Does "Radio" algorithm take manual additions into account?

General Discussions
1

I’m using the artist radio a lot recently, and one thing I frequently do while it is playing, is manually add other tracks to “Play next”, usually not directly related to the original artist. The idea is that I’m trying to mix it up a bit, and help push Plex in another direction. I’m wondering if the manually added track affects the next batch of tracks added to the list.

I would like for Plex to take into account manual additions when generating the next batch on the playlist; I don’t think it does that, but I’m not completely sure.

Here’s an example: I run artist radio from, let’s say, “Led Zeppelin”, and I get a bunch of 70’s and early '80 classic rock tracks from Van Halen, Iron Maiden, etc. While this is playing, I’ll add an “Oasis” track to the list, hoping that it will help generate some late '90s and early '2000s brit-pop into the mix, like Kasabian, or Blur.

The smart playlist from other apps like Muzecast will actually do this, they meander from the original “root” by re-rooting based on the latest tracks played, thus keeping the list fresh, but Plex doesn’t seem to do that.

Anyone have any insight here? Does this sound like a good suggestion for an enhancement?

2

In the interim, I found a “hack” work-around. Artist radio seems to be based on the list of “Similar Artists” in the tags, so a simple way of getting Plex to add any artist you want to the mix is by editing the tags for a particular artist, and just adding new artists to the similar artists tag. In my example above, I just added Oasis to similar artists for Led Zeppelin, and now the artist radio for Led Zeppelin starts to play not only Oasis, but also those artists which are similar to Oasis (such as Blur, or Kasabian).

This seems to stem from the fact the algorithm uses “similar to similar”, so it is possible to kind-of “link” otherwise non-intersecting groups of artists together by adding them to the similar tag of another group.

In my case, I Just added Oasis and Stevie Ray Vaughn to the similar tag for Led Zeppelin, and now I get a bunch of Blues and Brit Pop artists in my Led Zep radio…just what I wanted :slight_smile: