Shuffle backlash brewing?

Since the rise of the iPod as a cultural icon, writers and music fans have written countless tributes to the random shuffle function. The argument goes that human curators are no longer needed, the random switches of style to style are bracing and interesting, and albums are absolutely a thing of the past.

Will the most devoted iPod users be the first to tire of the random shuffle feature?

(Credit: Apple)

Today at the barbershop, the house sound system played "21st Century Schizoid Man" by King Crimson, followed by some unrecognizable metal, followed by Alicia Keys, followed by some female-fronted punk that sounded a little like X but wasn't, followed by "No Quarter" by Led Zeppelin. I commented to the heavily tattooed guy cutting my hair that this was the most random shuffle assortment I'd heard in a long time.

His whispered confession: he had grown to hate the shuffle feature, and the fact that the employees running the sound system were using it was driving him crazy. "It's either black or white, there's nothing in between." He claimed he never used it anymore on his own iPod, preferring to pick songs or albums by hand.

I still enjoy the shuffle technique--including on my iPod Shuffle, which I set to suck a random assortment from all my music, rather than creating specific playlists or sub-categories of music for it to select from. But occasionally I do get a jarring transition from loud to soft or from favorite song to barely-makes-the-cut. Skipping the offending song usually gets me back in the groove, but sometimes it takes two or three skips to get another one I like. I can imagine that over time this might grow tiresome. Especially if I didn't take the time to sit in front of my stereo every weekend for at least a little while and listen to an album the old-fashioned way.

I wonder, is this the beginning of a backlash? Will longtime MP3 player fanatics tire of random shuffle first? Will they soon be preaching the joys of listening to albums straight through? Or was this a mere isolated incident? Let me know in the comments....

[kmtkr]

Buddy - the 'random' related algorithms rely on the listener skipping over songs so it can tune the upcoming playlist - you sound as if you expect it to learn and react to your tastes without interaction. This 'story' is a non-starter, sorry.

You're the one due for a backlash if you don't park your imagination and start coming up with decent topics for discussion :)

Try doing a follow-up on the iTunes Store finally getting around to having both 'Rent' and 'Buy' buttons on various movie selections - just don't look for anything related to a 'backlash' this time, please.

[stefanvolos]

As someone who has a rather wide and varied taste in music, I never use the random shuffle feature for my entire iTunes library. The power of iTunes lies in the fact that you can be your own DJ and create as many customized playlists as you wish, and so I have playlists to suit my every mood and whim. Sure, it takes some time and organizational skills, but I seldom find myself compelled to skip a tune because something inappropriate suddenly came up.

[InklingBooks]

Apple needs to give Shuffle users more control by adding playlists that could be played straight through or shuffled (selectable in iTunes).

And they would not need to add a screen to do this. A spring-loaded position past On for the power switch would step from playlist to playlist. The first 'tune' in each list would be an iTunes-created text-to-sound file giving the name of the playlist. It'd be about five seconds long and, if the user does nothing, that playlist would begin to play. If the user doesn't want to listen to that list, he could step to the next.

As Shuffles store more and more music, this would let users select music to suit different moods. Soft, slow music for relaxing, faster music for jogging or whatever. And it'd add only pennies to the cost to make a Shuffle.

Make the playlists smart, and user-selected criteria would automatically add new music to a Shuttle. "New Songs" would automatically contain new tunes from iTunes. "Favorites" would automatically include most played songs.

--Mike Perry, Seattle

[shetaan819]

Here's what I do - I have a playlist for each genre - so for example, genre=HipHop/Rap and choose songs at 'Random'.....this gives you a selection of songs from a particular genre from old to new as long as its the same genre.....I've made sure all my mp3s have the appropriate genre set - this took a while as I have a collection of about 11K songs and songs from every genre out there but its been worth it......for those people who don't want to go through their whole collection and set genres for everything, iTunes or ZuneMarketplace should have a lookup service based on artist&songname that assigns genre so that your 'genre' playlist is automatically made for you.....hope this helps some of you out there....