbelievers:

You'd probably be surprised how few people you need in a group for a likelihood of over 50% that at least two group members have the same birthday (day and month, not the year).

-

[larkost]

Just in case you are looking for more random playlists, I wrote up a small AppleScriptStudio Application a while ago. It could use a lot of work to be more usefull... but it could be used right now:

http://larkost.dyndns.org:8100/Resume/demos/iTunesList/

(the server is awake whenever I am.. eastern time...)

[jamez bond]

I hate to stir things up, but the randomness in itunes does not seem random to me either.
Every morning, I put my itunes to play some random songs, and every morning there are a couple of songs that seem to be favoured...

I know a bit about randomness and probability as well, and this does not seem random...oh well.....

[iPond317]

Originally posted by Proudest Monkey:
My friends on the other side using WinAmp always talk about the shuffle feature and how often they use it. I gave it a try with iTunes and loved it at first. Songs i had not heard in a long time were being played, it was great. but lately, it hasn't seemed so random. Heres an example, i'm going to hit the next button 20 times and this is what comes up:

1.Limp Bizkit - Boiler
2.Led Zeppelin - Good Times Bad Times
3.DMB Live @ Folsom - What you are
4.everclear - i will buy you a new life 5.Rappin4Tay - playaz club
6.sugar ray - every morning
7.DMB Live 9/8/02 - intro
8.OASIS - you've got to hide your love away
9.soul coughing - circles
10.joni mitchell - big yellow taxi
11.beatles - rocky racoon
12.DMB - best of whats around
13.DMB - spotlight
14.KORN - justin
15.eminem - kids
16.beatles - love you do
17.pink floyd - mother
18.norah jones - don't know why
19.doors - people are strange
20.Garth brooks - thunder rolls

this didn't show my point as well, but if its shuffle, i don't think 3 Dave Matthews songs should come up, and a 2 beatles songs. just doesn't seem that random, anyone else ever notice this?

Way off topic:

Ah, another big DMB fan... not too many people have Spotlight... you been on DMB.share? If so, I'm Trpnbily19atODU. You should check out the Trax shows if you don't already have any.

[mrgaskell]

Once again, the random 'algorithm' puts songs in your database in a certain, predetermined order, thus it cannot be random because it is predetermined. If it were random, you could get the same song two or more times in a row, if it were *random*. Although this is really pointless, it is more of an argument as to what is random and what our expectations of random is and how Apple has completely let us down. I'm selling my TiBook now...

[mark9939]

Originally posted by jamez bond:
I hate to stir things up, but the randomness in itunes does not seem random to me either.
Every morning, I put my itunes to play some random songs, and every morning there are a couple of songs that seem to be favoured...

Maybe the playlists are a little smarter than we thought.

[eno]

Not only is the "shuffle" mode not really random, the "smart" playlists aren't all that smart either!

For example, I can create a smart playlist and tell it to include only songs that have not been played in the last three months.

But still, some recently played songs still appear in the list.

I understand this can occur if one doesn't play through a song in its entirety. Still, I don't like it.

[Hi I'm Ben]

here was my test to see how unrandom itunes is.

i listen to a song.
then in the middle of the song i skipped ahead to the next song
then
i went back to the last song and selected a new song on the list and then went around and did some other stuff... then i went back to the original song.. skipped ahead again, and the same song as the first time i skipped ahead was playing..

any other mp3 player would have picked a totally new random song.

[MrBS]

Originally posted by Moonray:
To the disbelievers:

You'd probably be surprised how few people you need in a group for a likelihood of over 50% that at least two group members have the same birthday (day and month, not the year).

-

Birthdays aren't really random... but your point is taken. People don't want random (or even pseudo-random) they want something different after each song. They don't want 2 songs from the same artist in a row, even if that artist constitutes 20% of their library.
~BS

[rogerkylin]

A short lesson on how randomness is generated.

A random number generator is used to generate numbers between 0 and 1 (scaled to the number of items you want to randomize). Writing this random number generator is no small task, granted there are some good ones available from Numerical Recipes.

However, when one calls the random number generator it needs a seed. A seed is some large number you feed the algorithm. From that seed a set of un-correlated (random) numbers is output. If the same seed is given, then the same set of numbers is generated. A computer, that follows instructions, can not truly be random. At best the un-correlated set of numbers is what can be achieved.

So, perhaps iTunes is not using a good seed variable for the random number generator. For instance, giving it the number of seconds since 1977 (or some time-dependent number) is a good way to generate a unique playlist whenever the list is generated.

[lavar78]

Shuffle != Random

Shuffle = The songs are picked like a hand from a deck of cards. Once a song has been selected, it cannot be selected again. Other than that, any card [song] can be the next in the sequence (so you could have something like 4 or 5 spades [DMB songs] in the first 6 cards [songs]).

Random = The songs are picked like lottery balls. For every position, *every* song is just as likely to be selected. Some songs may be selected more than once while others may not be selected at all.

iTunes uses shuffle, so the shuffled list is not random (because a previously played song is ineligible). However, you should get a random shuffle every time you shuffle the list. Also, AFAIK, iTunes only shuffles initially and *not* after each song, which wouldn't make sense anyway.

[adamk]

i have noticed that i do hear the same songs on both my ipod and through iTunes. which makes me wonder what kind of info is traded when the ipod is plugged in.

i have also noticed that in shuffle mode with my music library, songs that i have selected previously often come up more often then those i haven't played recently. i often find myself saying "but i just played that song" when it comes up. i also noticed that it will preferentially play artists that have been played recently.

there are some albums that are in my library but i never select to hear them as albums or as specific songs and they hardly ever appear in a shuffle. i know they are at the end but do not seem to be at the middle or end (of five days of music or so).

[sandman]

It has been my experience that each song has its own playlist associated with it. Meaning that if I put my entire libary on shuffle, and I choose a song myself and let iTunes keep playing, the same songs will always come after the one I chose. I am at work so I can't experiment right now, but I think it is the same every time you open iTunes. So regardless of the session the same stuff will come after a specific song you choose. So really the way to get more random songs is to first choose one at random yourself, and then let iTunes go from there.

[lavar78]

If you don't reshuffle (click shuffle once to turn it off and again to turn it back on), the songs will stay "shuffled" in the same order. If you use the deck-of-cards analogy, that makes sense.

i have also noticed that in shuffle mode with my music library, songs that i have selected previously often come up more often then those i haven't played recently. i often find myself saying "but i just played that song" when it comes up.

Is this a complaint? By definition, this is what should happen. Am I misunderstanding? Shuffle a list of 100 songs and play a certain number of them (let's say 20). Well, if you reshuffle that same list and play the first 80 songs, don't you see that there's an extremely high probability that you *will* hear a song you heard last time? There is only one case where you wouldn't (all 20 of those songs are the last 20 songs in the shuffle). The probability goes down if you listen to less songs the second time, but it's still highly probable.

Think of it this way: If you want to hear every song once, you have to play through the whole library in a certain order (alphabetical, shuffled, etc.). If you change that order before you hear every song (e.g. by shuffling again), the probability is very high that you'll hear a song you've already heard.

i also noticed that it will preferentially play artists that have been played recently.

That doesn't sound preferential to me (without more information). It seems like you're ordering them in your head ("I just heard this artist, so I shouldn't hear him again") and calling it preferential when it doesn't meet your expectations. The order you expect (spreading out all of the artists) is just a small subset of the possible orders for a random shuffle. I hope that helps.

[Anomalous]

Originally posted by lavar78:
If you don't reshuffle (click shuffle once to turn it off and again to turn it back on)

Nooo! Just option-click the Shuffle button to reshuffle.

[Superchicken]

I think the play lists are smarter than some posters

If you want a random list hit the random button and it'll be random. It won't be varity it'll be random. What would be cool not sure if you can already do this is to state that you want a percent of songs to be by a certain artist and so on and so forth, and you want them in a varried order.

Random means RANDOM, I technically could randomly get the entire Supertones live Album in a play list... is it likely... just as likely as it is me getting the same number of songs of another order.

Will you probably see it, not likely cause it's random. I would like it if apple put in a stagger artist feature... but hey maybe that'll be in in iTunes 4... but learn what random is before you say it's not random.

Another point people have said on this topic is... perhaps you simply notice different songs more. I tend to not notice any of Plankeye's stuff becuase they're pretty mellow, but if I hear TFK's When In Dout I always notice...

[superlarry]

how about this - it's happened to me a few times and also to a friend. start iTunes a-playin' and sometimes it'll wrap around to the first song you played and then repeat the same order of songs you just played. i've had this happen with various different numbers of songs, as low as 20ish. i find this bewildering.. why would shuffle select only a portion of the playlist?
and sometimes, although i haven't had this happen lately, iTunes will just stop. i know it's not "done" - i've got way too many mp3's to listen to in one sitting.
maybe it's time for a rewrite ;c)
cocoa, less CPU usage, better shuffling/playlists, no more of these LaunchCFMApp calls. hehe

[foobars]

Some of you guys think you're smarter than you really are and need a lesson on what random means in real life and what random means on a computer. Some of you have touched on this but I'm going to try and clairify it more...

iTunes works like this, when it starts up it generates a random seed. That's a number made from your computers clock (which isn't random) and modifing it with a few calculations.

Here's the important point: the seed may be randomly generated, but the random function that iTunes uses only produces one random seed everytime it starts up! What does this mean? Basically it means that the ORDER iTunes chooses is infact random, but it will choose that same "random" order over and over again.

Try it. Click on a song in shuffle mode, then move forward one track. Now choose a new song. Now select that original song and go forward. It's the same order! Most CD players (and MP3 players) would produce a new seed, but iTunes doesn't. Hence if iTunes chooses a song randomly twice, you'll be in an infinte loop.

Theoretically, you could have a million MP3s and iTunes could only play 2 songs on shuffle mode.

This is a very common phenomenon in programming.

There is a glimmer of hope: you can force iTunes to make a new seed by option-clicking the shuffle key.

[oscar]

How kids, don't turn this into a flame war, and to think that the solution to this thread is simple, itunes:pref:advanced:shuffle by song

[lavar78]

Click on a song in shuffle mode, then move forward one track. Now choose a new song. Now select that original song and go forward. It's the same order!

I'm not getting your point. That is what is supposed to happen. They aren't going to be in a different order until you shuffle them again. Again, iTunes doesn't randomize, it shuffles. You'll never get the infinite loop of 2 songs you referenced unless there are only 2 songs in the list you shuffled.

There is a glimmer of hope: you can force iTunes to make a new seed by option-clicking the shuffle key.

Yes. This is where you're telling iTunes that you want to shuffle the songs again. BTW, thanks for the tip, Anomalous.

[Jasoco]

Originally posted by oscar:
How kids, don't turn this into a flame war, and to think that the solution to this thread is simple, itunesref:advanced:shuffle by song

Yes, what he said. That is the answer. I used to have it play only one album before moving on. I thought iTunes sucked. THen I found this option and now I am happy.

[Flowbee]

I have just over 2000 songs on my iPod, and I've found that the best 'random' listening experience is starting somewhere in my song list and playing alphabetically. This almost always gives me a good mix of music, which includes songs I haven't listened to in a while. Plus, it can be fun trying to guess what's going to come up next.

(I'll take music over statistics any time)

[tooki]

Moving to Software.

tooki