My iPod prefers U2 (An ordinary shuffle story)

[Maybe]

I own 2 ipods (5 gigs and 30 gigs 3Gen). I copied all my music on my new 30 gig once i purchased it last june.
I have all the songs form Pearl Jam, Radiohead and U2. I made a big playlist with all the songs from those groups: more than 300. I went for jogging (1 hr and 1/2). I played the playlist in shuffle song mode. iPod played about 23 songs. The first 8 or 9 where all by U2, then one or two by pearl Jam, no one from Radiohead. I was getting really angry about that. Everytime a song was ending I waited for the next one hoping not by U2. No hope!
In the end 23 songs: 3 by PJ, 1 (one!) by Radiohead, 19 bu U2. How can it happen?! Later i did other tests and it still prefer U2 songs (7-8 times more than PJ, more than 15 times more than RH).
I copied all my songs in the iPod more or less in the same days. So it may happen that it plays the songs that are much nearer on the Hard Disk. But it looks exaggerate to me. I don't think it depends on hard disk access, maybe i have to reset my ipod?
Hope someone can help me. My opinion is that shuffle mode sucks!!!
Thanks

[dhfrance]

I would prefer a U2 song over Pearl Jam or Radio Head any day.

[Marky]

isn't it something to do with the options, shuffle album, or shuffle tracks... i still ain't worked out what each of them do.

[GuyVer]

If you had given the U" songs a * (STAR) rating then it would prioritise those over songs with no rating, hence you getting almost all U2 songs played to you.

GuyVer

[ZoidbergD]

Originally posted by GuyVer
If you had given the U" songs a * (STAR) rating then it would prioritise those over songs with no rating, hence you getting almost all U2 songs played to you.

GuyVer

Nope, the iPod should randomize all of the tracks when you have shuffle on. Ratings, play counts, file size, artist, etc, etc are not factors in the play order of a playlist with shuffle on. It is merely a conincidence.

Oh, and Radiohead rules the school.

[Skiace]

Originally posted by Marky
isn't it something to do with the options, shuffle album, or shuffle tracks... i still ain't worked out what each of them do.

here's how that works, suffle mode "songs" plays random songs, without regard to artist/album, etc. mode "albums" will randomly select an album, then randomly play songs within that album only, then when those are done, randomly select another album, and continue in the same manner

btw, just curious, what proportion of the songs on this big 300 playlist were U2? because if 80% of them or even 50-60% were U2, then u're experience should not be very surprising

[Maybe]

The proportion is 35 % more or less U2, 35% PJ, and 30% RH. No stars applied, shuffle by song. It still frefers U2 (that I like a lot). But I can listen to U2 selecting artist. I would like to play my playlist random between all the songs. I will edit my playlist and reduce the total number of songs and see what will happen. Thanks

[john2172]

It is my opinion that the random/shuffle mode SUCKS (on iTunes at least). I have sat at my computer for an extended period of time (doing homework), and acutally witnessed my "random" songs start to play over again in the same order they had just played in. I have also noticed that it will play many songs from one artist, and NONE from another. The fact that yours happened to be U2 is probably just chance, but it does happen. Honestly, why can't anyone figure out how to make an actual random setting. URG!

[mjmoonwalker]

Just make the shuffle "more shuffled" in the settings...either that or you have a lot of U2.

[jer_stud56]

Yeah, you can change the amount of "shuffle" in the settings, just look around for it. That way it'll put a bigger or smaller gap in the shuffling each time it changes, depending on which way you move the toggle.,