Making the iPod's shuffle function work better
Matt Haughey writes about the joys of a better “random” experience with his iPod shuffle than with his regular iPod:
When I autofill my shuffle randomly from iTunes, I have it pick high rated songs more often, so when it plays, it’s not a completely random sampling of my gigs of music like the full sized iPod, it’s actually random music plus a bunch of songs I love. This means when I’m driving around 1 in every 4 songs or so are my absolute favorites (I’m miserly with my 5-star ratings) and makes for enjoyable driving.
I have never used the standard “Shuffle Songs” function on my iPod for the same reason: there’s too much on my iPod that I don’t really want to hear. From the album tracks that I am not thrilled with on their own (but keep for the sake of completeness) to the 100+ tracks for tuning my iTrip (which is a bad user experience in its own right), I really only want to hear about 2/3 of the tracks stored on my iPod.
To fix the problem, I created five smart playlists. The first three are simple: I call them ‘x-star radio’, where x is a number between 3 and 5 inclusive. The ‘3-star radio’ playlist contains all songs rated 3 stars that have not been played in the last 10 weeks. The ‘4-star radio’ playlist contains all songs rated 4 stars that have not been played in the last 4 weeks. The ‘5-star radio’ playlist contains all songs rated 5 stars that have not been played in the last 2 days (since I use the 5 star rating to mark songs that I am, like, so totally in love with right now).
The fourth playlist is a smart playlist that contains all of the songs added to my iTunes library within the last 21 days.
I tie it all together with a fifth playlist called ‘@Radio’ (the @ keeps it at the lexicographical top of my playlists). It’s a smart playlist that is defined as the union of the other four. 90% of the time, when I use my iPod, it’s this playlist on shuffle. It is, essentially, my own personal radio station, where the DJ plays stuff that I haven’t heard in awhile punctuated by Today’s Top Hits and The Best New Sounds.
April 22, 2005 - 02:22 PM
Comments and Trackbacks
That sounds like too much work to me.
Well, yeah, there’s that. It is a little complicated. But it’s also fully customizable (to correct for size of music collection, frequency of library expansion, and the amount of music you listen to).
links for 2005-04-24 »
Times Editor Chris Lopez's weblog - Contra Costa Times Pretty interesting that the editor would start blogging about his paper's stories and process. Cool insight into the action at a paper. (tags: newspaper blogs editor bayarea) Making the iPod's...
Trackback from A Whole Lotta Nothing on April 24, 2005 at 03:18 AM
Amen. The iTrip stations playlist is extremely annoying in Shuffle mode, since there are 103 “song” files that are used to change the frequency. You can’t remove the songs from your iPod, and you can’t exclude them from the shuffle option.
I’ve messed around with various meta-smart list things I’ve seen around the web. This one looks like it might be the best I’ve come across so far. Will give it a try. Thanks for posting it.
http://www.littleyellowdifferent.com/miniblog/archives/week_2005_04_24.php#003074 »
making the iPod's shuffle function better...
Trackback from LYD's mini-blog on April 24, 2005 at 04:15 PM
Sounds similiar to my solution, but better. Cheers for the tip.
Apparently the iPod shuffle does not update the “Last Played” field on songs (just the “Play Count”), so the “#-star radio” smart playlists won’t be accurate. (The Shuffle has no internal clock.) Last Played will only be updated if you listen to the song on a hard disk iPod or in iTunes.
There is a solution to the iTrip tracks, convince the iPod they’re audiobooks (which it doesn’t shuffle). Use iTunes to convert them to AAC format, then run the Make Bookmarkable script from Doug’s Applescripts for iTunes.
Have you tried http://last.fm/ ..? It’s personalized radio that plays new tracks based on what you like (using http://audioscrobbler.com/ ). No need for all the playlists…
Dan: That’s a good point. The best way to use the shuffle, I think, is the way that Matt described.
Stephen: Awesome tip. Griffin should ship the iTrip CD with that enabled by default.
Eric: I’ve been using Audioscrobbler for over two years now, so I’ve built up quite a profile, but I love having the song tracking enabled by iTunes. I’ve played a bit with last.fm, but I don’t think I’d ever make it my primary mode of music-listening.
How to create a better shuffle »
Blogger A.J. Schuster tweaks iPod's shuffle function to only play fresh, highly-rated music. Using iTunes' Smart Playlists, A.J. assembles and combines a set of playlists that contain 3-5 star-rated songs that haven't been played in awhile, plus songs ...
Trackback from Lifehacker on April 25, 2005 at 10:15 AM
You were scooped:
Codepoetry did this in January.
http://www.codepoetry.net/archives/2005/01/15/doityourself_smart_radio_station.php
Jason: that’s a pretty good one. I’d want to add the option to require certain songs to always be in the mix (much like I do with the 5-star rated songs).
Additionally, newly-added music won’t be played unless it’s rated at least 3 stars. I don’t like to rate music until I’ve heard it, so that wouldn’t work for me.
This is why I love Smart Playlists. They are so easy to put together, but offer unlimited potential for complexity and customization.
On a PC, convert the iTrip’s MP3 files into AAC files using iTunes, then rename them all from *.m4a to *.m4b. Then load them back into iTunes. Voila, they get excluded from the Shuffle functionality (assuming you have the latest iPod firmware). Audiobooks don’t get shuffled.
I have tried things like this but I include some podcasts, the problem I have is that it always semms to clump the different lists all together. How have you gotten around this?
I’ve been doing this for some time now. Another hack: I use all but the “one star” rating, and program a smart playlist to play files with fewer than two stars (which = no stars) and a play count of less than two. That lets me listen to new adds that I haven’t rated yet.
Listening to music while I sleep »
I read this entry today on making the ipod's shuffle work better. The basic idea is to utilize five smart playlists to maximize the possibility of getting highly-rated songs punctuated with new songs and songs that have not been played in some time. I ...
Trackback from Minivishnu on April 25, 2005 at 09:10 PM
I like this stuff
Real Playlists
The not-expensive Entempo player has an instant playlist function from these guys: www.predixis.com. Desktop app works with anything. Not clicking—playing!
SmartPlaylists.com has had a variation of this up since last October. http://smartplaylists.com/comments.php?id=585_0_1_0_C
Making the iPod's shuffle function work better »
On Maximum Aardvark, AJ talks about how to make the shuffle function work better, namely by optomizing some smart playlists to tailor to your listening preference for the day. The ideas he has are good for someone who has...
Trackback from I n n e r d i m e n s i o n . n e t on April 26, 2005 at 04:57 PM
Shufflin' the Shuffle »
Cool. Making the iPod’s shuffle function work better [Maximum Aardvark] I already had the ‘Favorites’, ‘New’, and ‘Unusual’ playlists, but didn’t realize you could make playlists of playlists, or think th...
Trackback from ptalk on April 27, 2005 at 10:09 AM
Tuning the iPod »
Trackback from On Safari with El Jorgito on May 01, 2005 at 03:09 PM
Better Playlists for iTunes and iPods »
I really enjoy having all of my music on my computer, but I found that I had so much, it wasn't really easy to get a good variety. iTunes has the Party Shuffle option, but my library is so diverse...
Trackback from Fear and Surprise on May 03, 2005 at 07:51 PM
Overall, I think the random number generator has some weighting associated with it (giving high ratings or highly played songs some priority). Very frustrating, because some songs seem to get played over and over, especially when one does a “genre” random shuffle.
I have done a number of random lists using smartlists.
I have one of only the songs that I have never played on my Ipod. I call it unplayed. This list changes every time I update my ipod — the number of unplayed songs decreases.
I made an “unplayed classical” list, and an “unplayed rock” list — and I find these are a more pleasing random than the Genre list.
I have a smartlist of songs that have the word “love” in the title.
I have a smartlist of only jazz trumpet players.
I have a smartlist of songs that have the word “blues” in the title or are of the genre blues.
I have one of all songs that have the words “solo, duet, trio, quartet or quintet” in the album name. (This brings up mostly classical chambermusic with some jazz mixed in).
Is there anyway just to remove songs from the Shuffle queue?
Hi,
here’s a simple (?) question (it’s late, I’m too tired to figure this one by myself): how can I get my ipod 30 GB to playback a playlist randomly? I have tried setting Shuffle on and then starting my playlist, but the iPod inevitably (?) decides to play it back sequentially. This should be simple. Help.
Thanks.
Man your strategy is retarted. Here’s a great way… put songs on your ipod that you like. duh!
Use the regular shuffle and if you dont want to listen to a song(here’s the magic) skip it. Also you even wright like a flamboyantly gay man.