My iPod’s favorite tunes

When you set it to play songs randomly, does your iPod play certain songs or performers over and over, out of proportion to their presence in your music library?

The question of whether iPods choose songs in a truly random fashion, or not, has been much discussed of late. Though Apple engineers have claimed there is nothing but pure randomness at work, many iPod owners, like myself, are quite skeptical.

Even within a playlist, it seems to select certain songs over others. When I set the thing to shuffle my “five-star songs,” it comes back time and time again to “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” by the Beatles, “Bizarre Love Triangle,” by New Order, and Louis Armstrong’s “Mack the Knife.” On the other hand, it never, ever plays Lotte Lenya’s “Moritat von Mackie Messer,” from the same list. What’s with that? It loves “Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground. (I never did hear another song by that band, so help me. But no girl with a Fender bass in her closet could resist that bass line.) All of these choices are ones I approve of–except I like the German “Mack the Knife” better. But it does make me wonder what this thing is up to.

I was thinking about posting this as I walked from the bus this morning, and I was going to say, “Damn, why won’t the thing play Linton Kwesi Johnson?!?” And then, like magic, LKJ came on, singing “Lorrain.”

I am not a techno-snob, or a materialistic person (just a Mac-junkie), so I did not mean to direct a posting at iPod owners. But if you do have one, or if you use iTunes to listen from your computer, I’m curious to hear what songs it wants you to listen to, when it’s doing the driving.