I very much like the idea of mix builder, but I don’t think it is working for me as designed. When I make a mix, I include fifteen to thirty artists. Mix Builder then constructs its playlist, but typically includes an overwhelming number of tracks by one specific artist. (For instance, I built a mix that included Van Morrison, and his tracks appeared as at least every other song. When I removed him from the mix tried again, it was Talking Heads as more than half of the tracks. I just built a mix with twelve different artists, and the first seven tracks in Mix Builder are Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers.) Am I somehow weighting my choices in the mix? Does it have to do with the order in which I add artists to the mix? Plexamp remains usable, but would be much more usable if this feature worked as I expect it to. Thanks for any insight.
edit: the radios rely on ‘related artists’ data, if this metadata has not been retrieved for the selected artists, you might get an abnormal amount from the same artist(s).
check in plexamp or plex web artist page to see if there is a ‘related’ artists section for all your preferred artists.
refresh metadata (at the artist, or library level) to update the metadata.
You may want to make sure that you have all the extra metadata enabled in the music library advanced settings.
that sounds weird, I do not normally add so many, 6 or so max is what I use.
the mix builder has 2 functions >
radio – this plays selected artists + related artists tracks
mix – this plays only the selected artists
in the settings, you can adjust the ‘variety’ via the settings > playback > radio > ‘degrees of separation’.
Thanks much for this thoughtful reply. I have been using the “mix” function and not the radio function. The generated mixes include only tracks from artists I have included in my mix list, so the issue of metadata may not be relevant. But even if it is a problem of missing metadata for some of the artists, shouldn’t I expect to see in the “mix” playlist a more or less balanced distribution of artists for whom there is metadata? But it is a decidedly uneven distribution.
yes, I normally see a good distribution (not the same artist multiple times in a row).
of course it will depend on your library, if you have 100 tracks of one artists, and only 10 tracks of others, then obviously the selection may be biased towards the amount of available tracks.
if you can reproduce a specific example, feel free to post both server logs and client logs.
Plex Web > settings > troubleshooting > download logs
plexamp > settings > advanced > debugging > share logs (email them to yourself or whatever)
drop both log files into a reply, maybe elan or one of the other plexamp specific devs can further investigate.
I created a mix this morning with 11 artists. I’m not getting any tracks from several of them, but for other artists, it’s pretty much just their songs and sometimes the same artist 2-4 plays in a row. To be clear, I did play mix, not radio (when I tried that, I only got a playlist of like 4 songs and it wouldn’t do any more. When I tried again, it gave me the same exact playlist).
For one artist, some of the albums are from TIDAL and for another, I’m wondering if having the artist name different from the album artist is causing it not to show up in the playlist (I have the album artist as Tom Petty, but the track artist is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers).
Yes, that sounds like the same problem I’m having. I’ll check on the possible difference between album artist and track artist, though I’m pretty sure that those metadata were already “smoothed over” when I originally added these tracks to iTunes.
Also, I would note that I am unable to automatically download the client-side logs, as my PlexAmp has no Debug category under the Advanced settings tab.
If you’re using a desktop version, I think it keeps the log in its app data folder.
And I just stopped the mix I had playing and tried again at a radio mix with different artists. It generated a playlist of 9 songs… This seems to be a separate issue, so I might have to open a new thread. Definitely having issues for both functions of the mix builder though.
EDIT: Never mind. The radio mix seems to be updating. It just doesn’t start with large playlist?
Funny. I have tried both and get the same results. Library gives me all from my library and Tidal, only tracks from Tidal UNLESS it upgrades lower quality songs from my library.
