I love the latest version of Plexamp for Android (Beta), but have noticed a couple of issues.
When I choose genre radio, the same artist/albums keep showing up above and beyond the rest. Not sure if the algorithm that chooses them needs to be redone, or what but if I have a dozen albums from an artist, only one of them shows up continually from the list.
There is no Style radio, but there is a Mood radio.
I would still love an option to filter by Genre, then shuffle (instead of the “radio” feature because it’s too buggy and that way I can shuffle by multiple Genres.
For example, Hard Rock AND Heavy Metal.
It sounds like you’re hitting up against a known bug in the media server re. poor randomness. The issue has been identified, and a fix should be arriving soon! Beyond that, the algorithm for this favors highly rated tracks (star ratings), popular tracks (based on last.fm metadata), and tracks that you’ve not played recently.
This is entirely dependent on the server, and it sounds like your music might not be properly tagged or matched. Styles are brought in from AllMusic, so if you’re missing them, it’s likely one of several things. Firstly, make sure you’ve upgraded to the new Metadata Agent. See here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/upgrade-music-libraries-new-metadata-system/. Are you using the “prefer embedded tags” setting? If you’ve enabled that, you need to manually make sure your music has the appropriate tags. I’d probably suggest disabling that.
Outside of the randomness issue, what other bugs have you found in radio? I’d love to be able to get these reported to the devs for you! Have you tried Mix Builder? It might give you some of what you’re after (effectively multi-artist shuffle). As a workaround for multi-genre shuffle, you can create some smart playlists for the genres you want. There’s a great user guide in the forums that might help you out with this:
From the sounds of it, your main problems seem to be to do with the way your music library is set up. Let me know if you have any more questions, or if I can help you get things running a bit more smoothly!
I do have my preferences set to Embedded Tags because I’m very picky as to how everything is organized. I prefer bands like Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest to be categorized as Hard Rock and bands like Metallica and Megadeth to be categorized as Metal for example. I am not sure that using a Metadata agent would follow my preferences. But all of my MP3 files have the Genres in embedded in them within the advanced tab. So Plex should recognize this, correct?
The other thing I noticed is that if I go to an artist and choose Radio it will follow that for a couple of songs and then move to something else for a couple songs, then to something else etc. For example, if I choose some Glam Rock band such as Poison, it might play Poison, then Ratt, and move to Ozzy, and Judas Priest, then go to Pantera, and Slayer. So you can see it is migrating away from the original intended radio content. Any help would be appreciated!
This is an example of how detailed all of my files are labeled. Every one of them has the “Genre” listed as shown below. So why would Plex not be recognizing this when I have my preferences set to Embedded Tags?
That makes sense then! If you’ve got embedded tags preferred, Plex uses your genre tags rather than AllMusic’s styles. If the genres are embedded in the files, Plex will see them.
For the “migrating away from the original intended radio”, this could be two things:
The known server issue I mentioned with randomness not being random enough, or
Your “degrees of separation” setting in Plexamp
For #1, be patient and it’ll be fixed soon!
For #2, degrees of separation decides how many “artist relationship chains” to follow when constructing a radio.
e.g. if Artist A (the seed artist for the radio) is related to Artist B, and Artist B is related to Artist C, then that’s 2 degrees of separation. Think Bacon Number. You can change this setting via Settings > Playback > Radio > Degrees of Separation. If I recall correctly, this defaults to ‘unlimited’. Try tuning it down a bit, and experimenting with what you like.
The size of your library: are there enough tracks to build a sufficient radio?
Out of interest though, where did you read the recommendation to store your files under genre folders? Plex’s recommendation is usually to use Album Artist > Album > track
I certainly appreciate your replies. Despite all of the issues I’m having I do LOVE Plexamp. However, some days I prefer to use the regular Plex app for listening to music since I have more control over what is being played. For example I can filter by Hard Rock, Metal, and Grunge, and shuffle ALL of the content. Doing it this way, it will ONLY play music from genres within my embedded tags, and it will be completely random. It will not stray from the Genres on my filter, and I will not hear the same album over and over. If Plexamp worked in the same way I would use it exclusively.
No worries, I’m happy to help! With “shuffle all the things”, can I suggest logging out and logging back into Plexamp? In 3.2.0 there’s a new onboarding process to help create some smart playlists for you to do exactly that!
I’ll be honest, I’ve not had a lot of experience with preferring embedded tags, so I’ll see if anyone in the team has any other ideas for you! I’ll get back to you soon
I always feel uneasy about having an agent determine the genre for me because I have my own ideas about what is considered Rock vs Metal vs Alternative (although I hate that label for a genre).
Uninstalled and reinstalled Plexamp and everything is working the same as it was previously. The randomness is still an issue as you mentioned. I would love the radio feature if I wouldn’t see the same albums popping up over and over when I have so many more available! Filter functions in combination with shuffle would still work better for me at this point.
Thanks again for all of the help and suggestions! I look forward to hearing back.
Going back to the mix builder… It is a neat feature but if I wanted to use it for more than a couple of artists or albums it can get pretty manual intensive. But I have used it and it’s great!
When you set Genres to Embedded Tags, you won’t get a Style Radio.
You get a Genre radio in its stead. Because those styles will probably either be the same as your genre tags or will contradict them.
I don’t use Style radio at all. I’ve only tried to use Genre radio, or by going directly to the artist and clicking the radio icon. I had been under the assumption that this would feed off of the embedded tags for genre. Is that not the case?
