Server Version#: 1.21.2.3943
Player Version#: Plexamp 3.4.1
When shuffling all tracks in my music library, a pattern quickly emerges. Pressing the shuffle button at the top of the Tracks list always (100% of the time) plays a track from one specific album, then the next track will be by specific artist X, then the next will be by specific artist Y, and so on. Restarting the “playlist” by going back to the Tracks list and pressing shuffle again yields identical results; the next track from the same specific album, another track by artist X, then another by artist Y, and so on in the exact same pattern until stopped.
Note: this is /not/ the “Library Radio” playlist mentioned in some previous topics (I get a “Couldn’t start playback” message on the Radio playlists).
This behavior doesn’t change if when media is added to the library, but I have not tried removing anything from the library. It’s as if a random sequence of playlist positions was chosen the first time I pressed shuffle, and it is being incremented or iterated only slightly when shuffling again, so playback is no longer truly “random.” My library is quite large, so it seems like there should be much more variety when shuffling everything.
Is this a bug? Is there anything I can do on my end (short of deleting media) to change this behavior?
Edit: After further testing, I have found it doesn’t actually matter which player I use (web player, Plex app on Windows, Plex app on Android, Plexamp on Android, etc). Anywhere that I can shuffle the entire library, the same exact pattern emerges immediately.
No mater how often I shuffle this playlist the first 20 or so tracks are all from either various artist albums or are just single tracks from random albums I have ripped over the years and only keep a single track. This playlist currently has over 40,000 tracks so seeing the same tracks is not very random.
The new server updates say " * (Library) Enhance smart shuffle to do a better job of feeling random." and this seems to work in a more restricted smart playlist with fewer tracks where it looks like it does not select more than 1 track at a time from an album, which is something I DO like.
Elan,
Just selected shuffle on the same playlist and here is the log. Hope this is the one required. Let me know if you need another log as the downloaded logs has 141 files in the zip.
Good news about the pending change to not have the single tracks given priority. Why can’t they just be truly random selections with the option of not having more than 1 track from the same album/artist following each other?
What I suppose I mean is that I have never really felt that the shuffle feature within Plex was ever truly random and I would like it to be, but with a user selected option to not have repeating artist or album tracks.
This would only really work when the pool of tracks to select from was of a reasonable size to make this a feasible option.
I have a playlist with more than 40,000 tracks with over 1,000 artist and 3,000+ albums so it should be possible in this scenario.
The shuffle is not ‘truly random’ if you have “smart shuffle” selected. I think if you turn that off it will be more random, i.e. less geared toward popular tracks.
Jason_D.
Smart Shuffle is a “hidden option” I did not even knew existed. Turned it off and it seems to get rid of the single tracks in the play queue when I select shuffle on a big playlist.
I really think all of these “Smart” features should be optional and not set as defaults. Alternatively, also put them in a playlist creation option.
With the fix to stop biasing those single-track things, Smart Shuffle should end up being very close to what you want: good spread for albums/artists so they’re not clumped, and slight bias towards tracks you haven’t listened to recently and highly rated/popular tracks.
If you disable Smart Shuffle, you end up with something which is truly random, which also means you’ll see clumping which feels non-random.
Hi Elan,
For smaller smart playlists with <100 tracks I really like the Smart Shuffle feature as I usually only have a small selection of tracks meeting the criteria.
However for smart playlist with a large number of tracks meeting the criteria I do NOT want the Smart shuffle feature. Hence, I would like the ability to have it as an option per playlist.
I realise I might be an unusual user in this scenario so would not expect this to be a priority for consideration, but it would just make my listening habits more enjoyable;e as I have two main playlist I listen to and they meet the different criteria outlined above.
I don’t want any highly rated/popular biasing as my collection includes a lot of tracks not from the mainstream but I want random.
I get that truly random can seem non random. I didn’t know about the popular biasing though and I’m gonna check that setting when I’m near a desktop.
I found turning off smart play lists gives me a playlist that feels more random and less popular biased. My library is about 25k songs with a decent range of genres. Most days that’s what I listen to all day and I just throw in an album or song on “play next” if I feel the urge.
However mentioned above smart playlist slightly pushing lesser played tracks…I like that but can’t have it both ways obviously
It seems like How shuffle/random works is big for a lot of people. Have you considered settings for shuffle? Like add more or less popular tracks. Add more or less recently played tracks etc And as mentioned above, don’t repeat artist. None of these for me are must haves or anything but would be unique and make people feel more in control…
Being able to shuffle a queue though, that would be huge…did I see on twitter that might be. coming???
I am not sure if this would help you create the playlist you are looking for, but this is what I have done in attempts to create a shuffled playlist EVERY time I enter the playlist.
Since migrating from iTunes to Plex Music a few years back, I am essentially starting over listening to every track at least once. My formula says Track Plays = 0 but you can make it say not in the last n weeks, months, etc. Also removing Christmas music from being eligible since I have a separate smart playlist specifically for Christmas music that did not get played the year prior.
Now here is the slightly tricky part. Save the smart playlist as you normally would. Now open your web browser and log into your Plex server and view this new playlist and click the edit filters button to bring up the formula that made the playlist. Scan the url to find the sort variable. Replace the existing word with the word random and hit return.
The playlist should refresh with a random selection of songs that match your formula. Click save to save the playlist. One note to understand. EVERY time you enter the playlist, it will get reshuffled, so it will never look that same each time you view or play this playlist. Also, if you choose to download this playlist for offline listening in Plex or Plexamp, each time you open the app, most if not all the tracks will be removed and replaced with a new random set of tracks, so keep the track count low. Even though I have my playlist set to 100 tracks, in PlexAmp I limit the offline playlist to 2 hours, which typically equals 20-25 tracks, less if Pink Floyd or Yes make it in.
Each morning, I fire up PlexAmp, back out of my playlist, reenter the playlist and click play, always something fresh without repeat. This playlist behavior even works in Plex on an old iPhone 4s.
Currently I’m just shuffling the whole library. FroM plexamp mobile casting to my raspberry pi streamer. I just hit play again next morning and it continues where left off.
Also my wife is logged in to same account (we share a studio space) and therefore also has control over the same playlist. What is done on one phone shows up on the other.
This works well untill occasionally the playlist drops.
Sorry for the extremely delayed update here. I’m bad at keeping up with forums these days.
Anyhow, it turns out that my specific issue was caused by having the “popular tracks” setting(s) disabled, so thanks for pointing that out @Jason_D
Since enabling that, shuffle has been behaving far better. I still notice some repeats on occasion, if I re-shuffle my library a few days in a row, but it’s nowhere near as predictable or bad as it used to be. I suspect the coming updates to Smart Shuffle will resolve that as well, if it biases away from tracks that have been played recently (though, I guess “recently” is a matter of perspective, and it’s hard to account for everything when you’re shuffling a playlist with a playtime of >100 days)
I’m still not sure why I can’t use the library “radio” playlists, but I think that’s a separate issue at this point.
No, they do show up. But whenever I try to play one in Plexamp, I instantly get the message “Couldn’t start playback”, or in the web UI, “An error occurred loading items to play.”
I just tried it a few times; here are the server logs:
