About a week or so ago, everytime I shuffle my library of songs, 35000 songs, the same 5 songs always come up first. In random order, but always the same 5 songs. I have no idea why. There is nothing special about these songs. They have no star ratings and their play history isn’t more than any other random song in my library.
No songs/albums/artists in my library are starred/rated for this very reason. iTunes shuffle used to do that, use your play history and star rating to affect your shuffle, which in my opinion defeats the whole purpose of the shuffle feature. So I’ve never starred anything for fear that would happen. And after searching the forums, it appears a change was made to the shuffle feature to do just that.
After those 5 songs, it appears to shuffle the entire library randomly though. I don’t know what’s going on though. And it’s not device specific. The same issue happens on my Windows device, Android device and Fire Stick.
Correct, Music>Library. I’ve tried starting the shuffle after filtering by all 3, Artists, Albums, & Tracks, in case that made a difference, but nope, same issue.
Is there like some sort of “cookies” or “temp” or “cache” file that can be erased without having to rebuild the entire library?
Every Single Time I start a shuffle it’s stuck on the first artist - one from each album (the first one I think) until I kick it forward far enough to slap it awake… then it’s fine.
Server: 1.18.7.2457
Roku Ultra: 6.4.12.6214-0f6e34f3b-Plex Preview
Broken for AT LEAST 2 versions.
Just started a shuffle of my Blues Library 39 Artists, from the Library.
Had to kick it forward 17 times to get it out of David Gogo, played one Kal David song - then back to David Gogo for 27 more kicks forward and now we’re in Eric Gales with Joe Bonomassa and Beth Hart next followed by Nina Simone. Might be alright now, but you never know… Shuffle now means: Shuffle on over to the remote and start kicking it forward…
To be clear, this is not a bug. Plex changed the way shuffle is done to help bring your more popular (i.e. played) songs up to the front. If you just keep hitting shuffle, the list won’t change too much, but as you actually play the songs and their play counts change, they will get better mixed around. If you are expecting a pure random mix, that won’t happen with shuffle. I’m checking to see if there is a way to do that now.
Plex ‘improved’ a feature that was working exactly as expected.
Broken now, for all intents and purposes.
Unless finally Plex Dancing those Artists in my Blues Collection - to rid them of the previously forced and absolutely unwanted ‘Popular Tracks’ - improves the shuffle behavior. My confidence in that being successful - is microscopic.
Oh, and BTW:
The ONE thing I’ve been waiting almost 70 years for - is Plex to arbitrarily decide what I need to listen to in my Blues Library when I hit Shuffle. If Plex wants to give a whole lot of Blues Fans The Blues - mess with their Blues Library.
This is not related to the “Popular Tracks”. This is based solely on your listening pattern. The idea is that if there is a song a user doesn’t like as much (i.e. they skip the song) then they get demoted so it won’t show up very often. Songs the user does like, i.e. allows to play through and often, get promoted to the front. This is per user, so what you see and what someone else you might share with will get different results tuned to their usage.
I get if you just want a pure random list, this is not useful for you. Right now, that can’t be done anymore, but there are discussion to see if it can be brought back in some way.
Play an annoying sound really loudly during those discussions - that’ll be me wanting the old shuffle back. <—that was perfectly fine as it was.
BTW2:
After removing the ‘Popular Tracks’ for 7 Artists in the Blues Library - I didn’t start at David Gogo. That’s something, at least. The Shuffletest continues…
Who on earth would think “shuffle” my music library but play the tracks I’ve played the most first was a good idea? If I actually wanted that, I would create a smart playlist, where the track plays or album plays was greater than “X”
Does that apply to playlists, too? Some of my playlists have hundreds of songs, but the some tracks are included in other playlists. So switching playlists is gonna bring me the songs I just heard over the last hour or day?
I’ve been told that the “Library Radio” uses the same (or similar) logic. I’ve found that not to be true, and it actually plays tracks in (what seems to me) a random order.
That thought would NEVER in a MILLION YEARS occur to a User.
From the ‘This Just In’ Department:
Shuffle is behaving MUCH better - now that I’ve Plex Danced (Full) all the Artists in the Blues Library that had ‘Popular Tracks’ (since Refresh Metadata was useless). That microscopic confidence level is paying off - for me.
For those having Shuffle Drama - I suggest removing Popular Tracks - if you have any - and yes, it’s a PITA.
It absolutely, positively IS related to Popular Tracks - and if you have any. I don’t now in the Blues Library. Shuffle in the Blues Library now works as expected.
Shouldn’t high play counts come up LESS in a shuffle? Because you know, you’ve heard it recently? Because the shuffle mode played it for you yesterday, and now it wants to play it some MORE? ugh.
That’s not exactly true since the same 5 songs always appear first on my shuffle. And I’ve skipped those songs more than any other songs, since I don’t want to hear them everyday, yet they still keep coming up first.
That makes sense to me. I already know the popular songs I like, I want to hear a song I forgot about and haven’t heard in ages. At the least, they should just add some preferences to the Shuffle feature, so you can choose how it behaves.
I see what you mean. Yes, those songs that come up first in the Shuffle are marked as Popular Tracks for no apparent reason. How do you unmark them as popular?
Make sure you have Popular Tracks turned off, for God’s Sake, before you do this:
Edit the Music Library (in question - I have 3), Advanced, Disable all stupid stuff - Popular Tracks being #1 on the hit parade.
Remove that Artist from the File System Plex is looking at - for safe keeping, of course.
Scan the Library
See that it’s gone
Empty Trash
Clean Bundles
Put the Artist Back
Scan Library
When the Artist is back you should see no popular tracks and the guy that plays next time will be the next guy with Popular Tracks - if my theory holds any water.
I had 7 Artists in that library with Popular Tracks.
I did 'em all at once.
LOL “popular”. But I like the Peter Green Fleetwood Mac!
This eliminating Popular Tracks sounds promising. I may dedicate an evening to rescanning the whole shebang from scratch rather than try to do it per artist. The computers are here to do this work not me. Especially for a paid app.
Removing the Popular Tracks and starred/rated tracks fixed the problem for me. Luckily, I only had a few songs I had to deal with. But if you’ve been rating your songs for a while now and have a huge library, I can see that being a huge issue.
The “Popular Track” setting was already turned off for my library too. No idea why some tracks were marked as popular.
