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NYT: "Tunes, a Hard Drive and (Just Maybe) a Brain"

updated 10:15 am EDT, Thu August 26, 2004

NYT: iPod Shuffle

The New York Times today discusses the as well as conspiracy theories that surround its effectiveness. The mood-wrecking potential of leaving the selection of thousands of songs to chance has pushed some away from ever using Shuffle, while others insist the iPod favors certain artists songs -- a notion that Apple's Director of iPod marketing says is false while insisting Shuffle is completely random.

by MacNN Staff

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Roehlstation
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

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08/26, 10:34am | report spam | close Reply |
Seriously?

Someone felt that there is a conspiracy in the iPods shuffle. I wonder if he wears aluminum foil on his head when he sleeps at night too.

river-wind
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2004

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08/26, 10:36am | report spam | close Reply |
psuedo random

many times, the psuedo-random numbers generated by conputers are offset in favor of the low-end of the spectrum; a side-effect of the psuedo- nature of the "randomness"

Depending on how the algorythm identifies the artists/songs for randomising, there certainly could be some artists/songs which end up being favored.

In truth, the idea that shuffle is truely random is c*** - no computer generates truely grandom numbers - hense the word "generates." It's deterministic.

atkin
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 2004

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08/26, 10:49am | report spam | close Reply |
McNews

this makes the New York Times sound like USA Today. Or as my friends and I call it: "McNews, fast food for news"

foamy
Senior User

Joined: Sep 2000

0

08/26, 11:08am | report spam | close Reply |
Random?

If the iPod's shuffle is truly random, then the person who wrote the algorithm is truly an idiot.

Anyone who uses the "random" shuffle knows damn well, that once it picks an artists, the probability of that artist being played again in the near future skyrockets. I have hundreds of songs from some groups and those won't be played for hours, while 3 of the 8 songs from another group will be played on my drive to work. I should pull out my Stats book from college and calculate the probability some time.

foamy
Senior User

Joined: Sep 2000

0

08/26, 11:10am | report spam | close Reply |
McNews

It is a sad day when USA Today has become a better paper than the New York Times, or what I like to call it now, the New Pravda.

mr breaker
Junior Member

Joined: Aug 2002

0

08/26, 11:17am | report spam | close Reply |
Are people retarded?

Do they really expect the ipod to "read their mood"?? That is what the GENRE category is for. Pick the genre you feel like listening to...THEN SHUFFLE.

morons.

Evinyatar
Mac Enthusiast

Joined: May 2000

0

08/26, 11:49am | report spam | close Reply |
Doom is imminent!

Does this by any chance remind anyone of "I, Robot"?

Getoverit
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 2001

0

08/26, 11:51am | report spam | close Reply |
Random my a**

I had 3700 songs on my ipod, 15 songs by The Guess Who. Every 45mim i heard the same two guess who songs.

scotty321
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Joined: Nov 1999

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08/26, 12:02pm | report spam | close Reply |
iPod Shuffle Not Random

We all know that the iPod Shuffle REALLY ISN'T completely random, no matter what the guy at Apple Computer says. I've had my shuffle feature end up playing 4 or 5 songs in a row from the same two artists, before moving onto any other artists. In a TRUE random world, this would NEVER happen. It would be almost impossible for the same artist (out of my 900 artists) to come up within even the same HOUR as itself again.

phillymjs
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Joined: Jun 2000

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08/26, 12:15pm | report spam | close Reply |
I know it's random...

...but sometimes it *is* a little freaky.

Like Monday night. I got in my car after a Prince concert, put on my standard 1200+ song playlist of 4- and 5-star rated stuff, and before I got out of the stadium parking lot the iPod played two Prince songs in succession. I've got maybe 7-10 Prince songs in my collection.

A rather impressive coincidence, IMHO.

phillymjs
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Joined: Jun 2000

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08/26, 12:15pm | report spam | close Reply |
I know it's random...

...but sometimes it *is* a little freaky.

Like Monday night. I got in my car after a Prince concert, put on my standard 1200+ song playlist of 4- and 5-star rated stuff, and before I got out of the stadium parking lot the iPod played two Prince songs in succession. I've got maybe 7-10 Prince songs in my collection.

A rather impressive coincidence, IMHO.

lmhaffner
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Joined: Apr 2002

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08/26, 12:16pm | report spam | close Reply |
Fun fluff...

Come on, it's a fun piece. Don't take it too seriously.

"In the future, he said, he will try not to let his iPod run wild."

Hilarious :)

RTiMac
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2004

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08/26, 12:19pm | report spam | close Reply |
I'm not alone!

I'm glad I'm not alone with this issue. I thought my iPod was defective. It's gotten so I hate hearing a Beatles tune on my iPod because I know it will play EVERY Abbey Road tune before it moves on again.

datkinso
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Joined: Apr 2002

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08/26, 12:23pm | report spam | close Reply |
Random? Not!

That must be the world's worst random algorithm. It is not even close to random. It is bizarre but it isn't random.

testudo
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Joined: Aug 2001

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08/26, 12:25pm | report spam | close Reply |
Random

Depending on how the algorythm identifies the artists/songs for randomising, there certainly could be some artists/songs which end up being favored.

I don't know about the entire catalog, but playlists on the iPod are ordered in whatever way you've ordered them in iTunes. So if you order a playlist by time, they'll show up on the iPod ordered from shortest to longest song (or vice versa). The algorithm to make the shuffle order most likely is a simple random number generator, building a list of numbers with no duplicates (unless they have a specific algorithm to do this rather than just keep working until its done). These numbers would then just map to the playlist's sequence. So, the random numbers could be all over the place, but since so is your music (assuming not ordered by album or artist), its bound to get some 'matches'. (keep in mind everyone seems to have a different idea on how a 'random' feature should work).

Anyone who uses the "random" shuffle knows damn well, that once it picks an artists, the probability of that artist being played again in the near future skyrockets. I have hundreds of songs from some groups and those won't be played for hours, while 3 of the 8 songs from another group will be played on my drive to work.

Actually, the probability of this happening is quite high in general. Its like the ol' birthday statistics problem, which basically says in a group of 30 random people, the chances two share the same birthday is like 67% (numbers are probably wrong, but the underlying statistics is there). So, now think of artists (or albums, whatever) as days of the year. So, if you have 365 albums (or artists), you'd actually expect to hear two songs from the same album (or artists) in any sequence of 30 songs.

I had 3700 songs on my ipod, 15 songs by The Guess Who. Every 45mim i heard the same two guess who songs.

How could you hear the same two songs when shuffle doesn't repeat songs? Or is this not in one sitting?

Toyin
Mac Elite

Joined: Nov 2000

0

08/26, 12:28pm | report spam | close Reply |
Random means random

All this talk about an iPod selecting artists more often is nonsense. This is your brain trying to make associations. If you hear the same artist more than once that's as random as not hearing an artist at all. Also, you WILL remember the times that it seems to not be random more readily.

As for the article, I hope this was a joke. It's definitely not of the caliber one would expect for NYT.

A side note, I've find that if you add this line to your playlists it makes for a more interesting listening experience. "Last played is not in the last 'x' weeks or months"

lukechip
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Joined: Aug 2003

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08/26, 12:30pm | report spam | close Reply |
The jury is still out...

I'm not sure whether it is totally random or not. i agree that with my main playlist (1700 songs), I seem to get a songs by the same artist (e.g. U2) playing close together. Mostly separated by one or two other songs, and rarely back to back. However it might just be that the 'coincidence' is noticable, whereas other patterns, such as playing two songs by the same two different artisits (e.g. REM and U2) close together are less noticable.

One day I might run a bit of a test, and see what I find. Assuming that iTunes uses the same randomizer as the iPod, then you can generate new random playlists just by turning shuffle off then on. You could then export the list to Excel, and perform some analysis to see whether patterns of artists are formed more often than they should be.

Alternately, I could get a life....

testudo
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

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08/26, 12:30pm | report spam | close Reply |
Forced Random

BTW, I sort of 'force' randomness on my songs by setting up a smart playlist of all songs not played over the last 21 days. Everytime I connect to my Mac, the playlist updates to remove newly played songs from the list and add ones that have passed the time (my one annoyance, playlists aren't 'smart' on the iPod). This way, I never hear the same song more than once every three weeks.

Actually, as a test, I added another smart playlist tracking the last played from before March (I never played the list, I just used it to track which songs weren't playing). It took until July for the last couple of songs from that list to disappear, even though other songs easily played once or twice more. But statistically, you'd think it would take a while for all songs to be played...

lukechip
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2003

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08/26, 12:31pm | report spam | close Reply |
The jury is still out

I'm not sure whether it is totally random or not. i agree that with my main playlist (1700 songs), I seem to get a songs by the same artist (e.g. U2) playing close together. Mostly separated by one or two other songs, and rarely back to back. However it might just be that the 'coincidence' is noticable, whereas other patterns, such as playing two songs by the same two different artisits (e.g. REM and U2) close together are less noticable.

One day I might run a bit of a test, and see what I find. Assuming that iTunes uses the same randomizer as the iPod, then you can generate new random playlists just by turning shuffle off then on. You could then export the list to Excel, and perform some analysis to see whether patterns of artists are formed more often than they should be.

Alternately, I could get a life....

Waldo Rivera
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 2004

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08/26, 12:35pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: iPod Shuffle Not Rand

you DO understand that random means that it doesn't "care" what songs it plays next, right? to say that in a TRUE random world you wouldn't hear from the same artists in close proximity is totally silly. it's BECAUSE it can play the same artist / band one after another that we know it's actually random... there is obviously no "rule" that says that there must be X number of minutes/hours between repetition of "artist" field...

the thing i HAVE noticed (i don't know if it still applies to the new iPods) is that on my original 5GB iPod when i hit shuffle it would basically create a playlist and not repeat any of the songs it had already played since being shuffled.

the only thing keeping the shuffle from being *totally* random is that "playlist" thing... a truly random iPod could play the same song 4x in a row and not care... which could be PRETTY boring.

testudo
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

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08/26, 12:36pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Random means random

Actually, it doesn't. I read an interesting article once on random numbers. The only easy way to calculate random numbers is through an algorithm. But since its an algorithm, its actually not random, just 'random-like'. They still have patterns and all. True randomness comes from getting data from truly random sources. I don't recall the exact example, but it had something to do with tracking the intensity of cosmic rays (or some other weird natural phenomenom).

trevj
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Dec 1999

0

08/26, 12:38pm | report spam | close Reply |
I'm no stats expert but.

I don't think the fact that two songs by the same artist may be played back to back in shuffle mode is any indication that the algorithm is not random. In a truly random algorithm, all songs have the exact same chance of being played. Like the lottery, the odds of all six numbers drawn being 27 (or any number at all) are exactly the same as they would be for six different numbers. So the fact that that two songs by the same artist, or from the same album, may follow each other is no proof that shuffle is not random. If that NEVER happened, then the shuffle feature would not be truly random. At least that's my take on all of this.

Go Bells
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Joined: Jun 2004

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08/26, 12:43pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: I know it's random

I had the exact same thing happen to me... I had spent all day at a raw-sewage treatment seminar, and when I got in my car, my iPod played TWO Prince songs back-to-back, and I don't even have any Prince songs on my iPod... Coincidence?????

firefly007
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jul 2003

0

08/26, 12:54pm | report spam | close Reply |
Poker

Imagine playing poker the numbers repersent a artist and the suits repersent a genre. The cards are shuffled - maybe using one of those fancy shuffle machines like in a casio - and the hand is dealt to you. You might be dealt three 6's - three songs from the same artist. It may seem imposible but hey you are on your way to a full house.

You can't say that the deck was stacked - unless someone is cheating - so why would you say that Apple is cheating, favoring one artist over another. Every song has the same chance of being picked two or more songs playing in a row from the same artist may seem imposible but that the way the cards where dealt.

kyri
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 2003

0

08/26, 12:54pm | report spam | close Reply |
NEVER?

quote: "We all know that the iPod Shuffle REALLY ISN'T completely random, no matter what the guy at Apple Computer says. I've had my shuffle feature end up playing 4 or 5 songs in a row from the same two artists, before moving onto any other artists. In a TRUE random world, this would NEVER happen."
How could it NEVER happen if it's random, duh?

njfuzzy
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Apr 2001

0

08/26, 01:25pm | report spam | close Reply |
hahahaha!

Honestly, how many people here understand anything at all about randomness and probability? Judging from these comments, I'd say virtually none.

Random does not mean even distribution. It means random. If you listen to your iPod for hours, there will come times when the same artist comes up in quick succession. If it didn't happen, it would be better evidence that the play wasn't random.

Don't ask "What are the odds that this artist would come up twice in a row?" Ask "What are the odds that at some point over many hours of listening, the same artist *wouldn't* come up twice in a row from time to time.

There's no conspiracy. The average person just doesn't get what randomness is. Ask the average person to pick a "random" number between one and ten, and the majority pick "3" or "7" because those seem like the most random numbers available. Hilarious.

lukechip
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2003

0

08/26, 02:05pm | report spam | close Reply |
my vote

is with "Go Bells" for the most insightful comment in this thread.

I'm still laughing....

Buran
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 2000

0

08/26, 02:35pm | report spam | close Reply |
Elton fan here ...

and I'd just like to know what this guy has against Elton. ;) 13% of my collection is Elton music. I get a lot of Elton when in shuffle mode. Surprise? no.

This "non-randomness" is just your brain remembering "coincidences" more reliably (you'll remember being annoyed if someone calls you when you're in the shower, but not when you're just sitting around doing something near the phone, because you don't have the negative feeling of annoyance to associate with that call.)

I do laugh over the fact that every MP3 player I've ever used seems to be psychic. It's not just iPods and iTunes. I'm sure the car stereo (CD/MP3/line-in for iPod) I plan to get will be similarly seemingly mindreading as well.

Dale Sorel
Mac Elite

Joined: Aug 2002

0

08/26, 03:01pm | report spam | close Reply |
Really???

In a TRUE random world, this would NEVER happen.

No, in a true random world a track could play twice in a row.

Me�vv
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 2001

0

08/26, 09:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
Random?

The iPod shuffle is definitely not random. Like last week for example, when my iPod shuffled up Right about time with Ceasar's Palace. I turned off the iPod and turned on the radio. And a song by the SAME ARTIST was on the air at that moment!!!

Another time it played a song with Belle $ Sebastian, and I swear I had been thinking of that song just beforehand.

So much for "random".

garyj
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 1999

0

08/26, 10:52pm | report spam | close Reply |
Random Shuffle

My original 5GB iPod doesn't have the new "Shuffle" option on the first menu page, but I can select various shuffle settings from the Settings menu.

I think one of the problems people are discussing happens when they select "Shuffle - Albums".

If it plays a Prince song from Purple Rain, for example, then it will shuffle the rest of the songs from that album before it moves on to the next "random" song.

So if you play a series of 20 random songs you could EASILY play more than one from the same artist.

If you don't like this, select the "Shuffle - Songs" option.

Me�vv
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 2001

0

08/27, 08:28am | report spam | close Reply |
Different

My 3G 20GB is not like yours then. I set it to Shuffle and did not get Purple Rain first.

So now we know they are not just non-random. The iPods are different from each other too.

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NYT: "Tunes, a Hard Drive and (Just Maybe) a Brain"

updated 10:15 am EDT, Thu August 26, 2004

NYT: iPod Shuffle

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