Enable ability for Shuffle/Auto-DJ to play songs proportionally based on Ratings

[oldugly]

Here's an idea I've had for a long time. I would love it if when shuffling playback or using Auto-DJ, that MM would play my higher rated songs more often than lower rated songs. Or even the other way around. I don't believe this is currently possible, but it seems it would not be hard to create this capability.

Ideally, you would have a setting in Options that would allow you to "Enable Proportional playback based on Ratings when using Shuffle or Auto-DJ" based on clicking a checkbox (or checkboxes, if you want to enable for Shuffle but not for Auto-DJ). Then, you would be able to set a proportional value for each Rating, from Unknown to 5 stars.

For example, if you wanted to play each higher rated song more often than a lower rated song, just give each rating a value, starting with 0 for Unrated (or 1 if you want to include them), then 1 for zero stars, 2 for a half star, 3 for one star, etc. You could make it 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10... or even 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc. Or maybe, 1, 2, 4, 6, 4, 2, 1 if you want to boost the middle stars, and suppress the "bad" songs and also not overplay the "best" songs. Whatever values you define for each star would play that rating in that proportion to the other stars based on their assigned values.

Since I don't utilize half-stars, my values might be as simple as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; this would result in my 5-star songs playing 33% of the time, while my 3-star songs played 20%, and my Unrated songs never play.

I hope this makes sense, and I hope this would be a useful addition for others out there as well.

[Ludek]

Hi,
I beleive that this is currently achievable using auto-playlists?

i.e.
Options > Player > Auto-DJ
[x] Enable Auto-DJ
Add Files From: [Playlist]
'My AutoPlaylist'

And define 'My AutoPlaylist' rules like:
Playlist is '5 stars, 200 files'
Playlist is '4 stars, 150 files '
...

where '5 stars, 200 files' is another auto-playlist with rules:
Rating equals 5 stars
[x] Limit to 200 files ...

[oldugly]

I guess it depends on how that works. When setting a playlist to have a limited number of songs, does it randomly pick that number each time you play it, or does it pick them when it's created, and the playlist never changes after that? I'd want my whole library to be an option for random play. Seems like a pretty complicated way to try and make that happen.

[Lowlander]

It's the way I've been doing it for years, it really allows to fine tune the mixes. It does take a bit to setup, but it's set and forget.

If you set to Select by Random track (auto-refresh) on each of the Auto-Playlists involved you get a new list each time the parent AutoPlaylist is called.

[oldugly]

OK, thanks. I'll give that a try.