Wanting A Random Playlist

[UndergrndPlanet]

I don't doubt this question has been asked before but as you might could imagine searching for "shuffle" or "random" brings up way to many results that aren't what I'm looking for.

What I would like to do is create a playlist that will randomly shuffle songs, basically to do the same thing in a playlist that "Shuffle Songs" on the main menu of the iPod does for the entire library. It does seem that if you create a playlist in iTunes and click the "Turn Shuffle On Or Off" button in the bottom left it will change the order of the songs, but its a set order and not what I'm hoping for. Make sense?

Anyone?

[1SuperFly]

I *think* that what you want to do is create a smart playlist. Then set up the 'conditions' to choose (for example) songs not played in the last day/week/month (choose your snyc interval). That will change your playlist with every snyc so you'll end up with a random selection of songs. But you need to sync. If that's not what you're asking, then you're asking your ipod to do that, and as far as I know, it can't.

Oh, & you'll probably want to limit the size of this smartlist, and you can choose based on size/number of songs etc etc etc.

[JMG]

why don't you just turn shuffle mode to "song" on the ipod? That way you just play a playlist and it will play it's song's randomly.

[UndergrndPlanet]

Thanks for the tips. I think I was looking for a bit of both. JMG I had never noticed that setting and it took a bit of digging to find it. Aside from the fact that without selecting a different first song it always starts at the top and than starts picking em randomly this seems to do just about what I was looking for, thanks for the heads up.

Appreciate the help!

[JMG]

Originally posted by UndergrndPlanet
Thanks for the tips. I think I was looking for a bit of both. JMG I had never noticed that setting and it took a bit of digging to find it. Aside from the fact that without selecting a different first song it always starts at the top and than starts picking em randomly this seems to do just about what I was looking for, thanks for the heads up.

Appreciate the help!

Instead of clicking INTO the playlist and selecting a song, just highlight the playlist title in the playlist menu and hit PLAY. The first song will be random as well.

[UndergrndPlanet]

I love you guys. =)

[anypats]

I have been trying to get a truly random playlist as well and I seem to be failing at it or iTunes just isn't smart enough to know what I want. I created a smart playlist that the song had to be more than 2 minutes and less than 5 minutes in length, didn't include any audiobooks, didn't include a couple different genres, and was a total of 2.4GB. This gives me a playlist of around 600 songs for my nano. Now the problem I have is this - Some artists get favored highly over others. Even if I clear the playlist and let it reload I don't get a good diversity of songs. For example my current playlist has 47 songs by John Williams and 27 songs by Howard Shore and 13 by the Beatles yet there are still plenty of artists/bands that didn't get a single song in the playlist. With close to 200 Artists I would have hoped to get 3 or 4 songs from each artist to get my 600 songs. Not 47 from one artist and have 20 others get none.

Any ideas anyone?

[UndergrndPlanet]

Not sure if this is applicable to you or not anypats but its something I ran across while trying to figure out my sitch. If nothing else I did find it interesting:

msnbc.msn.com/id/6854309/site/newsweek/

[anypats]

Originally posted by UndergrndPlanet
Not sure if this is applicable to you or not anypats but its something I ran across while trying to figure out my sitch. If nothing else I did find it interesting:

msnbc.msn.com/id/6854309/site/newsweek/

Yeah, this article sums up my frustrations. The thing is if I use my 20GB and just select Shuffle Songs I am fairly happy with the shuffling results. It's just this Smart playlist that has me bugged. They really should have given the nano the same option as the Shuffle in iTunes with the Autofill feature. Instead I have to try and create these Smart Playlists that never seem to give me what I want. I can't remember how many times I have cleared the playlist and had it regenerate but I can guarantee that at least every time I do there is always at least 8 songs from the Beatles "1" album. If it truly selected songs according to my settings and with how often it seems to leave artists out of the mix at least one time you would think that the Beatles would be left out. I think I could get what I want if they had the option in the Smart Playlist to be able to limit the number of songs that each artist can have on the playlist.

[Preebs]

With close to 200 Artists I would have hoped to get 3 or 4 songs from each artist to get my 600 songs. Not 47 from one artist and have 20 others get none.

This is known as the Gambler's Fallacy. Think about it this way, Flipping a coin 50 times will give you a random distribution of Heads and Tails. Overtime you will come out 50/50 heads vs. tails but if I got 50 Heads in a row that would not change the randomness of the next flip.

Also, if you have more Beatles than any other group you can easily expect to get more of their songs when you make a random playlist. It all comes out to numbers, probabilities.

One would expect a random playlist to include say 100 songs by 100 different artists, but random also could give you 100 songs by one single artist.

[Fleck]

Originally posted by JMG
Instead of clicking INTO the playlist and selecting a song, just highlight the playlist title in the playlist menu and hit PLAY. The first song will be random as well.

Thanks a million Ive been trying to figure that out forever!