A couple of things I wanted to add to this thread:

1) I didn't realize you were going to call the 8 key "hate next". I thought it was called "swap next". Besides, I sometimes choose to use the 8 key even though I love the upcoming song. Perhaps it's a NIN tune and my wife is in the car, for example.

2) I can't imagine why anyone would want the next song to be simply random. Having a static, genuinely shuffled playlist is so much better. This static playlist allows so many great software features: Duplicate removal, the ability to go back to a song you heard three songs ago, shuffle weighting, bookmarking, the list goes on and on. A true "deck of cards" shuffle is just The Right Thing.

(Now, if only we could get it to shuffle a little harder so I don't get clusters of the same artist...)

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Tony Fabris