[REQ] Auto-Playlist in MMA [#10817]

[noxar3]

As many people posting in this section, one of the main reasons why I use MMW is the advanced smart playlist feature. I also find it's a big miss in the MMA. Waiting for a dev to fix that, I am using PPro, that does part of the job there.

In terms of dev, do you plan to do something as flexible as in MMW (or PPro), enabling to cross various types of criterias?

I also personnally extensively use secondary tag fields to stock qualitative data, namely in the Classification section in MMW. Are you considering synchronizing those with MMA and allow to use them as smart playlist criterias?

[Aralvor]

I'm an Avid user of Auto/Smart Playlists with Player Pro on Android. And there's a lot of users of this feature with PPro, based on the large number of forum postings, questions, and feature requests over there.

WHY?
Dynamic lists make sense for data that changes on the phone: ie Rating, Last Played, and Skip count, mostly (although I'd love to clean/update genres, artists, etc. and sync those back into my MMW library).

HOW?
Functionally, I think an Auto Playlist just "does its thing" whenever you select it, not constantly. So, you turn on your device, select Auto-Playlist "Awesome Mix #3"/Play, and at that time it builds a local playlist based on that set of criteria (from local tracks), and caches it. As long as you're playing that playlist, it doesn't change the selection. If you want to re-build it, just go back to your list of Playlists, and select it again. Sure, you could have it do this every time you turn on your phone, based on time, # of tracks played, or whenever you sync, but I've never found myself needing that in PPro.

USAGE PATTERNS
My usage patterns for Smart Playlists on PPro:
Given the 32GB + 64GB microSD card on my phone, I can load roughly 20,000 tracks onto my phone. Generally, I like listening to a "mix" of the genre I've picked, and want to keep it "fresh", so I want a reasonably large set of songs, randomized so I don't hear the same artist back-to-back. My ULTIMATE goal is to have ALL my music (rating > 3) on my phone, and decide what I want to listen to ON MY PHONE. Sure, once in a while, I want to listen to a particular album or artist or track, but more generally, I just want my own commercial-free radio station

I also travel a lot, so I *can't* re-sync a new playlist from MMW on a whim.

#1 RATE SONGS
I use a MMW smart playlist (genre + rating=unknown) to sync to the device (say, 1000 songs). Then in PPro, I have a similar auto-playlist, and randomize the songs. I rate the songs as I listen on my daily commute (good thing I'm not texting, huh? ).
BUT, after a while (say 250), I keep hitting rated songs, and I'm trying to get through my whole library, so I want to only hear unrated songs. So, in PPro, I just select re-select the smart playlist, and it generates a logically "new" playlist of only those songs still unrated (now=750), and I'm good for a little while longer. Wash, rinse, repeat....and re-sync

#2 CHOOSE SUBSETS ON-THE-FLY
Sometimes, spur-of-the-moment, I want "all the hard rock songs from the 80's", or "all Rock, Pop....from 1976" (kinda fun to recall what was going on in a given year). And so on. Sure, I could create these in MMW and sync them, but with only a few tags (year, genre, BPM, last played, etc.) this leads to a ridiculously large number of permutations - now I have to choose among 1,000 pre-defined playlists - that's no better than selecting each song individually. So I'll create a new playlist right then, on my phone - now go do it! And I DON'T want it sync'd back to my MMW and polluting my list of playlists there (or at least give me a yes/no option).

#3 STABLE, BUT CHANGING, a.k.a. "The Same but Different", or "The Intersection of Orthogonal Playlists"
I have some general types I want to listen to, "Rock", "80's Rock", "70's & 80's Rock", etc - ie, somewhat overlapping. But I can't load ALL of my 80's rock at one time. So, I might have auto-playlists in MMW for all 80's rock, 70's rock, etc.
I could probably do this in MMW, and just sync those playlists (does MM de-dupe across all playlists in a sync set?), but it seems like there are 2 different intentions, somewhat perpendicular to each other: on Windows, it's "What do I want to load on my phone", vs. on the device, it's "What do I want to listen to now?". So maybe I LOAD all artists whose name begins with A-G, but I want to LISTEN to "Rock 1971-1983".

Granted, some of this is driven by the effort to re-sync to my MMW computer - if it only took 5 minutes to transfer 5,000 songs and ratings back & forth, and I always had my full library with me, it might not be as important. (can I please sync remotely across the internet to my home machine from my phone? )

If I had to choose only 1 of the above, it would be the "only unrated" playlist.

In any case, it's an amazing product already - keep up the great work!

Dude, my thoughts exactly, actually thats almost (except for the #3 part, actually if you have a minute, could explain that idea in PM? i don't really get it :/) word for word the descriptiong of how i deal with my own music (though only 16+64gb here

Please please please release this smart playlist request, i'm almost done retagging my entire music library and i want to finally be able to use the most powerful of MM feature : its metadatas management ..

[lostinthought]

WOW I started drooling just thinking about being able to create an Auto PLaylist on MMA where I can filter by RATINGS!!!!
So here is me throwing in my request for this feature!!!

[MPG]

Hi,
I know this has been requested and I'd like to add my voice to the many....
I need (notice it isn't want?) the ability to have MMA generate playlists of songs never played. Here's why!

I have a playlist on my desktop that generates songs that I've never listened to. I then sync those songs to my phone. I need MMA to only play songs that I haven't listened to on my phone. This way, at some point, I will have listened to every song in my library....well, if I ever stop adding to it.

I do sync the phone to MMD to update the play count, what I don't know is if I've listened to every song that I synced onto my phone.

Please developers....make MMA the be all/end all of all players...add this feature....

TIA,
MPG

[rovingcowboy]

Simply enter the options for the sync configuration and have it automatically remove the songs on the phone not in the never played play list also tell mm in those config options what folder location on the phone you want the songs removed from. Then only sync that list.

[MPG]

Thanks RovingCowboy,
Couple of issues that I think exist for your proposed solution. The MMD auto playlist randomly picks songs that I've never listened to and is limited to 4 GB (the amount of space on my phone I have available for music). I have about 50,000 songs I've never listened to. So every time I click on the playlist, different songs are provided. So there's no way it can remove the songs on the phone. In essence here are the steps I perform.
1) Sync Metadata from the phone to the PC to update the playcounts and whatever else it does.
2) Using the phone, I delete the synced music folder.
3) Connect the phone to the computer
4) Open the Never Played playlist in MMD
5) Transfer the files to my phone
6) Using the phone, I move the files from the android/data/com.ventis... folder to the desired music folder.

The other issue is that with there not being an auto-playlist, I can only select tracks then random play, which means that I quite often hear a song I've already heard, which defeats the whole purpose of what I'm doing.

Am I doing something wrong?

[rovingcowboy]

If you're playlist on mmw finds songs of zero play count the list will move them from the phone after it syncs the data of play count gor the ones that have it. Since the list finds only zero count songs it wont have them in the list so it will remove the played ones. That is if the played data is sycned to the computer before the play list is loaded with songs to add to the phone. If it syncs the data at the same time it loads on the phone then the played song's data should be on the computer even if it removed the song. Unless it removes the song before it zyncs.

[rusty]

MMA 1.1.3 should be out the door soon and deals with various under the hood issues that needed to be fixed before moving forward.

Our next release will focus on new features / UI and this is certainly near the top of the list.

-Rusty

[MPG]

Great news Rusty. And thanks RovingCowboy for trying to help.

I eagerly await the 1.1.3 release.

MPG

[nonob]

Hi,

Do you mean that auto-playlist will be added to 1.1.3 ?

If yes, is it include in the Beta app on Google play ?

[ChoppedBroccoli]

Any updates on the likelihood of smart/auto playlists coming to the device?
Instead of thinking ahead of all the possible auto playlists I could want and transferring 100s of them over to the phone, I much rather have the ability to build auto playlists on the fly on the device. I think this is a killer feature and would pay to upgrade for it to the MMA Pro version.

Long-term, an amazing feature would be voice recognition (either via Google Now, or directly in the MMA app) that would allow me to say something like:
'Play songs from the 90's that are rated higher than 2 stars and are from the genres R&B or Rap'
That would be an amazing experience while driving.

But for now, the bare minimum of being able to create smart playlists on the fly on the device with the same power of filters (or close to it) on MM Windows would be highly desired and I'm hoping I can pay you guys soon for such a feature!

[MPG]

Any word on when/if this coming? Any word at all?

[Peke]

It is coming, but no deadline.

[toyzrme]

Thanks RovingCowboy,
Couple of issues that I think exist for your proposed solution. The MMD auto playlist randomly picks songs that I've never listened to and is limited to 4 GB (the amount of space on my phone I have available for music). I have about 50,000 songs I've never listened to. So every time I click on the playlist, different songs are provided. So there's no way it can remove the songs on the phone. In essence here are the steps I perform.
1) Sync Metadata from the phone to the PC to update the playcounts and whatever else it does.
2) Using the phone, I delete the synced music folder.
3) Connect the phone to the computer
4) Open the Never Played playlist in MMD
5) Transfer the files to my phone
6) Using the phone, I move the files from the android/data/com.ventis... folder to the desired music folder.

The other issue is that with there not being an auto-playlist, I can only select tracks then random play, which means that I quite often hear a song I've already heard, which defeats the whole purpose of what I'm doing.

Am I doing something wrong?

Maybe I don't fully understand what problem you're having, but I think you may be over-thinking this.... MMW keeps track of a separate "Sync Profile" for each device it syncs to (kept in MM.DB), including which songs were last sync'd to it - therefore, it knows what to pull off (if so selected by your playlists)

If you create an AutoPlaylist in MMW with these features:
- select files that have never been played before
- limit of 4GB
- Random sort

Then sync it with your phone: it will remember which songs were sync'd. (I think this is kept in a table on the PC, i.e. which songs were "pushed" to that unique phone/device/memory card)
When you sync the next time, it will first remove the songs no longer selected (whether because they were played, or the random sort picked 4,000 new ones), then put new songs on your phone to get back up to 4k.

Try it with a small list, like 20 songs, and verify whether it does what you want. (i.e. sync the 20 to the phone, play a few to completion, then sync again once or twice, and see if those played are removed)

If you don't want it always picking new songs (i.e. replacing all 4,000 songs every time), then:
- set the sort order first to PLAYCOUNT (ascending, i.e. "0's first"): to isolate/group the unplayed songs
- PLUS sort on another field (non-random, ie by title, or artist, etc.): this way they always come up in the same order
- and the limit of 4,000 will take the first 4,000 from that sorted list
It will pick the same first ~4,000 tracks, minus those you've played, plus a few new ones to get to 4k. You can do a "play random" on your phone to mix it up (since it will be in a fixed order)


I use last-play-date rather than play count, so that it's not just a binary "have/have not" listened, but rather "how long since heard", and so they'll come around again someday. I went through similar thoughts working with my library and playlists - for more details, and maybe trigger ideas, see my "Ultimate Playlist" here: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 28#p423300

[rapidoizoo]

Hi, I like to know if it is possible to ceate autoplaylist with MMA?

It cool with Media Monkey for PC to have different autolist to play song with a rating of 4, or 5 star. But i like make the same thing on my android cell , to rate my song, and sync it back to my pc.

If MMA have not that feature, there is a way to sync MMW with other App on my cell phone?


thank's for your help, and excuse my english, i'am a french guy