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When iPod is the DJ, watch out
C/NET News ^ | 8/26/04 | Rachel Dodes

Posted on 08/26/2004 8:23:14 PM PDT by SamAdams76

While Bob Angus was presiding over a summer dinner party at his Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, his Apple iPod decided to reveal its softer side.

Angus, a second-year graduate student at Columbia Business School, had selected the Shuffle Songs mode on his iPod, which was connected by an adapter cable to his stereo receiver. By doing this, he relinquished control of his 1,300-song music library--and, as he would soon find out, of his party.

The Guns N' Roses song "Paradise City" blared from his speakers. It was followed by the melodic piano solo at the beginning of Elton John's "Your Song." Angus' 10 guests burst into laughter.

"Everyone was rocking out," Angus said. "Then Elton comes on and kills it--it was like strike No. 1 against my manhood."

Such are the perils of using Shuffle, a genre-defying option that has transformed the way people listen to their music in a digital age. The problem is, now that people are rigging up their iPods to stereos at home and in their cars, they may have to think twice about what they have casually added to their music library.

Shuffle commands have been around since the dawn of the CD player. But the sheer quantity of music on an MP3 player like the iPod--and in its desktop application, iTunes --has enabled the function to take on an entirely new sense of scale and scope. It also heightens the risk that a long-forgotten favorite song will pop up, for better or for worse, in mixed company.

Device's preferences?

There is an unintended consequence of the allure of Shuffle: it is causing iPod users to question whether their devices "prefer" certain types of music.

Revere Greist, a doctoral student and amateur bicycle racer in Los Angeles, has concluded that his iPod's Shuffle command favors the rapper 50 Cent--and perhaps more important, that it knows exactly the right time to play 50 Cent's biggest hit, "In Da Club." He finds the dramatic beat, coupled with the lyrics "Go Shorty, it's your birthday," inspirational.

Greist rides his bike 15 hours a week, often more than three hours at a time. To get him through the tedium of this workout, he created a 40-song mix called "What It Takes," a name derived from a quotation on a documentary film about Lance Armstrong's training for the 2000 Tour de France. (After Armstrong defies his team manager's orders and races up a snowy mountain, his team manager says into the camera, "Now, that's what it takes to win the Tour de France.")

The iPod "knows somehow when I am reaching the end of my reserves, when my motivation is flagging," Greist insisted. "It hits me up with 'In Da Club,' and then all of a sudden I am in da club."

For Angus, though, Shuffle can be a workout killer. He said that while working out at the gym, his portable music player invariably drifts toward the Billboard Top 40.

"It really likes Ruben Studdard," the winner of "American Idol's" second season, Angus said. This, despite the fact that he only has one song of Studdard's--the soulful ballad "Sorry 2004"--stored on his 20GB player. "There's nothing worse than when you are having an intense workout and Ruben comes on," he said, "but it seems to always happen to me."

Lucy Shaw, a social worker in New York, has stopped using Shuffle altogether. "It was totally not reading my moods," she said. It would play upbeat music when she was feeling low--and dark, somber selections when she was feeling upbeat. Furthermore, she said, her device had a penchant for picking songs containing four minutes of dead air followed by a bonus track - like Brian Ferry's "More Than This" (the song to which Bill Murray sings karaoke in "Lost in Translation," a bonus track on the film's soundtrack album).

Conspiracy theories

These people are not the only ones who think that iPods have minds of their own. IPod enthusiasts are throwing all manner of Shuffle conspiracy theories around on Internet message boards, ranging from the somewhat plausible to the absurd.

At the MacSlash discussion site, one posting said: "I'm pretty sure iTunes is not sorting my songs randomly. It seems to learn. I'd say it's using some Bayesian logic and/or simple neural networks to vary probabilities of songs to be selected and adjust parameters of selection by the user's history of song skipping."

When confronted with such elaborate theories, Stan Ng, Apple Computer's director of iPod product marketing, laughed. "The funny thing about it is that it really is random," he said. "When you turn on Shuffle Songs, it creates a randomized list of all the music on your iPod without repeating a song."

That is to say, if you listened on Shuffle to all 1,000 songs stored on an iPod Mini, you would theoretically never hear the same song twice, much the way you would never get two queens of hearts if you pulled cards from a single deck one by one. (Conversely, if you select Random on the iTunes Smart Playlist function, you might hear the same song twice in a row, though it is unlikely.)

The popularity of the listening mode led Apple's product design team to add Shuffle to the main menu on the fourth-generation iPod, which was introduced on July 19. Now, instead of having to scroll down into Settings to turn Shuffle on or off, users have it at their fingertips.

Ng said that the technology behind the Shuffle function has remained the same since the first-generation iPod. He declined to reveal the algorithm used to generate randomness on Shuffle, but said the only reason that an iPod might seem to know a listener's preferences is that the listener, after all, chose the music in the first place.

Into '80s music

"I have friends who say, 'My iPod is, like, totally into '80s music,'" Ng said. "And I will say to them, 'Well, how much '80s music do you have on your iPod?'" The answer, he said, is usually an amount sufficient to ensure a steady stream of Flock of Seagulls and Duran Duran.

This logical explanation doesn't always jibe with users' experiences. Dan Cedarholm, a Web designer in Salem, Mass., insists that his iPod has a predilection for the indie punk band Fugazi. Even though he only has two of the band's albums stored on his "vintage" 5GB device, the band seems to dominate his iPod to a degree wildly disproportionate to the amount of space it occupies on his player's memory, he said.

"It is truly bizarre," said Cedarholm, who no longer likes Fugazi. "Before, it was this hidden gem, and when I heard them I would be like, 'Oh yeah. Fugazi. Cool.'"

Now he hits the Fast Forward button.

Cedarholm has contemplated removing all Fugazi songs from his iPod, but he said he fears that "the baton will get passed" to some other band, like his beloved Pixies, "and God help me if I wind up hating them too."

According to Ng, there is no way that an iPod can be a "fan" of a particular artist or band. Rather, he asserted, the anthropomorphizing of the iPod is "just another example of how much people love them."


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: ipod
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I am about to get an iPOD (or a Microsoft equivalent).

I have, according to my Excel spreadsheet, 14,432 songs in my CD music library. I've burned about 3,000 of them to my computer already. It is my fantasy to have my entire CD collection in my shirt pocket.

Now hitting shuffle on that collection would be interesting. Imagine Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" followed up by America's "Sister Golden Hair." Then "Floy Joy" by the Supremes (sans Diana Ross) followed up by Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water." Then something by Lobo.

Welcome to my musical world.

1 posted on 08/26/2004 8:23:14 PM PDT by SamAdams76
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To: SamAdams76

I love my iPod


2 posted on 08/26/2004 8:26:47 PM PDT by watchout
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To: SamAdams76

Guess I should purge my "Carpenters" songs before I get embarrassed.


3 posted on 08/26/2004 8:27:11 PM PDT by My2Cents (http://www.conservativesforbush.com)
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To: SamAdams76
Revere Greist, a doctoral student and amateur bicycle racer in Los Angeles, has concluded that his iPod's Shuffle command favors the rapper 50 Cent--and perhaps more important, that it knows exactly the right time to play 50 Cent's biggest hit, "In Da Club." He finds the dramatic beat, coupled with the lyrics "Go Shorty, it's your birthday," inspirational.

Hey! I went to High School with this guy!

4 posted on 08/26/2004 8:28:46 PM PDT by Hermann the Cherusker
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To: SamAdams76

for pete's sake, there's a writer so desperate for material that they're writting about the shuffle feature on an ipod?


5 posted on 08/26/2004 8:29:37 PM PDT by flashbunny (Kerry helped move jobs to china - http://www.flashbunny.org/commentary/kerryoutsourced.html)
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To: SamAdams76

Isn't there a function to shuffle only within a list supplied in a .m3u (or Mac equivalent) file?


6 posted on 08/26/2004 8:30:03 PM PDT by supercat (If Kerry becomes President, nothing bad will happen for which he won't have an excuse.)
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To: My2Cents
Oh, that is nothing. You should see old Pukin in the wee hours still boppin to Rock Lobster and Planet Claire.
7 posted on 08/26/2004 8:30:55 PM PDT by Pukin Dog (Sans Reproache)
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To: My2Cents

I'm waiting until you can "blend" songs on the iPod before using it "live". I love it as a personal device, but the gap between songs is less than optimal in a DJ situation.


8 posted on 08/26/2004 8:31:22 PM PDT by FightinFederalist
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To: SamAdams76

Don't make the mistake of getting an "equivalent" -- they are all very inferior.

The article missed the greatest advantage of iTunes, the Smart Playlist. I rate all my music with 1 to 5 stars. Then I set up a Smart Playlist to play only songs with, say 4 - 5 stars, produced, say 1995 - 2000, and that I've only listened to, say, once before. This is where the real power is.

I bought a Slim Devices Squeezebox to play my music over my home stereo (through the home network). Many years ago, I used to make custom playlists on my reel-to-reel tape deck. Of course, you couldn't shuffle the songs and it took forever to make the tapes. iTunes and Squeezebox are an absolute dream!


9 posted on 08/26/2004 8:31:31 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: supercat

Yes, "on the go" playlist.


10 posted on 08/26/2004 8:32:10 PM PDT by FightinFederalist
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To: SamAdams76

The iPod is a wonderful thing. It sounds great, especially if you use a good set of headphones.


11 posted on 08/26/2004 8:32:42 PM PDT by SaveTheChief (Bach gave us God's Word, Mozart gave us God's laughter, Beethoven gave us God's fire.)
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To: SamAdams76
I've burned about 3,000 of them to my computer already.

I think you mean 'ripped' not 'burned.'

12 posted on 08/26/2004 8:32:47 PM PDT by Petronski (Sometimes I'm just too damned cranky.)
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To: SamAdams76
interesting mix.
hitting shuffle on my computer could sound like this:
Ray Charles's "Mess Around", then Emenem's "Cleaning Out My Closet" followed by Sonicflood's "Lord, I lift your name on high", then Beethoven'd "5'th symphony might play.
13 posted on 08/26/2004 8:33:33 PM PDT by armyboy (Posting from Ft. Livingroom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! soon I'll be depoyed at Camp Refrigerator)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Forgot to mention that the Wall Street Journal had an article this week saying that kids in college dorms are all turning on "Share My Music" on iTunes. Everybody in the entire dorm can reach out and play music from anybody's computer! You often have your choice of music from 40 or more computers. And the recording industry isn't upset about this because it's sharing within a building with your "extended family". Is that cool?


14 posted on 08/26/2004 8:33:47 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: SamAdams76
That's why I've got a few broad genre playlists (e.g., a generic "pop" playlist with 200 songs). You can also use an iPod to generate automatic playlists by music genre so you would at least only be shuffling the tracks in a particular genre so a Rock song won't be followed by a a soundtrack track.
15 posted on 08/26/2004 8:35:36 PM PDT by Question_Assumptions
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

My only reservation about getting an iPod is that I will be limited to buying songs only on iTunes. I don't like that restriction. Other than that, I must say that iTunes has the others beat.


16 posted on 08/26/2004 8:35:40 PM PDT by SamAdams76 (Bush 53%)
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To: SamAdams76
"I am about to get an iPOD (or a Microsoft equivalent)."

Microsoft's in many industries, but they aren't in the portable mp3 player business. Apple's competition in this area comes from Creative and iRiver. IMO, the Creative Zen is a better purchase. If you compare an iPod to a similarly-featured Zen, the Zen winds up costing less, and usually does more. The only problem is that the software sucks, but there's a program called Notmad which solves this.
17 posted on 08/26/2004 8:37:00 PM PDT by Terpfen (Worrying about President Kerry is like worrying about President Dukakis.)
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To: Pukin Dog

I have three B-52 albums to put on my iPod. "Rock Lobster" sounds dated but "Dance This Mess Around" and "Planet Claire" still sound fresh.


18 posted on 08/26/2004 8:37:22 PM PDT by SamAdams76 (Bush 53%)
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To: SamAdams76

I love my IPod, but had to take my 350 Cary Grant film clips off of it for this exact reason. Great music and then a quick 10 second clip of Cary talking LOL!


19 posted on 08/26/2004 8:38:00 PM PDT by lawgirl (is RNC bound! W here I come!)
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To: SamAdams76

You can also buy songs on real.com. They cracked the AAC format developed by Apple. Anyways, you can get so much on iTunes anyway...


20 posted on 08/26/2004 8:38:03 PM PDT by FightinFederalist
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