Shuffle Play Is An Abomination

[JKL2000]

I don't like the idea of shuffle play, and I've never knowingly invoked it. It's only ever come into play by accident. Just now I was listening to Gong - Shamal (which I'm not very familiar with) and somehow I guess shuffle got selected and after track one ended the Amazon Music app (which I also don't use much) started playing track 1 of Gong - Camembert Electrique. I was like "is Daevid Allen on this album or not!" And then Gilli starts singing and I know something's wrong.

I'm all full albums all the time. Don't know what's up with you people who CHOOSE shuffle play.

[rcarlberg]

Two words: Jazz and Classical.

[PeterG]

Two words: Jazz and Classical.

That's three words

[rcarlberg]

That's three words

How about: 'jazz' & 'classical'?

[bob_32_116]

How about: 'jazz' & 'classical'?

or even: "jazz" & "classical"
or: "jazz" & "classical".

Double quotes rather than single.
We need to nail this.

[rcarlberg]

Double quotes rather than single.

Double quotes indicate a quotation or an irony quote. I used single quotes to indicate the two words I meant -- not including the 'and.'

Unfortunately some readers didn't like the construCKtion.

[Scott Bails]

Shuffle play is one of humankind's greatest achievements. I use it all the time on various playlists.

[PeterG]

Shuffle play is one of humankind's greatest achievements. I use it all the time on various playlists.

I'm with you there. I also use it on whole albums, it adds a new & often startling edge.

[Facelift]

Shuffle play is one of humankind's greatest achievements. I use it all the time on various playlists.

Agreed. The only genre I don't like it for is classical, so I usually have all my classical de-tagged for shuffle eligibility.

Listening to music on shuffle gives one a cross-genre, cross-era perspective like no other. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of albums I considered myself more or less "done" listening to, because of shuffle.

I would agree that I would not want shuffle to be the way I familiarize myself with albums that are new to me, but once I've known the album for a while I think shuffle is great.

[Scott Bails]

Linking 2 or a bunch of songs together is very simple. In iTunes before you rip the CD, select the tracks you want to connect, go into options - select "JOIN". That's it.

Hmm...I don't use iTunes. Wonder if Windows Media Player does this...

Agreed. The only genre I don't like it for is classical, so I usually have all my classical de-tagged for shuffle eligibility.

"Shuffle eligibility?" Never heard of that one. Is that an iTunes thing, too?

[Facelift]

"Shuffle eligibility?" Never heard of that one. Is that an iTunes thing, too?

My phrase, but Itunes does allow you to de-tag songs so that they won't play when in shuffle mode. This is probably less of an issue if you're using playlists, but most of my shuffle listening is from the whole music library minus classical, not within playlists. I usually remove big prog epics from shuffle mode as well.

[Rune Blackwings]

Shuffle play is one of humankind's greatest achievements. I use it all the time on various playlists.

Love shuffle play

Except when you start dozing off and Skinny Puppy comes on suddenly

[Halmyre]

Love shuffle play

Except when you start dozing off and Skinny Puppy comes on suddenly

I hate it when that happens.

Nearly swerved off the road...

[WytchCrypt]

I like both options. Sometimes I want to hear an album in correct order, but being able to put shuffle on an mp3 player with over 2000 songs is great fun

[Dusty Chalk]

I like both options. Sometimes I want to hear an album in correct order, but being able to put shuffle on an mp3 player with over 2000 songs is great fun

Yup.

[Poisoned Youth]

Wow.

[progeezer]

Wow.

That's enough verbiage for me as well.

[mozo-pg]

I like both too. I use the shuffle every evening. It's a great way to hear a big collection. I still play for full CDs.

[Dave (in MA)]

About a half hour ago I was using Shuffle mode when Zappa's "That's Not Really A Shuffle" came on.

[markwoll]

Shuffle a big ole disk full of music keeps me sane at work.
Shuffling an album is an abomination. The artist recorded it in a particular order on purpose.
Individual songs out of context are fair game.
I also use a pseudo shuffle/sorta Pandora plugin with my Squeezboxes called Smartmix.
You give it a seed song from your collection and it looks at a 'big database in the sky' to pull like music from your collection.
You can fine tune how far the picks will vary by a number of characteristics.
And you can mix in Spotify or some other online streamers that allow picking. I don't do that but it is available.

[3LockBox]

Yup.

is this who I think it is?

[Dusty Chalk]

Two words: 'jazz' and 'classical' -- no, it's two, put in grammatically correct context (yes, I can out-pedant most anyone).

is this who I think it is?

't'is. (waves) Hi!

[SteveSly]

I have a little IPOD boom box in my office at work and I have it on shuffle play from the minute I get to work until I leave at the end of the night. I am in and out of my office, so I may be listening a lot over the course of the night or just here and there. Personally I love the shuffle option. I have over 9,000 songs on my I-Pod and they range all over the place musically. It is sometimes cool to hear a song completely out of context from an album, and every so often something pops up that I have forgotten about that completely surprises me. It is kind of like having your own personal radio station.

All that being said, at home and in my car I generally still listen to full albums. I don’t have an I-Pod dock / port in my car so it is albums or radio only. At home I typically play albums on my home stereo, although I will occasionally put the Ipod on the dock and random play it. When I travel anymore I only take the ipod for convenience sake and usually have it on random play if in a rental car or listening with headphones.

[NogbadTheBad]

I do both and I'm happy to have the option. Sometimes I want to listen to the full album, it I want a surprise or just background while I'm working or driving its fun to see what comes up.

[rcarlberg]

Concept albums and albums where the tracks fold into each other should never be put on shuffle of course. But outside of heavy ProgRock that sort of thing is pretty rare.