[spuz]

Shuffling is different from selecting at random. I had an MP3 player that would use random selection instead of shuffling all tracks and it would annoy the hell out of me to hear the same songs twice in a row. I don't know if this is what iTunes used to do but if so then those people were right to complain.

[masklinn]

> I don't know if this is what iTunes used to do

It is. iTunes would play a song, and randomly select the next one (it would do random play, rather than shuffle).

Nowadays it generates a shuffled playlist and goes along, and people whine because it doesn't reshuffle automatically (you have to disable and enable shuffle to reshuffle).

An other option is to use random sampling, and to re-sample after you're done with the current set (possibly excluding any song of the previous sample)

[ygra]

iTunes used a shuffle that always resulted in the same order as long as there was the same number of songs on the device. (Or perhaps just shuffling with a tiny PRNG that used the number of songs as seed.)