PlexAmp Feature Request: Shuffle By Album

Feature Suggestions
1

Classical, Opera, Progressive Rock / Metal, Concept Albums and other album oriented forms need to be listened to from beginning to end for full effect.

A Shuffle by Album feature would allow a user to:

  1. Select a genre, playlist or artist
  2. Select Shuffle by Album
  3. A random album would be selected and then played from beginning to end
  4. Then another random album is played next

This can be implemented as a cycling option, similar to how Repeat is cycled through
(first we repeat the playlist, click it again, we repeat just the song and the icon indicates this)
or as a global “Shuffle Option” setting

many thanks!!

1 Like
2

Interesting that this isn’t in Plexamp since this function exist in the normal app.

3

There is “Random Album Radio”. Both in plexamp and in the regular apps.

4

Yes! Love that feature

an artist, genre and playlist filter would complete it!

1 Like
5

Oh yes, I agree. Somehow I skipped over this in the OP

2 Likes
6

We need this feature even moreso in Plex with its integrations to other services like Amazon Alexa, etc. Please offer shuffle by album functionality for genre, playlists, and artist as a common feature to really empower Plex music, so needed for Classical and Opera enthusiasts.

1 Like
7

I miss album shuffle a lot.

I just want to have a random album played when the other one is finished. I never shuffle tracks.
Not only for classical and opera, but for all genres.

Especially if you have a collection with various genres (classical, jazz, techno, blues, rock, punk…) you really don’t want to switch style every track.

1 Like
8

You might want to check out Random Album Radio from the Stations section on the Plexamp home screen.

9

That can only be used to to play random albums from the complete library.

It should be possible to make a selection (create a “collection”) and then play the albums within that selection in random order.

3 Likes
10

Another bump for “shuffle by album” in both the regular Plex app (on Roku in my case) as well as PlexAmp.

I saw that I commented on a thread about this four years ago, and I saw in the forums several other requests for “shuffle by album” that apparently fell on deaf ears.

In most of those other “shuffle” threads, they were closed because it was thought the issue had been addressed. One was closed, pointing out that “Random Album Radio” was the solution, which it is not. It plays random albums from your entire library, which is not what I want.

What I want is what every other classical music listener wants, and “Random Album Radio” is ALMOST there. The only thing lacking is to present the “Random Album Radio” option for any Genre, or Artist, or Composer.

In other words, I start at my music library and choose Genre>Classical. At that point, a Random Album Radio option would then randomly select albums (in my case, all classical “works” are set up as “albums”), play that album (work, as in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5) in its entirety, and then choose another album, such as Holst’s “The Planets.”

Alternatively, after choosing Genre>Classical, I might choose Artist>Rachmaninoff. At that point, the Random Album Radio option would randomly select one of my Rachmaninoff albums (works) and play it in its entirety, and then move to the next album (work) by Rachmaninoff.

All the pieces are there, Plex! You know what an album is. You know how to shuffle. Now just give us “Random Album Radio” at any arbitrary point in the library browse tree.

Thanks.
Bob

1 Like
11

I’ll totally bump this because it sounds like something I’d use from time to time if it were to come into being. Sadly, I can’t currently add my vote because they are all used up on 5 other suggestions that languish in the ethereal vapor of functional feature requests

2 Likes
12

In my quest to find a music server product that has a “shuffle by album” feature that would satisfy my need, and the need of many others, I’ve taken a look at about 10 products over the past couple of years. There are some that are close, but none has it completely solved.

I want to mention that a real contender is the Asset UPnP music server from dbPowerAmp. They do have a “Jukebox Album Selection:” feature that can be inserted anywhere in the browse tree. The problem was that it might have selected albums at random…but they were presented to the DLNA player sorted by album name. That kind of defeats the purpose!

Imagine my surprise when, a few days ago, I revisted a thread I had started in the Asset UPnP forum requesting Album Shuffle, presenting my findings along with log files that show the DLNA server sorting albums by title before delivering to the the player.

The response I got was “Bug confirmed. Will be fixed in next release.”

WOW!

So, though Plex might not like it, I want to let everyone here know that in the next release of Asset UPnP, there will be a true “Shuffle by Album” feature that will meet my needs. You might find it meets your needs, too.

1 Like
13

Plex really does need a shuffle by album. I have a WIDE variety of genres of music and I don’t typically want to be listening to a nice album of classical music and then BAM!, Gojira starts playing the heaviest stuff ever.

Let me shuffle by album inside a playlist or genre or collection, please!

It’s really the only thing I miss from iTunes back in the day.

3 Likes
14

plus 1 for this… I was looking for it the other day, and realised it doesn’t exist :frowning: … it would also be great to be able to skip to next album when in album when shuffling albums (rather than only being able to go to the next track)

1 Like
15

Any news on this?
While driving a car, it is really annoying, not to say dangerous, to have to queue a new album.

This is basic functionality present in any player, except for PlexAmp…

16

I want to like Plex and Plexamp (for listening in my car.). I really do.

But I can’t. Even though I bought lifetime Plexpass…

Since I last commented here, I went wholly to Asset UPnP and a combination of the built-in WiiM DLNA browser and BubbleUPnP on a dedicated Lenovo tablet when I need my “shuffle by album.”

It makes me reasonably happy, but “shuffle by album” is still a chore.

Back to Plex.

//rant on//

I bought and downloaded some new classical works three days ago. I brought them all in to MP3tag to fix tagging; what comes in downloads atrocious-to-fair, so I have to fix all the tagging to meet my library organization needs. I am a stickler for genre, style, artist/composer name, album/work name and track/movement names.

After fixing, I copied everything to my NAS where both Asset and Plex picked up changes.

I checked the Asset instance and all was where it should be…

But I couldn’t find the new works by artist/composer in Plex. Just not there.

In debugging, I then discover (again) that Plex wants “Album Artist” to be populated with, in my case, artist/composer. I always use “Artist.”

So back into MP3tag to “fix.” But Plex doesn’t pick up the changes. I then do multiple “scan library” attempts, while standing on my head and whistling, and Plex finally decides to display properly.

But there were other little things that frustrated me, too. Most seem to be related to Plex’s idea that it (the music scanners) know more about my music tags than I do. Even though I have the option checked to “favor native metadata tags” while scanning, Plex always seems to do something to modify the way I want things organized.

But back to shuffle by album.

I’ve been complaining here, as well as the WiiM forums, Bluesound forums, Asset forums and probably some others for YEARS about “shuffle by album.”

And nothing has changed.

For whatever reason that I CANNOT fathom, product managers and developers have decided that they will never address the need, though it is clear on ALL of those forums that the need is there.

The focus seems to be on adding new features rather than fixing what should be a core piece of the product.

As I constantly point out, it CAN be done. My Turtle Beach Audiotron from 20 years ago could do it. My iPod Classic from 17 years ago could do it. More recently, iTunes on Windows can do it today. And BubbleUPnP can do it today.

So, once again Plex people, will you PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE pay attention and add “shuffle by album” as described in this and other threads to the product?

In the meantime, I’ll continue to use Plex, with Plexamp, only in my car because the remote access is nice. But I’ll be grumbling the whole time.

//rant off//

Thanks for listening,
Shuffle Bob

2 Likes
17

Bumping this again. I’d love to switch away from iTunes, but the inability to shuffle by album within a playlist or collection is a dealbreaker. And no, Random Album Radio is not adequate.

18

Bumping this yet again.

Plex, it should be simple to do this. All the pieces are there. Just make it happen.