I Tunes Shuffle...is it cleverer than you think?

[big screen satellite]

i listen to music while i work from home, all day long, and i have i-tunes on shuffle for most of the day...and its sometimes very strange in its 'random' track selection...

i have over 6900 tracks on my machine at the moment and oddly today its just selected:

Futureshock - the Question (which is a remix of Underworld's Why Why Why)

then followed it up immediately

Underworld - Why Why Why (the long version)

its just like it thought, i'll select something similar to before, Matt won't mind, i'll do the thinking for him...very odd - i thought - hence my post...

i do have a lot of Underworld tracks on here, but the odds of this happening must be pretty long...

i wonder what's next...Why Why Why - by the Woodentops?

it keeps me happy with its randomness...unless my computer is now actually thinking... a la Skynet, in Terminator 2?

[big screen satellite]

scrap that - my computer is stupid...for some reason it followed this up with Castles in the Sky - Ian Van Dahl...just when i thought it was getting a brain...;)

Unless anyone of you can tenaciously link Why Why Why by Underworld to Ian Van Dahl...??

[sanakan]

you might like this recent slashdot-article (http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/05/08/28/0616225.shtml?tid=141&tid=228&tid=3) which links to this analysis on the shuffle function (http://www.omninerd.com/articles/articles.php?aid=34) of itunes.
i don't know if it's any good, but at least it's related :)

[big screen satellite]

very intersting, as dull as that seem be to some people, i find it very interesting (especially as i work in statitical type analysis..., and produce these kind of comparisson charts all day long) i just wouldn't have the time or inclination to analyse I-Tunes to that degree...

and as random as I-Tunes is, he is right in his asertion that you will likely see patterns, (if you want to) in anything

a professor talking on the radio the other week (when Liverpool won the European cup - and the co-incidental links to previous cup wins) suggested that it woulkd be more strange that co-incidences didn't occur in life than if they did,

on an unrelated note: apparently a room of 11 random people is all you need to get two people with the same birthday!!!

anyway, Random I-Tunes is still running and i have no ratings on my tracks, so its purely random, as far as i can tell...but i'll report back any anomolies....

[sanakan]

sorry, further off topic :o

very intersting, as dull as that seem be to some people, i find it very interesting (especially as i work in statitical type analysis..., and produce these kind of comparisson charts all day long)
aahh... i spent last week trying to make sense of things as chi^2 - tests, maximum-likihood functions, and so on... and - i don't like it :D

on an unrelated note: apparently a room of 11 random people is all you need to get two people with the same birthday!!!i think it's 23 people to raise the possibility to 0.5 ;)

[Raz]

Shuffle in iTunes is bollocks. I remember ranting about it in #rtsr a while ago :)

[sola sistim]

Shuffle in iTunes is bollocks. I remember ranting about it in #rtsr a while ago :)
the Shuffle on iPod Shuffle's is worse.

[groovypanda]

Unless anyone of you can tenaciously link Why Why Why by Underworld to Ian Van Dahl...??why why why would you have that turgid piece of pop-trance on your ipod in the first place... ;)

[Drix]

and as random as I-Tunes is, he is right in his asertion that you will likely see patterns, (if you want to) in anything


Made me think of the movie Pi.. God I loved that film.
Made me want to learn more math, and that is just plain sick comming from me.. I actually started at a math intro course and did pretty well for about half a year. It's all lost now though.

But I've been thinking about the shuffle function as well. In WinAmp you can set a degree of how random you want it, but I think it selects worse and worse music the less random you make it, so I always keep mine at max. In fear of what it might play if I try the minimun, I have never tried it..

[stimpee]

Matt: Why Why Why do you have Castles in the Sky by Ian Van Dahl on your ipod? its utter _____ (http://www.eslkidstuff.com/images/underpants.gif)

[big screen satellite]

Matt: Why Why Why do you have Castles in the Sky by Ian Van Dahl on your ipod? its utter _____ (http://www.eslkidstuff.com/images/underpants.gif)


not on my i-pod on my itunes...it was on some 'trance' compilation that i loaded on...i have to get around to deleting some tracks ;)

[suicidalpenguin]

I have to agree - Castles in the sky is an extremely dubious thing to have in the first place, let alone on your ipod

Admiting it on an international internet forum - even worse ;)

[lukeyd]

ahahhhh hah ah ahhhhaaaaahahaahahahahah

lets all laugh and point at matt
hhhhahahahahahaaaaaaa

[big screen satellite]

ahh come on its not THAT bad...i have far worse i'm sure, as i suspect a lot of you do...musical snobbery is far worse than owning some cheesey throwaway trance pap

in fact i'm not that ashamed...after all i'm a kid of the 80's and that decade rocked for quality music and some cheesey tunes...Star Trekkin' anyone?

i'm now gonna take a stand and big up the likes of Ian Van Dahl...(well perhaps not 'big up' but defend anything in my collection)

its not like its my favourite track or i play it every day, its just lingering in amongst the 6900 tunes i have and was a buck in the trend in the theory of I-Tunes having a brain...

i am not ashamed of any record in my collection, whether vinyl, CD or even MP3...there's a case for everything in my book (or in my collection)

np: Chicane Feat Brian Adams - Don't Give Up ;)

[groovypanda]

going back to the original point, and talking of lack of randomness in shuffles, does anyone else despair at the shuffle function on winamp - i swear it has a favourite few tracks that it seems to play much more than the law of averages would dictate.... :(

[ndrwrld]

ask rick and karl and darren...well, this IS the Underworld forum.:confused:

[sola sistim]

going back to the original point, and talking of lack of randomness in shuffles, does anyone else despair at the shuffle function on winamp - i swear it has a favourite few tracks that it seems to play much more than the law of averages would dictate.... :(

YES!!!!!!!!!!!
i notice that too.