At first I thought Time Travel Radio was just silly, but then after listening, it really is great…almost…it could be.
Here are a couple of dream scenarios:
You’re hanging out with people that are a little older and know that they’d be cool with some newer music if only they were introduced properly. A reverse time travel (like current version) could be the ticket.
You’re heading out to your favorite camping spot and want to choreograph the journey so that you start with current music, but end up with some old classics like Zeppelin, CCR, or Lynyrd Skynyrd just as you are arriving at camp (opposite of current version).
Here are the biggest problems:
The time travel is based off of album release date and not song track. This poses a big problem when you have greatest hits of remastered albums in your library.
Time travel only goes from oldest to newest, and not vice versa…this seems like an easy fix.
Time travel has no time constraints. It would be nice if you could set the time frame, like I want to go from the beginning to the end in roughly x amount of time.
Icing on the cake would be if you could pick beginning and endpoints.
I generally use “Plex Mix” instead of the radio option. I usually prefer the mix it provides.
But I have tried the Time Travel Radio option lately and quite like it. But it is too much of a good thing. Giving us the option of some sort of a time frame, or number of tracks would be perfect. I have music from the 40’s up to the present, but a lot from the late 60’s to mid 80’s. So even after a couple of hours, I’m still stuck in the 70’s. I’ve never actually made it past that era.
Seconded the idea for a time frame / track number option
If you look at my distribution, I find that I don’t spend enough time in the earlier decades; like I’m just getting settled in some 70s stuff and then Run DMC comes along. So I’ve been toying with the idea of making Time Travel Radio “even out” the path a bit (I don’t think we’d want to make it completely smooth, because in my case e.g. I only have a bit of stuff from the 50s, but at least not make it so lopsided).
(Totally agreed we should use track year when available, hopefully we’ll have that metadata available at some point.)
I spent more time than I should have converting several of boxes full of old 45’s my mother had (including some old 78’s) to digital and the process of eliminating the snap, crackle and pops. It was a personal challenge, even though I knew I could probably find them another way. Time travel skips through those quickly, because there’s not as many as later eras, and I wouldn’t mind if it stayed in those eras for a little longer.
I’m pretty sure I’ve edited the metadata so that at least the year is included. It all shows in Plex, in any event, so I’m assuming the Plex server has something to work from or with.
I figure if it’s annoyance (minor or major) to you, we’re bound to see an improvement.
Having said that, I’ve heard some music recently I probably would never have chosen myself with Time Travel, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
