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iTunes: Just How Random is Random?

cnet.com.au — Think that song has appeared in your playlists just a few too many times? CNET.com.au analyzes Apple iTunes' song randomizer -- and finds some surprising results.

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  • inkbomb, on 10/12/2007, -25/+84"John Mayer (Sony) was iTunes' least favourite artist."

    sweet, one down. now if only someone could make james blunt disappear from playlists around the world...
    • SurrealDream, on 10/12/2007, -14/+29I actually used to listen to John Mayer!
      Thank the Lord for iTunes, for telling me what not to like.
    • buffalodan, on 10/12/2007, -21/+6I am a fan of JMT. I love his blues stuff, but not his pop.
    • Mootabolife, on 10/12/2007, -7/+20Makes you wonder, how else are they telling you what to like/dislike?
    • bSimms, on 10/12/2007, -6/+43John Mayer may still have that teenage girl scene image, but he is a god on the guitar on Continuum.
    • erikerikerik, on 10/12/2007, -8/+17eh, itunes is in fact "too random" and its a flaw with reality. I believe this was covered in an issue of wired some time last year.
      what itunes was said be working on was a song flag. If a song was played too soon it was tossed back into the mix and not played.

      But any one knows that order fallows chaos fallows order fallows chaos fallows order (get the point?)... How much or how little of a picture (or algorithm) you wish to look at will determent if "it" looks like order or chaos.

      And skipping a few steps, this is very related to how we observe an action such as light. Study light as a wave and your results will back you that light is a wave. Study light as a partial and you're results will back your findings that way.
      /end ranting
    • CrankyMcGuy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+43"John Mayer (Sony) was iTunes' least favourite artist."

      This fact alone should prove that there is no conspiracy going on here. Apple has featured John Mayer at Stevenotes a couple of times in the past few years. They like him. If anything you should expect his music to be at the top of the list if iTunes skews the results.

      As another poster commented on, this isn't a very good study of iTunes random play and has been done better before. The sample was much too small to give reliable results and needed to be repeated again and again.
    • idonthack, on 10/12/2007, -12/+6random playlist is randoooom
    • cds0528, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18they did the test one time. they should've done the same test, exact same setting, same files and everything all over again 2 or 3 more times... then i'll buy the conspiracy

      Edit: looks like someone else said the same thing, sorry
    • kapsar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I'd like to see this analyzed and shown to be statistically significant.
      But personally i have noticed the same artists/songs coming up over and over on both my iPod and iTunes. One other thing i've noticed is that i'll hear a song on my computer then go to my car and then hear the exact same song on my iPod... i have 30 gigs of music and with constantly reshuffling i should not be hearing the same songs over and over again.
    • wmarcello, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5John Mayer is at least two leagues above almost everyone he is compared to. He's been a great talent since his first album, but his latest just cements it. Continuum has been my favorite album in my entire collection since its release. More people need to actually give him a listen before trashing him based on singles he put out years ago.
    • joeshlub, on 10/12/2007, -1/+41This article is just ***** stupid. Anything that attempts to detemine whether or not something is random without any statistical analysis is such a huge waste of time it sickens me. Instead of dealing with this question by taking a statistically significant sample and analyzing it, they took a small one and then failed to actually see if there was any real correlation at play.
    • Livert, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Can anyone explain why I would need to create itunes account to be able to download album art for my mp3s? Is it just a ploy to collect information on the millions of my illegally downloaded mp3s? Oh, and ***** the RIAA.
    • gr8one, on 10/12/2007, -12/+10It's a well known fact that Itunes shuffle playing is not random. People do not want random, they want non-repeating. The two are not the same. This is not news, it is crap. And John Mayer is awsome and if you think otherwise you're an idiot
    • Otto, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19This doesn't show that it's not "random". It shows that people don't understand WTF "random" really means.

      The iPod and iTunes are both highly random. It's been proven, over and over again.

      People, on the other hand, are very good at seeing patterns in chaos. It's hard-wired right into our brains. It's that part of the brain that helped our ancestors see the predators in the fields of grass and such. The downside is that we're really good at seeing patterns that are not actually there. We assign significance to these patterns where no such significance exists.
    • TheWorm, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3I've always noticed this! Even with around 30gb of music, there are artists that show up with out fail, every time i put itunes/ipod on shufle.
      Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jack Johnson, Gorillaz, Bruce Springsteen, John Mayer, Marroon 5, Beastie Boys,Coldplay

      And I have a huge library of indie music. Is it coincidence that some of the more commercial artists get more shuffle time?

      What are some artists that always show up for you?
    • Ladon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3I'm not sure why the first comment is insulting James Blunt, if you don't or don't like music, ignore it.

      Also, this story is not only ages old, but lame. Buried for Lameness Factor 3.
      Every other program that has a 'random' option is 'random and non-repeating', which means it isn't random at all. But as soon as Apple gives people what they want, people start complaining and saying that Apple is stacking the deck.
    • SVPirate, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1This is a load of crap. I'll grant you the random function in iTunes sucks pretty badly, but I don't buy that it's rigged. The reason it's crappy is becuase it's based on a computer random number function, which is about as random as most things a computer does...

      I'll bury this with the Digg shovel, but I'd actually like to beat the author of the story over the head with it...
    • Alniner, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Question for everyone. Do you know the difference between Random and Shuffle? You can't have a "random" algorithm. It doesn't exist. Pick a number between 1 & 20. 15. Do it again....15....do it again....15. I can always pick 15, it's a random number between 1 & 20. Shuffle will play every song between 1 & 20 before repeating.

      Most of the arguments sound like the moron's at Best Buy working in the audio department, they don't know *****.
    • ChumpChief, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1My guess is that however they generate random numbers in iTunes doesn't give a uniform distribution. There are lots of ways this can happen, and it doesn't require a conspiracy theory to back it up. I agree a more scientific study would be interesting though... just in case there is a conspiracy :-P
    • essjay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think everyone should have their own James Blunt. What better pick me up than to smack him in the bloody mouth every time you feel a little low.
  • knowall, on 10/12/2007, -5/+137Sigh... I know this is going to get front-paged... and will spawn all sorts of conspiracy theories.... but this is a ridiculous "study" if you can even call it that. This is hardly conclusive proof. They need to do it again and again to see if it's reproducible.

    I can flip a coin 10 times and get tails 8 times. Does that mean the coin is broken? No. it means there's high variations in small data sets. Flip a coin 100,000 times and it will be much closer to 50:50.
    • HalBSure, on 10/12/2007, -0/+24I agree, the data set is way too small. Here's a semi-old article on the same topic that it is much better.

      http://www.omninerd.com/2005/08/25/articles/34

      It deals mainly with how weighted the ratings are, but it certainly gives a better glimpse into the whole thing.
    • Cleanlyness, on 10/12/2007, -18/+4Of course you could flip a coin 10 times and get it to land heads more than tails. You. are. not. a. computer. There should be a ticker option where it plays every song at least once, there is a reason why you added that song to your playlist.
    • SultanTravi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Agreed. With modern computers, larger sample sizes and numerous trials are easy to do. They should have done much more.
    • ezweave, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I think they also fail to realize that random number generation (LCGs, in particular) don't always have a "bell curve" (normal distribution). That's the thing about random numbers (or statistics in general)... as you mention, even if you flip a coin 100 times, and it comes up heads (say) seventy times... that doesn't mean that the coin is broken. Statistics are useful for studying expected behavior, but it does not dictate outcome. So many people fail to realize this.

      A bigger data set would make this more interesting and tell us more about it. I also notice that they never use any independent artists, which makes this seem more like a result of too many pints and not a well thought out study.
    • jefdub, on 10/12/2007, -0/+36Exactly. If you read the 3 comments appended to the CNET story, their brief analysis is more insightful than all 3 pages of the article (including pretty excel graphs):
      --Comment 1---
      There are no calculations to show whether these findings were statistically significant over the dataset, there is merely conjecture while showing raw results. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance
      --Comment 2---
      They should analyze it using the Chai squared analysis to determine if it is truly outside statistical variation or just chance.
      --Comment 3---
      From just glancing at this, it looks consistent with most types of LCGs. In fact, these are pretty close, in terms of frequency, for all categories. A 3% difference is negligible. Random does not mean a bell curve, sorry C-NET. This is amateur statistics at best.
    • kp3469, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4knowall: thank you for taking the words right out of my mouth! also sadly lacking was any sort of probability analysis, i.e., in a group of 1300 slots, what is the probability that artist X gets played 60 times? 59 times? 4 times?
      the statistics in the article are WEAK.
    • CorporateFelon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@Cleanlyness

      One Thing I've noticed, and this isnt proven by any amount, but that the random playlists created have every song in the play list. So it knows what songs are coming up. The next song isnt chosen at random when the current one ends. Once you get to the end of the playlist, assuming that you have repeat on, a new random playlist will be generated. So when you hit that end/beginning mark and try to go forward/back continuously it'll keep being different songs.

      One easy way to test this, but I'm too lazy to test, reset all the play counts, turn repeat off, and just hit shuffle and play. When it gets to the end, I think that each song should have played once.
    • laplacian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@jefdub
      the best comment was next:
      "Hey, CNET, how about a follow-up article with an actual statistician analyzing the results rather than someone who conducted this study like a high school intern."
    • SpeedyG, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6If you put about 70 people in a room, the odds are EXTREMELY likely that two people in that room will share a birthday. Conversely, you could put 700 people in that room, and it's still somewhat likely that not every day of the year will be covered.

      Same applies here. Some are prevalent, some aren't, but when you've only drawn enough times to (ideally) cover everyone three or four times, you shouldn't be surprised at wild variations.
    • phronko, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7While I agree that those comments give more information than the article: It's "Chi Square", not "Chai". Chai is a type of tea.
    • goodoldharris, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Seriously, did not a single person at CNET take statistics ***** 101? The ***** they write is getting worse by the day.
  • sideshowRAHEEM, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18"Through payment of a fee, the theory goes, a record label could increase the rotation frequency of their own music by tweaking Apple's randomisation formula."

    A good theory execpt for one thing if I already have a song on my iPod I have already bought/"stollen" it so why should the record lable give a ***** how many times I play it.
    • Akaji, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Maybe the fact that you hearing that song a lot makes you used to the band, making you want to buy more of their songs. Which is beneficial for the record label because they get a large cut (read: most) of the cost of the song.
    • MeNaCe942, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2As a follow up to "Through payment of a fee, the theory goes, a record label could increase the rotation frequency of their own music by tweaking Apple's randomization formula"

      I have well over 90% of my music purchases from local no name artists with no label and no Riaa connection, and i still experience the clustering aspect of shuffle, so i think apples randomness generator is just jacked up cuz there is no reason for apple to prefer to play band X over band Y because apple has never herd of band X or band Y.... Not to say this doesn't stop them from doing that with popular music, just i see that this goes farther than that...
    • MrBlackthorne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1iTunes has always had an affinity for playing my own band's music for me (which is kind of annoying). We're not signed, we don't have any RIAA connection, and some songs' recording quality is AWFUL (from our first demo). Funny things happen when you use code to try to implement randomness.

      I had a song stuck in my head in the shower this morning, and my iPod played it randomly on my ride into work. That must mean that my iPod can also read my mind. :)
  • nihilette, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10iPods have feelings. you just have to leave it on shuffle to figure them out
    • doctechnical, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Feelings, perhaps, taste, no... based on it's putting Kate Bush and ABW&H at the bottom.
    • acomj, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5@doctech
      Your ipod should have your tastes, since you put the music on it (hopefully its music you like , isn't that the point?)
  • Ngai, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1The easiest way to solve this could be to rename all your songs to the number they are... like 1 through w/e song ended at your library. idk just a thought.
  • gk128, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3I have always said iTunes isn't totally random.

    Sometimes I'd be listening for a couple of hours, and decide to play a song that played a while ago. iTunes would then play all the same songs it did in order from that point until I chose a random song.
    • Seddon, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Same with the ipod shuffle.
    • DrawingTheSun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1you need to reshuffle (click the little shuffle button off, then on again)

      when you shuffle, itunes creates a random list of songs, the order will not change unless you shuffle the songs again
  • avalys, on 10/12/2007, -3/+53Nimrods. Random means random - it does not mean "automatically perfectly evenly distributed".
    • nihilette, on 10/12/2007, -14/+1random |ˈrandəm| adjective • Statistics governed by or involving equal chances for each item. •

      yep
    • ElusiveByte, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"involving equal chances"

      But that's just it. Equal *chance*, not equal distribution in every subset. "Equal chance" means, if the random test were conducted an infinite number of times, the results would tend toward equal distribution.

      Flip a coin twice and you have a 50% chance of getting two heads or two tails. Is that even distributed? No. If flips were always distributed you would always get one heads and one tails. But is it random? Yes.

      Ask enough people to flip a coin 10 times, and someone will get 10 heads on a row. That's random. iTunes does not force "five heads and five tails", it allows things to be random.

  • ImTheDarkcyde, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Watch out for Paul Anka, my ipod can't get enough of him
  • shane1337, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3for a while now itunes has been sloppy with their randomizer, it seems that they don't seed their random number generator properly (if you start a on a specific song the next 'random' song is always the same and the next on is the same, ect.). i imagine this stem from the same thing, as it seems like a simpler and more realistic (all be it less fun) answer.
  • robbclark, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2all on one page: http://www.cnet.com.au/mp3players/musicsoftware/print.htm?TYPE=story&AT=339274094-239029154t-210000015c
  • flap, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6rip songs from c-d's, don't connect to the internet and strip all the metadata. Then do it 1000 times.

    I would care about the outcome if they did that, then it would be easier to tell if itunes just sucks at shuffling.
    • phronko, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Of course, you'd also need statistical analyses and a cutoff point.

      If you do it 1000 times and find that a song played 55 times when it should have played 50 by chance, is that proof?

      Stats are the ONLY way to get near-definitive answers about this.
  • jimripper, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Tough to say if this analysis is fair without a statistician's opinion on the power of the number of songs used. However, this is interesting nonetheless and should be explored with a significantly larger sample of songs and in a more systematic way.
  • illustrissim, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3**dons aluminum foil cap**
  • DaDiggCode, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I'm taking a class of the study of economic statistics and I'd say this is BS.... this is what CNET and other news publications want you to think - that there is some unknown force controlling your music playlist. Their isn't... listen to Knowall

    ;)
  • pHr3ak3r, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Jeeezus ***** christ...how often do we need to hear about how random freaking itunes is? Just chillax...if you dont like the way it does it make it more or less random or...you could even skip a song :o Time is much better spent watching grass grow than running distributions on a random algorithm.
  • DaDiggCode, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Joy - lets learn about how statistics really works :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)
  • Santabot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9lol @ cnet bashing via comments after the article, not a single positive statement.
  • troysteinbauer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5No matter what you guys think, it is random. Take a high school level statistics class and you will find out that even thought it may look NOT random, it very well is.
    • sTiVo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2it very well is? or it very well MIGHT be? The point of the article, whether successful or not, was that the song distribution had enough outliers in it to call its randomness into question.
  • TherealObadiah, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Apple's shuffle algorithm stinks. I have smart lists where a few songs have been played around 40 times and many others have been played less than 5 times. It stinks!
  • antdude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Also, see http://digg.com/apple/Does_Your_iPod_Play_Favorites for iPod's randomizations.
  • eleven59, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2just had to add my experience on itunes. most of my music is what you would call independent or underground. 99% have been bought on itunes. even if some of the artists are on major labels, they are not on billboard top 50, prob not even 100. what i have noticed is that on any play list i have created, it has a fair amount of randomness. sure some artists appear more than others and rarely even back to back, but usually bc i have more songs by them. that is fine with me as long as its not the same song repeated 2 times or more in any one listening session. but when i use their own party shuffle, i started to notice more back to backs and even same songs twice in a session. but like i said majority of these artists are not top popular artists, so take what you will from that.
  • InfinitySnatch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3iTunes: Just How Random is Random? The results may or may not surprise you.
  • awbdallas, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Well nothing is perfect it is not like apple put much time into the shuffler they probaly jsut wrote a script and got on with it they are more worried about the overall way the iPods are used
  • MyNameIsJoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Next up. Is a deck of cards random? I played cards last night and got pocket aces on 3 times and kings twice. I must have been cheating. Now all I have to do is figure out how I did it, so I can do it again next time I play.
  • picto, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I think there's a reason it's called a pseudo-random number generator.
  • UberC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I wonder if they had the smart shuffle option on. That would explain why artist with multiple songs were played the same as artists with one song. Smart shuffle makes it less likely to hear multiple songs from the same artist.
  • Cornloaf, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0I have a first edition iPod Shuffle. A few months ago I was on a long flight and had it on shuffle and listened to it for about 2 hours when the thing crashed while playing a song. I turned the Shuffle off and back on and it started from the first song I heard on the flight. Then one after another, it repeated all the "random" songs in the same order. The same problem has repeated itself a few more times since then. My daughter's iPod Shuffle will do the same thing and I can recreate the problem. We've got a transponder/charger and if we turn off the car while the iPod is playing, it will stop working. We have to turn the iPod off and back on. It will start from the first song played and repeat the "random" songs in the same order.
    • DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The iPod shuffle creates a "random playlist" in advance each time you synch with iTunes.

      If you want to change the shuffle playlist order without synching to iTunes, you can press the Play button on the shuffle three times (quickly) while in shuffle mode, this will generate a new "random playlist". If you don't synch with iTunes or don't press play three times, the random list will stay the same.

      In linear mode, pressing play three times will make it jump to the first song on the normal playlist.
    • Cornloaf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Damn, I'm dumb. Thanks for that bit of info. What if you never sync it with iTunes? I never installed iTunes on my computer and use xplay or songbird to load up my shuffle.
  • pruppert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yo, CNET. Use a much bigger sample size. And show me some chi square results. Seriously, I'm curious.
  • robinator08, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2I guess the only guaranteed way to get non biased music is to pirate it?
  • mattsydoz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I don't let the music selection be random. Usually I play music in iTunes using Party Shuffle based on a playlist that is made up from several playlists:
    1. The 40 least played songs and not played in the last 2 days.
    2. The 40 least recently played songs.
    3. 40 random rated songs not played in the last 2 days
    4. 40 songs added in the last 3 months and not played in the last 2 days.

    I have over 17 continuous days of music which has all been played in the last 6 months.

    Of course at times I will add into the party shuffle stream music that I specifically want to hear right then.
    • GuyHersh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Dude, thats the most genius thing I've heard of ever.

      I never really played with the power of smart playlists, and never thought of doing things that way, and then making a 5th playlist to combine the other 4, AND then using a party shuffle to play them so you can see whats coming.

      God damn, you are my hero.. I just set up playlists as you described, and will tweak them as I want, but great thinking! any other tips?
  • jasonwatkinspdx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Interesting, but not a big enough sample size. I could easily see the random function being coherent by in innocent ways too, like teiring: pick a random artist, then pick a random track.
  • mjwedeking, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I wish there was an option to shuffle songs based on user rating. Higher rated songs get played more frequently. I want to hear a 5 star song 5 times more often then a 1 star song. Call it Radio Shuffle?
    • Raz4Life, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3...or party shuffle? It let's you select an option to play higher rated songs more often.
    • Ladon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've never heard of 'Radio' being used to refer to better songs. I've heard it used to refer to shortened versions and 'songs that the record company wants desperately for you to like', but never better.

      Party Shuffle is what you want, or you could create a smart playlist containing songs with higher ratings and stick that on random.
  • daigakuinsei, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2also of interest
    http://digg.com/apple/How_Much_Does_iTunes_Like_My_Five-Star_Songs_
  • DD00, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1God you have to be really ***** bored to read that article.
  • Bistromath, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Didn't CNET have anyone on staff that could do a proper statistical analysis of the data? Like even some undergrad intern with 1 semester of Stats 101? Absurd conclusions being drawn here.
    • inonthekill, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, bistromath I agree with you... Let's conduct a $1 budget study and write an article on how CNET is the E! Channel of the tech industry and occasionally likes to put out rumor-type / under-researched stories that creates a frenzy bzz online and brings THEM a load of web traffic..... like their love for writing about Microsoft vs. Google War even when there is nothing actually going on between the two companies. More and more I'm starting to dislike CNET, even download.com... does anyone have any suggestions where I can go?
  • ericsemail, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2As many have said, the data presented is more than likely statistically insignificant. 1000 times on a 1000 different machines plus a control group and maybe they'd be closer. This is why we have advanced statistics--which the article doesn't recognize at all. Is the iPod shuffle truly random--NO. No computer we have today can ever be truly random. Is the iPod shuffle feature genuine--I'd assume so--but the data presented to us tells us nothing to prove or disprove this.
  • marciot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1
    That's why I think using the pick-a-number-from-a-hat-with-replacement method for playlists is ineffective. What they need to do is something akin to shuffling cards in a deck. The algorithm would be to assign a random number to each song in the entire library, then sort the songs by that number. The resulting list will have every song once, but in shuffled order. Once you generated your shuffled list, you would play it song by song in sequence from start to end.
    • DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"The algorithm would be to assign a random number to each song in the entire library, then sort the songs by that number. The resulting list will have every song once, but in shuffled order."

      That's actually how it works... Unless you make an iPod or iTunes re-generate its shuffle list you will never get the same song twice in the sequence.

      What most people don't realize is that when they choose the "shuffle songs" command on the main menu of an iPod, it generates a new shuffle list. To never get a song twice you must avoid using this command and use the "now playing" feature instead to get back to where you were in the current random playlist.

  • Light11, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0thats why i have a meizu m6 mini-player full of bootlegged songs and not an ipod.

    yay china
  • jonahan52, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There is also a preference under playback that allows you to change the likelihood of hear the same artist or same album. Apple did this a few versions ago because someone else did about the exact same article before. Jobs even talked about it in one of his keynotes.
  • foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Chilli Peppers is 3!
    Rock on!
    Death of a Martian is the best song in the world! Too bad it was made because of a sad reason. (Flea's dog died, his name was Martian)
    • foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Edit time ran out: Anyone who wants to, pick up Stadium Arcadium. The best $30 you will spend in a year.
  • Bigcat1021, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Random is a process not a result.
  • rollem, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Buried. This article is a perfect example of improper statistic approaches. In order to make any argument about the randomness of the playlist, one would have to do a simple chi-squred test to measure if the expected frequencies based on random drawings were actually different from the actual results found. Since just some raw percentages were given, there is no way to find out if this articale is actually reporting an interesting finding or not. Actually, they may have provided enough data to proceed with your own measurements, but this simple step should ahve been done by any self-respecting tester.
  • whiteyMcBrown, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I thought I heard Steve Jobs touting the benifits of iTunes and iPod leaning towards favourite songs in shuffle mode. That way you get a shuffle, but you'll definitely get some of your favourites in the mix. You may not agree with Apple's interpretation of 'random', but I don't know if this is all as malicious as the author is suggesting.
    • pintong, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is a setting in iTunes, but not the iPod.
  • navarone, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0When I first got my new 30Gb video i uploaded my itunes, went to listen and hit shuffle songs... guess which song was first.
    http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/4261/ipodvideoqh2.jpg


    Makes you think....
    • inonthekill, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Nah nah.. it wasn't U2 Vertipoo? I don't believe you
  • JackSpratts, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2when it comes to shuffle i know what i want and it isn't true randomness. i just want the program to play every single song out of order - once - then jumble up the playlist again and play them differently, once, ad-infinitum. it's a pretty simple concept and winamp for instance does a fairly good job of it.

    playlist size may also be a factor. mine usually contain 1000 songs, or some 60 hours, and it helps if the time spent listening per day is a non-even divisor of the playlist length, but that's really more important when listening without shuffle.

    - js.
  • Thumbz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Itunes isn't random at all. I figured that out a long time ago. If you put on album shuffle, it always plays the albums in the same order, and is kind of annoying.
    • pintong, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2It seems that sometimes iTunes will fall into a loop when on shuffle. I first noticed this when doing a "post lyrics from the next 15 songs on shuffle" game. I noticed that as I approached song 15, the song order repeated. I verified this by continuing to skip forward until it looped again.

      This has happened to me a couple more times since. My best guess is it uses something in the song's meta to generate the "random" value for the next track. It might also combine it with info from the last track played, thus creating a loop when conditions are correct.

      This occurred under iTunes 5 and 6 (I believe). It has yet to happen under iTunes 7.
  • Speed, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I agree it's not statistically sound, but it is initresting. And to all though saying this means nothing, and C-Net is full of noobs for doing this study, yadda yadda yadda, would you be saying the same thing if it was the Zune playlists they got it from? Or a Creative Zen on shuffle?
  • mwsherman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I don't believe anything without a p value.
  • dfielder, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0I've ALWAYS thought something was screwed up with their shuffle feature , I get the same crap with my Ipod too , I hear alot of the same songs. GLAD I'm not the only one who thought something was going on.
  • noelmarkham, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I don't use the random function. I'm secure enough to know what I want to listen to and when I want to listen to it.
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