For millions of people that own an iPod, “shuffle” means: to randomly play music in their nifty device.
As a proud owner of an iPod, a programmer, and a music addict. I question the randomness of the shuffle feature in the iTunes library and the iPod. Therefore, I decided to put it to a test:

Create a playlist with a bunch of songs from the same artist and hit shuffle. You will find that the iPod will play the songs in a random way and a song will not be chosen twice. The same test results will be obtained when you play your entire library without interrupting it. All the songs will be played once! So basically the shuffle does work. But, using iTunes or the iPod everyday still makes me wonder how it works, because some artists are appearing more often than others when you have a library of music with more than 1000+ artists.

If you do your own research you will find mixed feelings regarding this subject, and tests have been done by multiple people to test the theory that the randomness of our mp3 players is being controlled by the big guys.

Is the shuffle being controlled by major labels and Apple? Are labels paying Apple to have their songs play more often in peoples’ iPod’s?

I leave it out to all you guys…