Random playlist rules for genres

[asder99]

Hi!
I've got a very large amount of mp3 in my mediamonkey library, and I've a lot of different genres too.

So, when I play it random, sometimes I pass from Mozart to the Slayer, to BB King, to Chemical Brothers... Is it possible to have a little rules for the song's sequence?

Is there any plugin or something I can do for improve my listening?

Thank you!

[BKKKPewsey]

Just set up auto playlists with the genre's you want to hear.
If you are using auto dj - you can then instruct it to just use songs from that playlist.

[asder99]

I can't do that, because I've got more than 200 genres for 900 albums... I would do that if there was macro-category such as rock, rap, blues... but only for blues I've got "Blues", "Blues rock", "British blues rock", "Chicago blues", "General electric blues", "General delta blues", "contemporary blues" and "Texas blues".
So if I make an auto playlist for genre, it'll be a very short playlist.

Can I instruct autodj to choice a various similar genres?

[BKKKPewsey]

You can still do that.
i.e. If you set up a auto-playlist with contain word blues in the genre field in the basic tab
That will find all songs with the word blues in the genre field e.g all of your examples

[asder99]

Yes, that should works for the blues, but not for pop ("vocal", "uk garage", "Traditional folk"...) for reggae ("toasting", "mento", "roots revival"...), etc. etc..

It could work with BPM too... but IMHO search for a genre's name is not a real solution...

[dannyno]

You have a lot of genres.

You could add "macro" genres to your genre classification, so that all your blues albums appear under "blues" as well as their "micro" genre, and all your "pop" albums are defined like that in addition to their more specific designation. Of course, that means editing tags for your 900 albums.

You can also build playlists that find albums with selected genres - not searching for a matching word, but for specific genres. So you could have one for everything you call "blues", and everything you call "pop", and so on. You then don't have to add a new "macro" genre to your tags, but just type in the criteria once. And then you could then have playlists merging blues and pop but excluding classical, or whatever boolean you want.

You can do what you like, really.

But that's building playlists. Another way of reading your question is in terms of defining a rule that tells the player that when playing randomly, classical never follows death metal. Which I don't think is possible?

Dan

[asder99]

You have a lot of genres.

You could add "macro" genres to your genre classification, so that all your blues albums appear under "blues" as well as their "micro" genre, and all your "pop" albums are defined like that in addition to their more specific designation. Of course, that means editing tags for your 900 albums.

You can also build playlists that find albums with selected genres - not searching for a matching word, but for specific genres. So you could have one for everything you call "blues", and everything you call "pop", and so on. You then don't have to add a new "macro" genre to your tags, but just type in the criteria once. And then you could then have playlists merging blues and pop but excluding classical, or whatever boolean you want.

You can do what you like, really.

But that's building playlists. Another way of reading your question is in terms of defining a rule that tells the player that when playing randomly, classical never follows death metal. Which I don't think is possible?

Dan

Yes, but add a macro genre means hours of work to manually add tags on 900 albums!
I don't think it's impossible.
You probably know Shazam, Soundhound or similar program that recognize songs. They work listening bpm and beats.

Or a better integration with last.fm or something like that, that usually do the same thing I'm proposing... analyze what you're listening to and give you similar song.

I don't think it's impossibile...

[dannyno]

Yeah, I said that extra tags would mean more work.

What about my other idea?

I've Soundhound and Shazam. They do more than rely on bpm I think, but now we know what you mean. I don't use last fm, so I don't know how it works.

[asder99]

Oh, I'm sorry. Your other idea seem unapplicable too, because I constantly add new album to my collection... and I hate to spent too much time to classify it properly, so I just auto-tag them and everything it's done in 2 clicks.

Last.fm just analyze the singer and the songs you're listening to, and suggest you other similar artists and songs... check it out, it's not bad!

[Onweerwolf]

There is a script that DJ's based on last.fm. It takes your currently playing song, looks it up on last.fm, finds a similar artist and plays a song from that artist if you have it in your library.

It worked under MM 3, not sure if it also works under MM 4, I haven't used it in a long time. I also forget what it was called so you should try and search the add-on forum if you're interested.

However, I would like to point out that correct and dedicated tagging is the key to enjoying MM as a player.

[dannyno]

Oh, I'm sorry. Your other idea seem unapplicable too, because I constantly add new album to my collection... and I hate to spent too much time to classify it properly, so I just auto-tag them and everything it's done in 2 clicks.

Last.fm just analyze the singer and the songs you're listening to, and suggest you other similar artists and songs... check it out, it's not bad!

You can do it in not many more clicks by doing your autotagging and then just adding in a macro genre. What you have at the moment, based on your description of what you're doing, is an uncontrolled mess.

I did a bit more reading on Last.FM. I can't see that it is "analysing" songs at all. It's basing recommendations on song tags, social information and on your own behaviour.

Looks to be a bit like Amazon, which recommends stuff I might like, but it doesn't somehow analyse book text and authors to do so. It's looking at pre-existing classifications, my buying behaviour, and the buying behaviour of others (plus any manual amendments I make to the recommendations list).

According to http://www.last.fm/about:

Scrobbling helps us tell you what songs you play most often, which songs you like the most, how much you’ve played an artist over a certain amount of time, which of your friends have similar tastes… all kinds of stuff. By focusing on the music you already play we can help you discover more music.

and

Scrobbles mean we can deliver personalised recommendations for every single Last.fm listener, every single day. We compare what you play to the scrobbles of millions of listeners around the world, meaning your recommendations are the result of more than 43 billion scrobbles and counting.

[MusicBringer]

...correct and dedicated tagging is the key to enjoying MM as a player.

@Onweerwolf, I agree