Re: [REQ] Auto-Playlist in MMA [#10817]- HOW and WHY
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2013 8:57 am
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!
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!