My IPod no longer shuffles songs within playlists that are clearly set to shuffle. It is about 3/4 full so I thought of maybe compressing the files to get more space. Do you think that is the problem and if that might help?

Question

My IPod no longer shuffles songs within playlists that are clearly set to shuffle.  It is about 3/4 full so I thought of maybe compressing the files to get more space.  Do you think that is the problem and if that might help?

Answer 1

Storage space on the iPod would not affect shuffled playlists or playlist shuffling, though substantially full iPods may wind up skipping songs on larger playlists after a while, and require a restart.  As for compressing the files themselves, you can automatically re-encode files to a lower bitrate by checking the box on the summary page when your iPod is connected to your PC/Mac.
As for the shuffle problem, after restarting your iPod (hold the center button and Menu for a few seconds, until the Apple logo appears), make sure you're telling the iPod to shuffle the songs in a playlist by repeatedly clicking the center button until the Suffle Menu comes up, then scroll to the right to turn it on.  From that song forward, the playlists' contents should be shuffled every time the playlist ends, or is accessed from a new song.
Shuffle does sometimes turn itself off, I've found, so double-check the setting is still on.  Also, iPods shuffle by randomly assigning a playlist order for your songs, which is different from traditional shuffle (on, say, iTunes or Windows Media Player, where the new song is determined at random upon the current track ending.  The iPod only chooses a random order of songs when you shuffle, to conserve battery life and queue up songs coming up on the playlist in the event of a shock).