For music on the go and having fun creating mixes (again) the iPod shuffle was a great recent purchase. I don't always buy into the "enjoy uncertainty" or "life is random" concepts that Apple preaches though and find myself creating a smart playlist to autofill my shuffle that pick from higher rates songs in a number of other playlists that have a list of my favourite tracks. I'm not alone in this and I have noticed a few others sharing there ideas.

"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.

And Maximum Aardvark fixes the problem of the unsatisfactory random experience,

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."

Seems like a little too much work to me but it might be worth a try.

Making the iPod's shuffle function work better [Maximum Aardvark]

Categorized: Technology , Apple

Tagged: , Apple