I listen to my iTunes library on both my iPhone and on my PC. When I went for a ride yesterday I put one of my music playlists on shuffle on my phone for the first time. This playlist has about 20 albums (around 150 songs). During the ride it played about 20 songs (most of the songs are over 10 minutes long). Today I decided to listen to the same playlist on shuffle for the first time on my PC. It played the same exact songs in the same exact order.
To test it out I did created another playlist and synced it with my phone. I put both on shuffle at the same time and both the iPhone and PC played the same exact songs in the same exact order. The interesting thing is the next time I put them on shuffle, the orders no longer matched.
Doing some research I found the shuffle option reshuffles the library every time you play it, similar to a dealer reshuffling a deck of cards after each game. So the song order is already determined. If you listen to the whole library on shuffle and don't have it set on repeat, it will play each song in the order determined by the algorithm until every song is played, and then replay them in the same order. Every time you close and open your playlist, it will reshuffle the list in a new order according the the algorithm used, so the order will be different. If two devices have the same playlist, they will both shuffle the songs in exactly the same order the first time.
To test it out I did created another playlist and synced it with my phone. I put both on shuffle at the same time and both the iPhone and PC played the same exact songs in the same exact order. The interesting thing is the next time I put them on shuffle, the orders no longer matched.
Doing some research I found the shuffle option reshuffles the library every time you play it, similar to a dealer reshuffling a deck of cards after each game. So the song order is already determined. If you listen to the whole library on shuffle and don't have it set on repeat, it will play each song in the order determined by the algorithm until every song is played, and then replay them in the same order. Every time you close and open your playlist, it will reshuffle the list in a new order according the the algorithm used, so the order will be different. If two devices have the same playlist, they will both shuffle the songs in exactly the same order the first time.
