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iTunes and Shuffle Mode

(two questions this week… I’m on a roll!)

While sitting at my iMac I always boot up iTunes, put it in Shuffle mod,e and let it play music, often for hours on end. However, the other day I noticed something rather odd, or so I thought.

There are a great number of songs in my 4,600-plus library that have been played twice or more (some as high as 8-times), but approximately one-third of my library has never been played.

Is there any explanation for this behaviour? Is there a setting I should change to more randomize the shuffle mode? Is there something I need to reset to make the shuffle algorithm work properly?

Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions or knowledge will be appreciated!

(if it helps I’m running the latest Snow Leopard incarnation as well as iTunes version)

— forkboy1965

Comments: 2 Responses to “iTunes and Shuffle Mode”

    14 years ago

    Didn't you know? Your Mac has a special iMind chip in it and can read your mind and predict what song you are in the mood for :)
    Actually, the randomness of iTunes shuffle has been the subject of many blog posts over the years. Is it really random? Turns out, yes. It is our minds that aren't -- it is hard to conceive that some songs would still be at 0, while others get played several times. But that is how true randomness works.

    forkboy1965
    14 years ago

    iMind? It's not listed in the Applications folder. I'll go back and check again though.

    I will chuck this up to true randomness then. Thanks Gary.

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