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...
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