With not much hope that Plex Mix will return in the near future, if ever, I decided to give the Artist Radio another shot. I selected an artist I had just added, with only one album, ripped from a 45 RPM vinyl record. “Me & Boggy McGee” by Gordon Lightfoot.
Artist Radio immediately created a playlist, but neither of the 2 tracks available, by the artist I had selected showed up. I let the “Radio station” play for about an hour, and more tracks were added as it progressed, but never a track by Gordon Lightfoot.
sounds kind of promising, because that was the best part of Plex Mix. The ability to select a song, not an artist, and have a generated list that actually included the song you were hoping to hear.
Hmm… I did have a long comment about what was wrong with the Artist Radio, what we are missing out on when not being able to use the Plex Mix, and what is currently wrong with the whole Plex approach to things.
And then I realized - I am not going to spend any more time on this!
You win, Plex People. You did have the best solution for “playing your own music” out there - Now you are just another average music player who focuses heavily on TV, Movies and Podcasts.
I no longer believe the Plex Mix as we know it will be coming back.
I no longer believe I will be telling all my friends about all the benefits of Plex.
You win.
For me personally, Artist Radio is no substitute for the now-defunct Plex Mix feature.
I used to use the Plex Mix feature often before it was removed, and in my experience it did a much better job of staying within the realm of genre and mood of my selected seed track.
Artist Radio seems to function on a 3 degrees of separation algorithm, and there’s no outer boundary to how far the artist/track selections will deviate from the originally chosen artist. Also, as already mentioned, I often find that instances of tracks by the originally selected artist are few and far between.
Well then how about making better use of it?
I know Smart Playlists is offered as an option for better control of curating your own genre, mood, year, etc. based playlists, but as far as know it’s not yet fully supported on all player platforms. Also, Smart Playlists are more limited than what Plex Mix offered in terms of variety.
Also, why aren’t there any tools for creating auto-curated radio playlists? Simply offering Artist Radio plus Library Radio / Time Travel Radio / Random Album Radio seems so limited. It seems like such a waste of potential with all that great metadata available.
Until just recently, that wasn’t an option, because the track “moods” and “styles” weren’t available to us at the track level. Even if you try to use this method, you need to know what the “moods” are for a track to start creating that list. The only way to see that is to look at the XML for the file. You can’t edit a track mood or style for a track. Only an album.
Lots of possible workarounds, none of the equal to Plex Mix!
I missed Plex Mix shortly after it disappeared but Library Radio does a pretty good job finding popular tracks from my library. Plex Mix would give me a good variety from my library but most folks are pop music listeners and rarely would recognize what I was playing and many times never heard the artist.
I’ll jump on the bandwagon and say that I really miss Plex Mix. Music is the primary reason I use and maintain a Plex server and have Plex Pass. The Plex Mix feature enabled me to tap into my music library in a deeper way to hear suggested songs that I may not have ever pulled out of the library on my own. Many of these songs become added to my curated playlists if I like them. Hope this feature gets resurrected.
Adding another Plex Pass member who is gutted Plex Mix is gone and surprised and disapointed in equal measures how the mother ship has handled this…
The Plex value prop has to work on all three viable/desirable/feasible levels and I get that changes in the market can impact that. I was always amazed that Plex was able to push both server and client out to so many platforms. I wondered how they could support that code base but also what the product strategy was?
If Plex Pass and lifetime holders are a bit like an investor community (and evangelists) then giving us the product roadmap narrative would be a good idea.
So for example, the streaming service and the interstitial ads came as a bit of a shock. What the hell? What is the play here?
In any case, I think what most of us long-term users on here would really like to hear is a whisper of an apology or at the very least an acknowledgement that you guys f***ed up this particular episode.
Just say the words. Say you’re sorry and you’ll plan things in a slightly more grown-up way in the future.
(Bump)
Optimistically hoping Plex Mix finds its way back to my music library early this year. Maybe in conjunction the new version of PlexAmp we hear rumours about.
Enjoy premium features, like personalized radio stations, automatic mixes based on mood or song, lyrics, the best album art, and more. Audio fingerprinting helps Plex recognize your music files so it can identify the track where your filename may have failed you.
and
Don’t know what to listen to? Create a mood mix based on how you’re feeling and let Plex pick for you. Enjoy what you’re hearing? Create a Plex Mix based on similar tracks. Our smart mix will help you rediscover forgotten gems in your music library.
That page first being linked back in August, and still it is being advertised as a working feature.
I guess “temporarily unavailable” is in the eye of the beholder.
We were told Plex Mix would be missing for a while in this announcement at the end of June, 2019 - and then there was a glimmer of hope when track moods were re-enabled for the server in mid November. Two months later, you still can’t edit the moods or even see them unless you open the XML for the track, and then you have to trust that the scanner/agent has actually added that information.
Sometimes, what you want to hear is “Hound Dog” by Elvis, and then continue on with similar music. Clicking the Elvis Presley Artist Radio button gives you no guarantee that “Hound Dog” will ever be played.
And even though you can find my version of Hound Dog here at MusicBrainz, and find it at All Music with associated moods and styles, neither the album or track has any of that information.
@elan Any interest in responding to any of the messages we’ve left since you last responded 2 months ago telling us yet again that a solution was coming?
@elan
Without any ETA, then seems like it would be good to remove the various mentions of Plex Mix on the site page. By the very definition of the term, this would be false advertising, and as said earlier, these mentions were pointed out around 6 months ago, too, by someone else.
While Plex Mix isn’t even remotely the reason I signed up for Plex Pass, seeing it listed on the site page as being a working feature just seems wrong.
Enjoy premium features, like personalized radio stations, automatic mixes based on mood or song,
and
Don’t know what to listen to? Create a mood mix based on how you’re feeling and let Plex pick for you. Enjoy what you’re hearing? Create mix based on similar tracks and rediscover forgotten gems in your music library.
