The case against the Shuffle

I was at Nokia in Helsinki on Tuesday running a workshop on the Long Tail. I was impressed by how much brainpower they had in house, and how much they were inviting in. Just in the past week I'd been preceded by Henry Jenkins, Cory Doctorow, Esther Dyson, CK Prahalad and probably a few others that I'm forgetting about.

One of the interesting questions that came up during the workshop was about Apple's new iPod Shuffle. In provacateur mode, I described it as a "value subtract" product, arguing that the lack of a display would limit its success.  I got a fierce reaction from one of the Nokia's researchers, who thinks it will be a huge hit because of its passive entertainment value: with near-zero effort on your part, the Shuffle offers a fresh selection of music from your collection, both randomly copied from your hard drive and played in random order. As Apple's marketing puts it: "iPod Shuffle adds musical spontaneity to your life. Lose control. Love it."

This was a good opportunity to put Long Tail theory to the test--what would the rules I've set out predict about the Shuffle's commercial future? The answer: they argue against it. Here's why.

You can think of the thousands of songs on your hard drive as a Long Tail of sorts. Even though you've bought, ripped, or downloaded them all, they're not all your personal "hits". Some of those tracks are songs you don't care for on albums you otherwise like; others are albums you wish you hadn't bought or ripped in the first place. And yet others are songs that you've simply grown tired of.  In other words, the signal-to-noise ratio in your own collection can be nearly as variable as that in any commercial music service.

The difference is that the commercial services provide recommendations, editors' picks, bestseller lists and collaborative filtering to suppress most of the junk. This is important: a key element in extracting value from any Long Tail is the ability to find the diamonds in the rough, which gets harder the further into the rough you go.  In other words, a Long Tail without good filters is just noise.

So that, in a nutshell, is the case against the Shuffle.  For anyone with a big music collection (thousands of tracks) a random walk through their entire library is statistically likely to be an unwelcome reaquaintance with mistaken purchases, whim rips, filler album tracks and embarrassing ghosts of music taste past.  And if you're anything like me, that gets annoying real fast.

Now, I know that the shuffle feature can be turned off and you can load the device with any playlist you want.  But then it's just another mini music player, save the quite useful feature of telling you which track is playing and allowing you to choose another without having to memorize their order. That's what I meant by "value subtract." No doubt they'll still sell millions, such is Apple's brand and momentum. But I don't think the Shuffle will have anything like the impact of the original iPod itself.

Comments

[ATL]

I agree that the IPOD Shuffle blows on high. There are many other compliant Mps players (Rio's Nitrus or Carbon) on the market that offer much more than this 512MB to 1GB range that the Shuffle offers. Apple is a weird company, one day they put out something which is remarkable (The Ipod)and the next they throw down something which is just absolute crap! I love my IPOD, but if I would have been a bit more knowledgable about some other players on the market I probably would have taken a pass.

ATL

[fj]

A couple of people have said it, sort of, but it can't hurt to say again. The smart playlist feature on iTunes makes all the difference. If you load up your iPod Shuffle based on your *whole* library every time, the results will be something like what Chris suggests. But smart playlists let you easily set up sub-playlists: by genre, with a series of artist names, by your ratings, by notes in the comment fields, by inclusion in your regular playlists, by date, etc. There are a lot of options there, so if you want to get your music from *way* down the tail, it's not so hard to do so. (And you can set up a list with exclusions, too; so, say, if you don't want to hear Christmas songs in June, they're easy to exclude.) Anyway . . . if you're an average music listener, just digging what you dig--not worrying about catalog-like knowledge, understanding, and organizating of your music--you could easily set up a couple of mood-based playlists: angry, happy, mellow, etc. Playlists = noise filters, I guess is what I'm saying. The combination "match to" and "limit to" options is pretty powerful, but still pretty simple, too.

[DensityDuck]

>The smart playlist feature on iTunes makes all
>the difference.

But that's not a feature of the Shuffle, that's a feature of iTunes.

Or maybe the real feature of the Shuffle is that it's a cheap mp3 player that works with iTunes. Its whole purpose is to sell iTunes to people. If the Shuffle is designed to work much better with iTunes than with anything else (and if iTunes works better with an iPod, etcetera) then the low price point is augmented by a de facto subscription to iTunes (because your Shuffle works so well with it, right?)

[Gabriella]

alright, i've used this shuffle. you can so chose music. you can decide to shuffle them, or simply play them in order continuously. the option to let the computer choose a playlist for you is for ease of use, not for marketing bla. if you are going to complain about something, go to an apple store and ask some questions first. you don't have the right idea, this isn't as random as you think, and if you can let loose, you can enjoy that too.

[Gabriella]

oh, and something else. i know for a fact that this is useful. it isn't like an ipod where you can voice record, see and organize your life on a calendar, contact list, etc, and most consumers don't even know ipods do those things (with the exception of the mini because it cannot voice record.) but for all of you who say the shuffle is a piece of crap, let me tell you, i use my ipod for school, but i would love to have a shuffle as a jump drive and just to play a select group of my songs. in a car, trying to scroll through music can be dangerous. not to mention this is just what people who work out were looking for, and the mini still had a harddrive. do not compare the shuffle to other mp3 players with more memory. apple has bigger ipods, so the argument is silly. just get the facts and seriously play with it. i thought it was lame before i heard the quality of it on speakers at the apple store and got to understand its limitations

[Rovo]

I really don't follow some of the logic here. The Shuffle doesn't do anything that the shuffle or playlist features on a regular iPod can't do.

If you want to buy another Apple product, just go and do it and stop justifying the 'need' when there just isn't one if you've already got an iPod.

[Monica]

Here's my experience for what it's worth. I got a 15GB iPod last year and barely used it. My favourite way of listening to music remains my hi-fi system at home, with headphones or not, depending on time of day and degree of concern for neighbours. I haven't yet ripped all my cds to mp3's, and have a lot of vynil which I'll probably never transfer to mp3 because it's such a pain (and I don't see the point of losing the vynil sound by transferring to mp3 anyway). But, I also enjoy carrying a walkman when I'm on the subway, train, walking, or cycling in town or in the park. A cd walkman is a pain to carry, it's too big to hold anywhere if you're not using a bag or large pockets, and even with a bag I'll only carry with you two or three cd's. Cassette walkmans are smaller and handier, but again I'm not likely to carry more than a couple of tapes. The 15GB iPod was too big for me in terms of capacity because I'm not going to want to carry around that much music, only the amount I'm going to want to listen to while I'm out and about for the day. The rest, I'll always have at home. The other thing I didn't like about the iPod is that it required a separate belt clip accessory or similar, if you wanted to wear it while cycling for instance; it could be inconvenient if you had no pockets to store it in. So (all considerations on audio quality aside, because nothing could ever match proper cd on hifi quality anyway), what I wanted was a cross between the cassette walkman and the iPod. I sold the 15GB a while ago, while I could still make some money from it, and went back to the cassette walkman. Then last month I got a 512 Shuffle because it was exactly the missing link I was looking for. I reckoned 100-ish tracks is the perfect amount I'm going to want to be able to carry around for short trips. I don't need a display because I'll just fill it with the playlists I choose. I barely used the display and browse function on the 15GB iPod except at the start, to pick a playlist or album or artist; I want my hands free when I'm around, especially if I'm on the bike.
I may use the iPod Shuffle more like a bigger cassette player than for the shuffle function itself, but to me, for the way I want to use it, the appeal of the Shuffle is evident. The fact it's so small and light is also a bonus. The price, too, obviously. It's also nice to carry around something that doesn't cost a fortune, you feel less worried about losing or dropping it. The iPod got scratched so easily.
The rest of the appeal has a lot to do with the brand, indeed, but I think the design itself is a big part of it too. It could be any other brand, it just so happens Apple has great designers. The Shuffles are selling very fast and it's taking weeks to get new orders delivered, so, I don't quite see the marketing failure, but maybe it's early to tell. Frankly I don't care much either way, as long as I can be delivered from the pain of cassettes!

[Monica]

By the way, I agree there's probably better choices of mp3 players if you're looking for bigger capacity (than the Shuffle), displays, other features... but personally I just didn't want any of that. I wanted something small, light, simple and cheap for short trips, with just enough music to last a couple of 1-hour train journeys plus the half-hour or so it takes to walk from the station to wherever I need to go. A mini-player, exactly.

I usually listen to a few artists or albums at a time, and I do pick my favourites to carry around, so I have no problem with the whole selection process. I prefer listening to whole albums rather than doing mixed playlists, but there's no filler anyway because it's only the stuff I like and choose. I don't need a display to tell me which track or artist it is, I'll know already from the first notes. I'd never listen to a cd for the first time on an mp3 player. I just want to carry around my favourites at that particular time. Not a hundred albums collection.

In the end, people are going to have different requirements and preferences in the way they listen to music on a portable player. Something will have more or less appeal depending on what you want, you can't expect one size to fit all.

[pG]

I love my shuffle!

It does exactly what it says on the tin - it interacts beautifully with my powerbook, creates random playlists from my favourite tunes, is easy to fill up and keeps me amused for hours as I work out. I only want an mp3 player for the gym, this one is extremely light, doesn't get in the way or have an involved interface that needs my attention when i'm concentrating on something else. It's perfect for my requirements.

That doesn't mean I don't value and love a proper 60gig i-pod, but it's too chunky and precious to take for a run.

[Opinionated Bastard]

I think you're wrong for a very simple reason.

Yes, the shuffle doesn't have a screen. What Apple decided is that for a RAM-based player, more memory capacity is more important then having a screen. If you don't agree, then you'll have to pay more for the same size device. In fact, I predict they'll have some imitators as time goes by, because its a pretty simple idea: ditch the useless screen, add memory instead.

For me, whild I've looked at RAm based players before 32/64/128/256 was just too small. It wasn't quite enough capacity. In fact, it wasn't until the 40GB iPod came out that IT was enough capacity, and I've now crossed its limits too.

Yet I'm now thinking about buying a shuffle, because the reality is that most of the time when I'm using my iPod, its just on general shuffle anyways. It some cases (the car), its nice ot have my entire music selection, so I can choose a playlist that suits my mood.

But for my morning walk, a shuffle would be lighter and easier to deal with. For that, I want two buttons. "shuffle on/off" and "skip". The fact that the iPod has a extra couple of buttons (on/off, skip back is nice, but ultimately, not that interesting.

[Charlies Other Brother]

Like I need a "commercial music service" to make recommendations about what I should listen to ?!? The ~lamest~ track in my music collection is better than any of the schlock some top-40 bozo would have me listen to. I for one love my shuffle, which is an impotant part of my Music Triad: iTunes for the house, 4G/40GB for the car(s), and an autoloaded shuffle for everywhere else.

If your music collection is ~that~ bad, why not free up some space & delete some tracks? Or have you considered that another track is only as far away as a press of the clickwheel??

[Monica]

"The ~lamest~ track in my music collection is better than any of the schlock some top-40 bozo would have me listen to"

Exactly! I actually am using the shuffle option more and more and it's a beauty. Sometimes the random selection gets it so spot on, picking just the right sequence, it's like having your own radio station playing only your favourite stuff.

I can understand preferring something bigger and with a display and all, that's a different need so you want a different kind of player. But the selection of tracks, whether you play them randomy or not, whether you prepare a playlist manually or use a smart playlist with autofill, is only going to be as bad as your collection. It's not that hard to come up with 120 or 240 songs you really like. It's impossible to get filler and lousy tracks if you actually choose what to put in your iTunes library. What's the point otherwise?

[Joanna]

Chris,

Here's why I want an iPod shuffle, even though I already have a (filled-to-the-brim) 20-gig iPod: I like to run outside. Carrying around my iPod just doesn't work: the hard drive crashes from all the jostling, and it's heavy. Still, I have a gym playlist with something like 300 songs, which I use while running on the treadmill. The playlist is built for for shuffling, and -- sad to say -- it's pretty much the only thing I listen to regularly while exercising. (Total creature of habit.)

So the iPod shuffle is perfect for me: it won't crash while I run, and if I can dump my gym songs onto it, I'll have lots of tunes to accompany my outdoor jogs. I agree with you about filling it with random stuff from your iTunes library -- bound to be full of junk, and of course you're right that the absence of a screen is a bummer. It's just that for $100, I don't really care.

[Marcus Dyson]

My wife and I share an installation of iTunes - It's easier that way for various reasons. I have wide tastes (Prokofiev and Satie to Slipknot and Sinatra - Pizzicato 5 to Michelle Gun Elephant), Amanda's tastes are narrower and more mainstream.

Amanda got a Shuffle, and plumbed it straight into our iTunes - she didn't like the result. Within a couple of minutes she had set up a smart playlist that selects her taste of music random/dynamically from our collection, and randomly updates her Shuffle from that. She LOVED that.

The default behaviour of iPod Shuffle is not ideal. But it only takes a couple of minutes to make it work the way you want. This is part of the fundamental sophistication of Apple/iPod.

On the flip side of that two minutes of "hassle" Amanda has the cutest, most-stylish, best-value solid state digital music player available, and I'll be buying one shortly.

The screen is just an inconvenience. I can't read it while I'm skateboarding, snowboarding, mountain biking or at the gym - the only times I use a portable music player.

A benefit of random track selection is that it gives people an opportunity to discover gems that they had overlooked before - slow burn tracks that passed you by on first listening. It may not be for everyone - but I advise people with larger collections (mine runs to 33,552 tracks) to try it, it will unlock riches you never knew (or have forgotten) that you had.

[David Sabel]

Chris -

Coming a bit late to this party, sorry for the pile-on. But I just wanted to offer an "I'm with you" - but for different reasons.

I started this long, strange digital music trip out with a Rio 300 back in 1998 - It had 64 MB built in, and I added another 64 MB card - a whopping 128MB - or around 2 hrs of music at 128kbps. It was perfect for a jog, or a commuter plane flight. I stuck with this baby up until Gen 3 of the iPod then made the switch. The 10gig iPod was heavier and bulkier, but held A LOT more music. In a way, the Rio was like the Shuffle (though it has a screen). What made me migrate was that I grew tired of having to constantly manage the music on there in order to keep it fresh.

Having my own "long tail" with me on an iPod with a large number of playlists, coupled with a DLO FM TransPod plugged in to the AC jack in the car and I have all the personal radio I need.

Oh, and perhaps because I started off with a player with so little disk space, I don't have a single "clanger" in my digital collection. I'm not one to rip a whole CD and leave songs I don't like in my collection. As a result I don't rate my music because if I did, they'd all be 4s and 5s anyway - so rating based random mix generators don't apply in my case. And even if I like all the songs, that does not mean I want bone jarring segueues (think James Taylor into The Red Hot Chili Peppers) as you pointed out.

For me, the larger capacity iPods, with some well crafted mixes, make the Shuffle as obsolete as my old Rio 300 which sits somewhere quietly in a closet awaiting the return of the Antiques Roadshow.

[hatless in hattiesburg]

DensityDuck: "hatless: who are you responding to?"

i was just responding to the points of the main article. sorry if you thought it was about your comment.

[CM]

I was planning to by a 1G USB drive, which costs about $80. For $150 I got an iPod shuffle instead, which is also an ultralight digital music player. Pretty good deal. I know you can store files on a regular iPod, but it's not that easy. With my Shuffle, I just plug it in and any computer instantly recognizes it as an external drive.