OPINION WEDNESDAYS – iPod Posession

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

(In my defense, I only recently realized it’s Thursday.)

I have an iPod. Lots of people do. There are MP3 players out there made by every company in all sorts of different shapes and sizes, but the iPod seems to remain the most popular. I’m guessing a portion of you own one.

This is a topic directed toward those people who own an iPod specifically. It comes about because I’ve noticed something odd about my iPod. That is: it loves me. This small machine is posessed with the souls of some unwitting Apple personnel, one of whom seems to have become a sort of musical guardian angel.

It’s freaking me out.

Here’s the deal: On my ‘General’ playlist that I play most of the day, I have approximately 750 songs. When I listen to my iPod, I tend to just pick the first song I want to hear, and let the iPod go wild on ‘random’ from that point until I hear something that makes me crave a specific song. (For example, I’ll start out by telling it to play ‘You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid’ by The Offspring, I’ll listen to it, it’ll play a few more random tunes then come across, say, ‘Under The Bridge’ by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which makes me think that I’d love to hear the Chili Peppers, but I’d prefer ‘Throw Away Your Television’, so I’ll go back into the menus and play that song.) The end result is that it is continuously randomizing the entire playlist each time I select a specific song.

The funny part is that consistently my iPod will try to get me to listen to specific songs. Once I’ve listened to the song I chose, the iPod seems to gravitate toward including a specific song within the first 20 random songs it plays thereafter. Once I select a new song and it all gets randomized, that same song shows up again in the first 20. The song is different each day, and sometimes varies within that same day, but it consistently picks one song that seems to play in the first 20 random songs.

I’m not a mathematician, but as best as I can figure any given song should come up in the first 20 songs approximately 2-3% of the time with a 750 song playlist.

But, some statistics for you:

Today: “Rollin’” by Limp Bizkit appeared in the first 20 songs 66% of the time. (9 samples)
Yesterday: “That’s What You Get” by Paramore appeared in the first 20 songs 71% of the time. (19 samples)
Two Days Ago: “Tell Me Baby” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers appeared in the first 20 songs 88% of the time. (25 samples)

I have been tracking this for the better part of a week now, and it keeps itself above 50% each time when, unless the way I’m seeing the statistics is inaccurate, they should be there about 3% of the time.

The weirdest part is that it always seems to be a song which is meaningful to me on that given day.

So. Any of you have an iPod that’s similarly posessed? Does the ghost hate you and try to ruin your day? Does it love you and try to make you see things you wouldn’t have thought to see? Am I just nuts, here?

Tagged with: iPod • MUSIC • posession

Filed under: COOL