A Plea to Fix Mood Radio

[tkohhh]

I’d like to start a discussion about the possibility of fixing Mood Radio. I’m hoping to convince the developers that it’s do-able and that it will make the product better.

Context
Plex has a way to tag content, which is useful for browsing your library or creating playlists filtered by certain tags. When it comes to Music, there are a set of tags for Artist (Genres, Styles, Moods, Country, Collection, Similar Artists), a set of tags for Album (Genres, Styles, Moods, Collections), and a tag for Tracks (Moods). The tags can be edited independently of their parent or child (i.e. adding a Mood to an artist does not add that same mood to the album, and vice versa).

These tags can be edited manually. Often they are pre-populated from some data source (I’ve seen Allmusic and last.fm suggested as the source, but I don’t know for sure where the pre-populated data comes from).

Why It Needs to Be Fixed
In it’s current state, Mood Radio builds a shuffled playlist of tracks based on a mood selected by the user. The tracks included in this playlist are on an album that is tagged with the mood selected.

This is problematic because it creates a user experience that doesn’t match expectations. For example, I was recently listening to “Happy Radio”. The song “Candle In the Wind” came on, from the album “Elton John - Greatest Hits 1970-2002”. I certainly don’t consider “Candle In the Wind” to be a happy song, so I found it odd and frustrating that it showed up on “Happy Radio”.

However, to make things worse, there’s no good way to prevent “Candle In the Wind” from playing on “Happy Radio”. It can be removed by removing the “Happy” tag from the “Greatest Hits 1970 - 2002” album, but doing so means that I’ll never hear “Your Song” from that same album in “Happy Radio”.

Taken together, this creates a frustrating user experience. There are several examples of frustrated users posting on reddit or on this forum wondering why a certain song is showing up in a certain Mood.

Why is it like that?
According to this post, the reason back in 2020 was that there was not much data pre-populated in the Track Mood tag. Presumably, the developers were concerned that using the Track Mood tags would not yield enough tracks to build an interesting playlist.

This concern is understandable, as it could be frustrating for users to have to manually enter Mood metadata before they are able to use Mood Radio.

How can it be fixed?
I have three potential solutions that would each alleviate the frustration:

1. Go all-in and switch Mood Radio to be based on Track Mood instead of Album Mood.
   Doing this will likely cause Mood Radio to have much fewer tracks due to missing Track Mood tags. To remedy this, a utility could be developed that copies Album Mood into Track Mood when no Track Mood exists. This utility would need to be run just once to populate Track Mood, and then going forward Track Mood would be managed manually like all other tags.
   Then, if a track comes up on a Mood that doesn’t fit, the user can remove that Mood from the track.

2. Change the underlying query that pulls tracks for Mood Radio to first look at the Track Mood. If Track Mood is populated, use that. If Track Mood is empty, then use the Album Mood.
   This method has the advantage of not requiring a utility to be developed, but also has a downside in the management of Moods. In order to remove a specific track from a specific mood, the user would have to add an appropriate Mood on the track. Going back to my Elton John example, I would have to add a mood other than “Happy” on “Candle In the Wind” in order to make sure it won’t play on “Happy Radio”.

3. Provide a setting to the user that allows them to select which level Mood Radio is based on. The options would be Artist, Album, and Track. The default can be Album so that everything keeps functioning the way it does now. Allowing users to change the setting will allow those of us who are on top of tagging our library to fully utilize Mood Radio without the frustrating downsides of the current implementation.

A Note on Tag Editing
I’m a believer that the best time to tag media is when you are interacting with it. In that regard, I love that Plexamp allows me to add (or change) the star rating of a song while it’s playing. It would be even better if we could also modify the mood tags on a track right in Plexamp (maybe in the three dot menu for the track). This would go a long way to help make mood radio more useful and tailored to the individual user.

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Thanks for reading, and I welcome any thoughts on my proposal. I really love Plexamp, and I hope that Mood Radio can be made less frustrating!

[EricD1973]

I second this plea. Using album moods makes no practical sense for a Mood Radio.

[OttoKerner]

This request boils down to:
“Store Mood in the track level and make it editable”

[D_eight6]

Your response isn’t constructive. It’s been asked of before. As someone who has created my playlists manually and named them Mood: California and Mood: Summer Ends, it’s just not helpful when the Mood tag is not editable for easier use. I don’t like what’s been provided. I rather SELECT ALL of my songs that I have in a playlist, Edit the Mood of the selected to Summer Ends and boom, done. No more playlists and now my very own curated Mood. Why is that such a difficult request?

[tkohhh]

There’s already a mood tag on the track, and it is already editable… the request is that “Mood Radio” uses the track mood tag rather than the album mood tag, or at the very least let users decide at which level Mood Radio is based on.

[tkohhh]

@elan, tagging you here to respond to your reply on reddit.

Because track moods aren’t plentiful in the metadata we get.

First, thank you for chiming in!

I of course understand that you want things to “just work” without the need for user intervention. However, in doing so you have handicapped users that are “enthusiastic” about using the tagging features in Plex. Furthermore, in it’s current state, Mood Radio produces head-scratching results, even to “casual” users.

That’s why I’ve proposed a few alternatives that will not break Mood Radio for the casual users, but also gives the enthusiastic users meaningful control. I’m curious what you think about my proposed solutions?

[jamesray]

Thanks for starting, at least editing possibilities in Plexamp are highly desired.

Moods on artist and album level makes no sense indeed. Besides that, I can’t relate / recognize a lot of the imported Moods to what it supposed to describe.

I doubt if it would work great if Track Moods are used (because the one who describes the Track Mood could have another opinion than I have, it is more or less subjective - some tracks which make me happy, are to the ears of my wife sad), but it would definitely improve Mood Radio if that’s used instead of using Artist / Album level Moods.

I didn’t want to wait for Plexamp using Mood Radio based on Track Moods.
I emptied all Track Moods and created a list of around 15 Moods to add to Track level: (Sad, Happy, Melancholic etc.).
And for some Moods I stretched the ‘concept’ Mood a bit: (Dinner, Friends, Sunday Morning, Late Night, Dancing etc.).
This way I can quickly select Tracks in the Mood Sunday Morning with genre e.g. Classic instead of making playlists.

But it is tedious and time-consuming.

Listening in Plexamp on my mobile or iPad and editing the Track on the desktop or MacBook😩

Which is why I created a feature request for that to resolve that bane (can’t be that hard, for a developer ):

Ability to add or edit Moods in Plexamp

As there are no Genres (or Styles) per track I thought about the way I want to select tracks for listening for an occasion. My Plexamp “workflow” to create smart lists / filters is as about as follows: I modify my Artists and Styles according to the Discogs structure. In Plexamp I rate tracks with 1 to 5 stars. When I want some music for an occasion I create a few Rules: Genre = Classical Stars >= **** Mood = Sunday morning An occasion is - for example - Sunday morning, Late Night, Par…

@D_eight6

it’s just not helpful when the Mood tag is not editable for easier use. I don’t like what’s been provided. I rather SELECT ALL of my songs that I have in a playlist, Edit the Mood of the selected to Summer Ends and boom, done

I started in Plexamp with creating playlists, but I discovered I could find my way with Track Moods. Those playlists and the ones I imported from Roon, Tidal, Spotify I wanted to edit in bulk to add to a Mood. But that is apparently not possible.

Advanced Filtering imported playlists

I have transferred playlists from Roon to Plexamp with Soundiiz. I have also 88 tags in Roon which describes the tracks e.g. the occasion or mood of a track: Dinner, Late Night, Sunday Morning, Late Night, Friends etc. (Which is why I created a Feature Request to edit / add Moods in Plexamp: Ability to add or edit Moods in Plexamp) I exported those tagged tracks as a csv file to import in Plexamp via Soundiiz as well. What I want to achieve is to add those tracks to the matching label Mood …

[jamesray]

@tkohhh

However, in doing so you have handicapped users that are “enthusiastic” about using the tagging features in Plex.

More than enthusiastic

[tkohhh]

@jamesray

I doubt if it would work great if Track Moods are used (because the one who describes the Track Mood could have another opinion than I have, it is more or less subjective - some tracks which make me happy, are to the ears of my wife sad),

In an ideal world, tags would be a per-user setting rather than a per-server setting. Even still, I think allowing the server administrators control over the moods used for Mood Radio would be vastly better than the current implementation.

@jamesray

But it is tedious and time-consuming.

I agree, but then again tagging media is always going to be tedious and time consuming. What’s frustrating right now is that I’m WILLING to put in the time, but it doesn’t matter because Plexamp doesn’t use the track tags.

[elan]

@tkohhh

tags would be a per-user setting rather than a per-server setting

The schema doesn’t support that and almost certainly will not. Our philosophy is the Same Great Metadata for all users

I have to be honest, track moods and per-track data in general make less sense to me now after we added Sonic analysis of tracks. In many cases, simple using a track radio will probably better results than the sparse metadata we get on track moods, and I don’t think it’s realistic to expect people to add that level of data.

In at least some cases, you can use playlists to get effect, e.g. having “workout”, “happy”, “driving”, “dinner party” playlists as substitutes for elaborate tagging schemes.

I’m sorry, this probably isn’t what you wanted to hear…

[pshanew]

@elan

In at least some cases, you can use playlists to get effect, e.g. having “workout”, “happy”, “driving”, “dinner party” playlists as substitutes for elaborate tagging schemes.

It feels like smart playlists could be a very suitable solution to this problem. They’re highly configurable (and honor the track mood) and can be set to order tracks randomly. They’ll update as tags change (for configured filters) and can be easily selected in clients (Plexamp included). They’re not “Mood Radio,” but they seem like a great solution for those willing to put in the work.

[tkohhh]

@elan

The schema doesn’t support that and almost certainly will not. Our philosophy is the Same Great Metadata for all users

That’s totally understandable, and it’s certainly not a dealbreaker!

@elan

In many cases, simple using a track radio will probably better results than the sparse metadata we get on track moods

In some ways I agree here. However, lyrical content is not part of sonic analysis, and lyrics contribute a great deal to the “mood” of a track. There are tons of examples of songs that “sound” happy but are quite sad when you consider the lyrics. I need a way to make sure “Pumped Up Kicks” doesn’t come up when I’m listening to “Happy Radio”.

@elan

In at least some cases, you can use playlists to get effect, e.g. having “workout”, “happy”, “driving”, “dinner party” playlists as substitutes for elaborate tagging schemes.

This is obviously true. In fact, I can create a smart playlist that looks at track mood. What’s unfortunate about this approach is that I have to create a different smart playlist for each mood that I want to listen to. The benefit of Mood Radio is that the UI for going into it asks you which mood you want. Perhaps we could get a parameterized smart playlist? That would certainly satisfy this request.

At the end of the day, Mood Radio is just SO CLOSE to being something great. I’m just hoping we could push it over the edge.

Again, thanks for taking a look at this… I really appreciate your time!

[jamesray]

@tkohhh

I of course understand that you want things to “just work” without the need for user intervention.

Problem is, it does not work.

@pshanew

It feels like smart playlists could be a very suitable solution to this problem. They’re highly configurable (and honor the track mood) and can be set to order tracks randomly. They’ll update as tags change (for configured filters) and can be easily selected in clients (Plexamp included). They’re not “Mood Radio,” but they seem like a great solution for those willing to put in the work.

Agreed, but when creating smart playlists, it would be nice if there are at least some editing possibilities in Plexamp for Moods, Genres, Styles e.g. to edit Albums, Artists and Tracks if necessary so I don’t need to switch to the desktop.