I can't figure out a way to DOWNLOAD a SHUFFLED version of a PARTIAL playlist

Plex Labs
1

I have some smart playlists set up with filters like “find all tracks where genre=Synthpop, track added within the last 6 months, with Track Plays=0.” These playlists give me easy access to recent library additions in my favorite genres.

Each such playlist appears in the Plex web client sorted alphabetically by band name, then by album name. OK, that’s fine. I can use Shuffle to play the tracks in random order.

But, here’s the problem. In Plexamp on my phone, if I download a portion of the playlist, the playlist always downloads from the top, in alphabetical order.

So, if I have 10 hours of music and I want to download 1 hour, it is the first hour, with all of the bands beginning with the first couple letters of the alphabet.

What I want to do is download an hour or three (or ten) that has a RANDOM selection from the WHOLE smart playlist. But this does not seem to be possible. All I can do is download the tracks in alphabetical order, and then shuffle THOSE inside Plexamp at the time of playback. If I download the WHOLE playlist I can shuffle everything, but I don’t always have the space or time to do that.

Is there a way to shuffle at the time you download, and not download from the top down?

Or, is there a way to create a smart playlist with rules like I outlined above, and have that playlist be created with the tracks in random order? (If I just click the Shuffle button when looking at the playlist, it sets up a shuffled queue, but the playlist is still alphabetical.)

This is actually killing a really great Plexamp use case for me.

(No, I cannot stream the tracks and thereby shuffle the whole playlist; I have to use Downloads on my phone. My mobile data is unusably, stupidly expensive.)

Any ideas?

2

Until we add explicit sort fields inside the app, it’s unfortunately kind of tricky. I thought that making it inside the web app wouldn’t save the sort field if it were defaulted, but it appears it does.

If you know how to edit databases, remove the sort=xxx bit from the play_queue_generators row which is added when you make the smart playlist.

3

Why not setting up the filter like this?

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The resulting playlist is not alphabetically sorted. Neither by artist name, nor by track, nor album title.

4

That’s what I was hoping to find, thanks. I just overlooked that Title dropdown, too focused on the other stuff.

@elan Otto’s tip addresses my use case. A “shuffle on download” option in Plexamp could still be nice for some edge cases, but this use case is handled well enough.

Thanks guys!

5

Dammit, I had forgotten about that option, thanks!

6

I too have forgotten about features I designed and shipped, believe me!

7

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