Shuffling entire iPod?

sure :)

a) make sure shuffle is activated (SETTINGS>SHUFFLE: SONGS)

b) from the main menu go to any choice (ARTIST, ALBUMS, SONGS). What I choose is ALBUMS>ALL>PLAY

and you're all set

-->edit -- eric beat me to it! :P

I thought I had done that, but I must have missed a step somewhere. I'll try it again. Thanks all for your help!

Originally posted by ejd142
Yeah its there, but its not always the best shuffle, but oh well.

I noticed that too. I have over 2600 songs uploaded so far, and shuffle between them all. This morning I heard three U2 songs almost in a row: two songs from Joshua Tree, then a song from a different band, then Zooropa after that. :confused:

Not a big deal, I can always fast forward a redundant band, but I am a bit curious how it decides which song to shuffle to next. Guess my 'Pod's a U2 fan!

Somewhere around here is a thread about the "true nature of randomness" (yes I was reading this message board long before I was acutally posting ;-)) you'll tend to find what appears to be patterns in any random behavior. If it's truely random than any result of shuffling is just as likely to occur as any other result... If that makes sense...

Eric

Question... What happens if you press Play upon waking your iPod up to the main menu? In other words... don't navigate into Songs or anything first.

I've always guessed that it would play your whole library (with your shuffle prefs) but I always forget to try it when I have an iPod in my hands!

(PS... True randomness--which computers seldom quite achieve anyway--can do ANYTHING, including sometimes a little repetition just by luck. But a good non-repeating random effect can be had by making a sizable Least Recently Played playlist and shuffling that. At least you'll never hear the same song again right away.)

Originally posted by Babbit
I'd like to be able to...

- Not repeat an artist until a single selection from all other artists have been played once while playing my entire Pod on shuffle.

- Not repeat an album until a single selection from all other albums have been played once while playing an entire artist on shuffle.

But then you'd be defeating the purpose of randomization.

Anyway, I also don't wanna hear the same song twice so this is what I do: I made a smart playlist for songs that have zero playcounts. Then I just shuffle that. When I have played all the songs, I just reset the playcount to zero. Alternatively, I could set edit the smartplaylist to have songs with playcount 2, then 3, etc... It wouldn't still be true randomization, but at least I'll be able to listen to all my songs and not repeat any song. However, it doesn't guarantee that you won't hear a song from the same artist and album like you described.

Originally posted by curtw
I've done this too, but where's the "reset playcount" function (on the Mac)? I can't find it! I still have 891 songs to go before I get all the way through my 'Pod, and I was just going to change the playlist criteria to "less than 2 plays," but a reset would be cooler...

I'm sorry, I'm on windows. Anyway, you could try: Selecting/highlighting all the songs in your library then right click and there will be an option to reset all playcounts.