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iPod Shuffle Not Able to Play Podcasts

September 22, 2008 by debbie T | Mac Corner • iTunes

I was having difficulty with my iPod Shuffle (bought refurbished a couple of months ago). I could not play podcasts. It would play music, but when I tried to play a podcast, the little yellow light would flash, and nothing.

I reset several times (which by the way, doesn’t seem to work on my Shuffle anyway) and I tried deleting and adding several different files in iTunes.

I was all set to call Applecare and request a replacement, when I realized the “random shuffle” switch was on. I clicked it back on “normal” and voila, it now worked. sigh. I wonder why podcasts cannot be randomly played, and why it makes the shuffle choke.

As a whole, the iPod Shuffle is a bit buggy, and I probably wouldn’t ever recommend it to anyone. I only purchased mine because I needed a cheap replacement for my 20gb iPod until I decided on an iPhone or iTouch. But they are cute and small, and it does the job. It is a little irritating that there is no screen and I still don’t know why it won’t reset properly either. (Something for google another day)

At least I got it working again~

There are 4 comments

  1. Podcasts can’t be played on shuffle because podcasters actively disable that as a courtesy to users. Imagine you’re jogging along to a great set of tunes and suddenly a podcast on law comes in - might ruin the mood!

    here’s a snapshot of the Get Info window where I select the “skip when shuffling” option as part of my workflow each week: http://skitch.com/nosillacast/s4jp/nc-2008-09-21

    Comment by Allison Sheridan on September 24th, 2008

  2. Well thank you Allison! That makes total sense!!!

    Comment by debbie T on September 24th, 2008

  3. Bless you. I was going crazy trying to get my podcasts to play. Your solution was all I needed. Thanks!

    Comment by Tim on October 14th, 2008

  4. Thankyou SO much; I’ve been having the same problem and not being able to figure out what is going on. I was going insane…but now am cured.

    Ta

    Comment by Smuttley on December 14th, 2008

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