Is there a way to have the iPod play through my entire list of songs in random? It seems that I can only get the random key to work when I'm under a certain artist/genre/playlist/etc., but not just to randomly play all the songs on the entire iPod.

 

Same here. I ended up just making a playlist that contains every song on the ipod. I also have separate playlists for sections of the alphabet since scrolling through thousands of songs is just SO much fun...

 

Danae has got the answer. It is an unfortunate limitation of the iPod.

 

There is a way to get the songs to play randomly. However, I have the navigation system and do not know how to enable this on a non-nav mini. Basically when you are in your ipod screen go to songs and select any song to begin playing. Once the song begins to play, press down the joystick to bring up a few options. You will notice "Random" is one of those listed. Rotate the joystick to "Random" and press down on the joystick to activate. Your songs will now play in random order.

This will not stay on forever. There are times this feature is still active after I have shut off my car, and sometimes I will have to go back through the process to re-enable it.

 

Thanks, NicoBlake. Unfortunately the non-nav Minis don't have a "songs" section in the menu; this is MINI's problem, not the iPod's. They just need to stick a "songs" menu on the main page (not sure who forgot to put it in there) and this issue would be solved.

 

Mine plays randomly through all the songs and I don't have a special play list. It is the only thing that I select - I don't select albums, playlists, etc. just the random button - non navigation.

i do have the issue with the random setting not lasting when the car is turned off for a while. sometimes it works great (as it did for 2 days this week), stays overnight etc. then it doesn't stay if the car is shut off for more than 10 minutes.

 

From the HU I just select Artist, All, select the first song then turn on random.....works for me.

 

For some reason mine just recycles on whatever album or artist it's on.

 

As some said, if your head unit likes to 'reset' and forget what was playing, it picks up at "song #1" and then if you press random, you are now shuffling your entire ipod.

and also, I think 'artist/all' will get you there too.