Presented as a public service, here's the new Shuffle commercial. Like it says over on the left, we're not related to Apple, but the spot is pretty ubiquitous these days so some folks may be coming here for info.
The song featured is "Who's Gonna Sing" by The Prototypes
Welcome new visitors... See the out-of-date blurb over on the left about how this is not a blog about the iPod shuffle... But for better info, check out today's Engadget coverage of the revised Shuffle launch (among other things...)
Those stories a year ago about people feeling that their iPod knew what they were doing, and programmed songs in the shuffle accordingly, were pretty hilarious. So I'll just present this series of excellent, seemingly GPS-driven, random musical selections without further comment. Flying into New Orleans last week, as we were landing the little fella decided it was time for Alan Toussaint's 'Java.' Landing at JFK a few days later we got a little taste of The Strokes. Then this evening, getting on the subway @ 53rd & Madison, it was of course time for Metallica's cover of '53rd & 3rd' (close enough for rock & roll, especially for some Cali metalheads, I guess).
Of course, the streak can't hold up - since starting to write this, we've had the Texas Tornadoes and Serge Gainsbourg; perhaps the iPod is pinin' for Austin or Paris, but I don't think that's happening any time soon ...
Iron & Wine into 
The key surprising feature of the new iPod Shuffle is not its randomness, but its lack of a window showing 'now playing' song info. The product team seems to have decided to go with form over function, figuring the looking-at-the-display element wasn't a key part of the experience for most users.
So this past week i've made an effort not to look at my display, to see how the experience feels. It ain't easy - my mind tends to fill with questions like:
I guess I don't NEED that info, but having it definitely enhances my listening experience. Granted, I guess most folks tend to listen to a limited set of music - viz the recent discussion of how celebrity playlists tend just to be what everyone's already listening to - so maybe they don't have issues like this came up. (Though I bet if for some reason you just bought John Mayer and Maroon 5, and were shuffling between them, you might want to know which track was which. Or, you know, whoever...)
Nobody ever said it was a good strategy just to cater to the needs of serious record collectors, as both indy retail and most of the new digital services are discovering... But is wanting to have all the info just a hardcore-collector trait? Time will tell how users will respond - Apple's usually been happy blazing their own trail for better or worse...
Jeez, I go out of town and offline for three days and Steve Jobs names his new flash player after my blog... No official product info here, just random thoughts on random songs. Hang out a bit if you can momentarily quench your unslakeable thirst for the latest and newest. (If not, here's the official Apple iPod Shuffle page.)
Meanwhile, here's a hilarious Wired News story about the stampede of Mac cultists into the Apple store in SF to grab their own iPod Shuffle moments after Steve announced it... (Coincidentally or not, at the time of this announcement, I was stopping in to the Apple store in Santa Monica. I asked whether they had replacement cases for 2nd-generation iPods, they said "no, we don't even have any replacement accessories for the 3rd generation ones...")
And you knew it wouldn't take long for the real bloggers to weigh in: here's Engadget's report after joining the stampede and trying the iPod Shuffle for themselves... and Flickr's commentary on the interesting "song titles? who needs em?" feature ...
Web traffic logs don't lie, and they show a big uptick in visits right after Xmas from people searching for "ipod shuffle" in their favorite search engines. So clearly lots of new visitors got the gift they wanted this year, and now they want to find out about its coolest function. You actually won't find so much about that here (as explained previously) but we the management welcome you to the world of random digital music...
Nina Simone's "I Loves You Porgy" into Outkast's "The Love Below (Intro)," complete with sweeping strings and piano as well as Andre's best classy lounge singing...
It wasn't my plan to set myself up as any kind of expert on the Shuffling capability of the Ipod; I just liked the function and how it randomly played me cool songs, enough to be inspired to set up a blog. However, I get several search engine hits every day, as well as the occasional e-mail, from people wondering if I have any particular expertise in how the function actually works.
Word on the Street (i.e. 2 e-mails last week and this post someone referred me to) says that a lot of people have questions about Shuffle's sometimes odd randomizing functions. Without any particular technical knowledge (for that matter, without any technical knowledge whatsoever), I'd say that just from my own experience I know I'll often hear two songs from the same album in the course of 4-5 songs; and there are things I put on there many months ago that I still have yet to hear...
But notwithstanding the population who worries about Random Logic and Algorithms, the world has discovered the joys of letting the Shuffle function pick the music - as this article in Wired indicates. The article is cool overall, but I'm not sure I agree with the marketing professor who hauls out the creaky stereotype of younger listeners with short attention spans dominating the practice. For me and a lot of more ... um... experienced listeners the potential to be reminded of obscure favorites from one's music collection is a key draw - much like the phenomenon mentioned by The Guardian a few weeks ago of the "50 Quid Bloke" - i.e. the older music fan who doesn't have a lot of free time but still wants to hear cool music, and usually uses his/her music player as a radio playing only good songs. When I first read that article, I figured "50 Quid Bloke, c'est moi!" - in fact it's a little eerie to have my demo pegged so effectively, but there you are...
So Missy Elliott's 'Lick Shots,' came up on the player, and it took me a couple of minutes to realize that it was the Two Many DJ's mash-up version, and not the original. The track featured the distinctive guitar riff from Elastica's 'Connection' (which is actually the distinctive guitar riff of Wire's "Three Girl Rhumba" - my iPod was good enough to point that out by playing the original track a few songs later). But anyway, it didn't sound particularly out of context to hear the riff underpinning 'Lick Shots' - because Missy's best tracks might as well be mash-ups already. You never know what she and producer Timbaland might throw into the mix, from the genius bhangra sample in 'Get Your Freak On' to the demented Double Dutch interlude in "Gossip Folks."
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