Better Shuffle Formula

[Peke]

Hi,
MMA 2.0 should support Auto-Playlists like MMW/MM5 so this should be addressed/fixed.

For now I use workaround to sync Playback Statistics back to MMW and as explained above use auto-playlists to get new set of tracks on each sync.

Takes a bit of time to analyze tracks to sync but it works.

[dkstott]

Peke,

With nearly 20G of music on my phone, I shouldn't be hearing the some of the same songs on a daily basis during my 1-2 hours exercise routine. Nor should I have to have playlists. I expect MMA to be able to shuffle the entire library and not ignore major sections of the music.

My only ability to "fix" this is to delete the music that gets repeated to force MMA to consider the rest of the library. This works for about a week and then it's back to hearing repeated songs.

Hi,
Instead of using entire library I always used Playlist with criterias:
- Not Played past 7 Days
- Limit 1 track
- Random Sort

That worked flawlessly.

In addition I sometimes use additional criteria to refine result for less listening tracks
- Play count <10
- Rating NOT BOMB

Using few of these can greatly improve Auto-DJ experience and not ruin listening.

[dkstott]

When can we begin to expect to see MMA 2.0?? I've seen it mentioned here for what feels like 2-3 years now

Hi,
MMA 2.0 should support Auto-Playlists like MMW/MM5 so this should be addressed/fixed.

For now I use workaround to sync Playback Statistics back to MMW and as explained above use auto-playlists to get new set of tracks on each sync.

Takes a bit of time to analyze tracks to sync but it works.

[Peke]

Hi,
MMA 2.0 is already worked on and we are testing it internally.

You are seeing mentions from 2-3 years as MMA 1.x is designed to bring some of main features and syncing to Android while MMA 2.0 should close gap in functionality to MM5 and it is scheduled after MMA 1.x mature, proven to be stable and MM5 gets more publicly released/announced where MMA 2.0 should thrive.

[g9ujab]

It seems to me that an optimal shuffle algorithm would actually be far from random. I'd build two lists: 1) already played songs and 2) songs not yet played. The algorithm would randomly select from List 2 the next song to play. Then, once played, the song would be removed from List 2 and placed on List 1. The algorithm would then repeat the process of randomly selecting the the next unplayed song from from List 2. Only when List 2 was empty, would the algorithm begin randomly selecting songs from List 1 and then placing them, once played, on List 2. This approach would give the listener a greater sense of random selection, even though the process is not random. Just a thought that might be helpful.

[Peke]

Hi,
If I got this correctly you are referring to behavior like If manual skip event happen then do not reset Shuffle (already played) but continue to prefer non already played tracks?

[Lowlander]

You can use Randomize Play instead of Shuffle as this will go in order to a randomized list. This means files played won't be played again (unless you have Repeat All and the end of the Now Playing is reached).

[g9ujab]

Lowander, thanks for the tip. Ill give that a try.

Peke, yes, I think that's right.

[oblivioncth]

You can use Randomize Play instead of Shuffle as this will go in order to a randomized list. This means files played won't be played again (unless you have Repeat All and the end of the Now Playing is reached).

The only issue with this is that if you reinitialize the "Randomize Play" by hitting the button again (either on AA or within the app itself) it will still suffer from weirdly seeming like it prefers certain tracks for a while, so just make sure that if you stop listening for a while and come back to the app that you just continue playing from where you left off instead of hitting the Random Play button again. Obviously this isn't possible if your changing playlists/categories, or your device restarts (it may save the current list to a cache, I'm actually not 100% sure on this one), but it is a good suggestion considering what we have to work with at the moment.

[crath]

I've got 8,256 tracks in my main playlist. In general, I like to just random play from that list. As others have already recounted here, MM plays the same set of tracks over and over if left to its own devices. Android MM suffers from the same trouble.

Early in this thread, someone suggested adding additional criteria to a playlist in order to force MM to play un-played songs. Before researching this issue last week, that hadn't occurred to me; so, I gave it a try and it has been an unbridled success.

To establish what time threshold I needed to establish, I first created an AutoPlaylist set to "Last Played < (days) 15" and then looked at the length of the list. After fiddling with different durations, I finally settled on 31 days. I then created a second playlist that captures songs played only songs not played in the last 30 days (since there is no >= filter). Now when I play songs on my desktop (from "Last Played < (days) 30") the two AutoPlaylists keep themselves current and I'm hearing tracks that haven't played in many years.

These two playlists sync to my Android phone (I sync all 8,256 tracks) and the phone picks up where my PC left off. The only complication is that I need to sync more regularly than I had been; but that's easy.

[crath]

I've been using this approach for a few weeks and am following up here with some additional learnings:

• I had to tune the last played timeframe. After trying values from 30 up to 120 days, I settled on 90 days.
  This got my not-recently-played list down to about 2,000 tracks (of the 8,256) and as I'm playing this list it is shrinking.

• It turns out that Autoplaylists don't actually automatically update themselves. Each time, just before I tell MM to randomly play my not-recently-played list, I have to select another playlist, and then re-select my not-recently-played list in order to trigger MM to update the autoplaylist. If I don't do that then MM quickly falls back into playing the same subset of tracks--i.e., after a few hours of play I'm hearing repeats.

I've got 8,256 tracks in my main playlist. In general, I like to just random play from that list. As others have already recounted here, MM plays the same set of tracks over and over if left to its own devices. Android MM suffers from the same trouble.

Early in this thread, someone suggested adding additional criteria to a playlist in order to force MM to play un-played songs. Before researching this issue last week, that hadn't occurred to me; so, I gave it a try and it has been an unbridled success.

To establish what time threshold I needed to establish, I first created an AutoPlaylist set to "Last Played < (days) 15" and then looked at the length of the list. After fiddling with different durations, I finally settled on 31 days. I then created a second playlist that captures songs played only songs not played in the last 30 days (since there is no >= filter). Now when I play songs on my desktop (from "Last Played < (days) 30") the two AutoPlaylists keep themselves current and I'm hearing tracks that haven't played in many years.

These two playlists sync to my Android phone (I sync all 8,256 tracks) and the phone picks up where my PC left off. The only complication is that I need to sync more regularly than I had been; but that's easy.

[MrLargent]

Hi all,

Have spent time searching around and this seems to be the best thread and not too old.

I am looking to move from iTunes to MM, and like what I see so far.

However, the main function I use is the 'shuffle' and also have a 7,000+ song library. iTunes was great with being able to curate playlists which, MOST IMPORTANTLY, allowed me to limit the number of songs in the playlist (I do not want to export 7,000 songs to my phone).

Is this function ONLY available in MM Gold?

If anyone has a step-by-step guide as to how they do it, it would be appreciated.

Lastly, wondering if the 'shuffle/repeated tracks' issue has been resolved completely. I see some criteria settings above.

Ideally I want to sync 2,000 songs, sorted by least played, to my phone (android) and then randomly play them. After playing a week or so, doing a sync, which should update my playlist count, and then sync my playlist updates with new tracks (removes ones that no longer meet the criteria initially set-up in playlist) and then I have a 'fresh' playlist. Works on iTunes easily... how to make it work on MM easily?

Thanks in advance!

[Lowlander]

Yes, AutoPlaylists can pick a random subset limited to a size you set and AutoPlaylists are a Gold feature in MediaMonkey 4.