What we mean by ‘random’

The discussion about iPods not giving ‘true’ random play is quite interesting; it highlights the fact that when we say we want an MP3 player to play ‘randomly’ in fact we mean anything but, and I’m a little surprised that the designers at Apple didn’t suss this from the get-go.
What we really want is… not to hear the same song twice in the same listening session, not to hear more than one track off the same album in one session if possible, and probably not to hear more than two songs by the same artist. In fact true randomness means that we might hear the same song 23 times or all the tracks from an album in correct order.
There are two ways round this; my favourite is to listen to your songs in alphabetical order by song title. This creates an amazing illusion of ‘randomness’.
The other is to set it on shuffle play and just pause/lock the unit between sessions; you can’t cconnect it to the computer and have to use the charger to avoid resetting the playlist. This method doesn’t ‘feel’ as random as the alphabetical method but at least you won’t hear ‘Cheap Astronaut’ by Baby Bird several times in one sitting. It’s my iPod’s favourite song. Don’t ask me why.