Hung out with a bunch of folks this weekend, iPods orbiting through speaker cradles and cars.
It’s clear. A curated playlist is far superior to a straight shuffle. Playlists express the DJ’s ideas on how the works interact. Shuffle offers surprise, but nearly always jars the listener with out of place tracks.
Sure shuffle has its place. It’s fun to see what it might find next, play guess that song on long trips, but too often it flails across genre, media type (podcasts?), etc.
Good point. One thing to consider is who compiled the playlist. For example, I would grow tired of a playlist consisting entirely of The Ramones, The Clash, Pearl Jam, and Sleater-Kinney no matter how well curated it was…