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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Sunday, August 28, 2005

How Much Does iTunes Like My Five-Star Songs?

OmniNerd:

iTunes’ available song ratings of 1 to 5 stars allow users to quickly find their favorites and help the Party Shuffle feature play more of what they like most. This article explores the algorithm iTunes uses to pick what comes next in the playlist.

Many claim to still see patterns as iTunes rambles through their music collection, but the majority of these patterns are simply multiple songs from the same artist. Think of it this way: If you have 2000 songs and 40 of them are from the same artist, there is always a 2% chance of hearing them next with random play. So right after one of their songs finishes, odds almost guarantee they will be played again within the next 50 songs and show a 50% chance they will play again within the next 25 songs. It's simply the mind's tendency to find a pattern that makes you think iTunes has a preference.

This is interesting stuff, but both my wife and I have been able to guess which band would pop up next on a whole iPod's worth of music being shuffled with startling regularity. The thing absolutely gets stuck in "artist rut," where we've both seen the same bands come up again and again.

We're also reasonably sure that, once a song by a particular artist does play, the chances of that same artist coming up again are suddenly much higher. And the total number of songs by a single artist doesn't matter. Yes, I may have many songs by certain groups, but these aren't always the artists that come up most often. If my iPod has over 3450 songs--and it does--but only 3 of them are by "A Flock of Seagulls," I shouldn't regularly hear two of those songs within 10 tracks of each other on a random play. But I do. Is my mind really playing tricks on me, or this just broken?

Related: Does Your iPod Play Favorites?

[ Posted at 11:18 AM | Permalink ]