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

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?

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

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...??

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

you might like this recent slashdot-article which links to this analysis on the shuffle function of itunes.
i don't know if it's any good, but at least it's related :)

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

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....

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

sorry, further off topic :o

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

i think it's 23 people to raise the possibility to 0.5 ;)

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

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

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

the Shuffle on iPod Shuffle's is worse.

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

why why why would you have that turgid piece of pop-trance on your ipod in the first place... ;)

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

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..

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

Matt: Why Why Why do you have Castles in the Sky by Ian Van Dahl on your ipod? its utter _____

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

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 ;)

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

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 ;)

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

ahahhhh hah ah ahhhhaaaaahahaahahahahah

lets all laugh and point at matt
hhhhahahahahahaaaaaaa

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

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 ;)

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

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.... :(

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

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

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

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