How do you shuffle an entire artist?

[Cpasley]

When I select an artist I hit the "shuffle" button next to the "play" button. This results in it playing just the first album under a particular artist. For example, in V2 if you long pressed on an artist play and shuffle options appear but I can't seem to get it to work the same way. I apologize if this has been brought up but it's driving me crazy (more so then usual).

 

Thanks 

[maxmp]

It actually shuffles artist, but in shuffle songs, shuffle albums mode. If you want to shuffle all songs without albums separation, go to the all artist songs.

If you feel this should be improved (e.g. you may want to shuffle all artist songs immediately from the artist page) - please let me know, I think adding specific option for this won't be a problem.

[blaubär]

23 minutes ago, maxmp said:

It actually shuffles artist, but in shuffle songs, shuffle albums mode.

It doesn't do that for me. The shuffle mode is "Shuffle songs/categories". After the first album of the chosen artist has finished, another album of another artist starts playing.

Are you saying this should be otherwise ? We had this debate already in the past when people complained about being unable to shuffle artist's albums. They couldn't, and I didn't hear that it should work, that is until now.

Edit: Samsung s7 Oreo 818

I don't have album artist in each and every song, but those without are well defined by artist

[blaubär]

So, does the shuffling of an artist's albums by pressing shuffle in the list view of the artist work for anybody ?

Meaning, does it play an album in shuffled order, then if you switch to next album, either manually or automatically, do you get an album of the same artist ?

[andrewilley]

I think the default operation should be to shuffle the entire current category level. So if you are viewing the first drill-down level (in this case, an Artist's name) then the logical expectation when tapping the Shuffle icon would be to hear randomly shuffled songs from that artist's complete body of work (i.e. completely randomly within that Artist's name, without any album structure).

However if you had already drilled down from the artist's top-level into one of their albums, and then you tap the Shuffle icon, I would expect it to first play that entire album shuffled (or at least all of the songs in it that are tagged using that Track Artist) and only once that album is finished pick another random album by the same artist to play shuffled *.

The same logic should apply with Folder and other categories. If you tap Shuffle when viewing a folder, then any songs within that folder (including any sub-folders) should be played completely at random without any grouping structure. Only if you first drill-down into a subfolder should that subfolder be played completely before moving on to the next subfolder (randomly chosen from the same parent folder) *. 

* The option to move on to the next list, or stop at the end of the first list, should be under the control of the Repeat>Advance List option.

Andre

[blaubär]

1 hour ago, andrewilley said:

I think the default operation should be to shuffle the entire current category level. So if you are viewing the first drill-down level (in this case, an Artist's name) then the logical expectation when tapping the Shuffle icon would be to hear randomly shuffled songs from that artist's complete body of work (i.e. completely randomly within that Artist's name, without any album structure).

However if you had already drilled down from the artist's top-level into one of their albums, and then you tap the Shuffle icon, I would expect it to first play that entire album shuffled (or at least all of the songs in it that are tagged using that Track Artist) and only once that album is finished pick another random album by the same artist to play shuffled *.

The same logic should apply with Folder and other categories. If you tap Shuffle when viewing a folder, then any songs within that folder (including any sub-folders) should be played completely at random without any grouping structure. Only if you first drill-down into a subfolder should that subfolder be played completely before moving on to the next subfolder (randomly chosen from the same parent folder) *. 

* The option to move on to the next list, or stop at the end of the first list, should be under the control of the Repeat>Advance List option.

Andre

Thank you, Andre, that's a sensible specification.

So I guess we have a bug. Or is it rather a feature request ?

[blaubär]

I searched a bit and found the discussion we had in november :

 

 

[Mr. Make Believe]

5 hours ago, andrewilley said:

I think the default operation should be to shuffle the entire current category level. So if you are viewing the first drill-down level (in this case, an Artist's name) then the logical expectation when tapping the Shuffle icon would be to hear randomly shuffled songs from that artist's complete body of work (i.e. completely randomly within that Artist's name, without any album structure).

However if you had already drilled down from the artist's top-level into one of their albums, and then you tap the Shuffle icon, I would expect it to first play that entire album shuffled (or at least all of the songs in it that are tagged using that Track Artist) and only once that album is finished pick another random album by the same artist to play shuffled *.

The same logic should apply with Folder and other categories. If you tap Shuffle when viewing a folder, then any songs within that folder (including any sub-folders) should be played completely at random without any grouping structure. Only if you first drill-down into a subfolder should that subfolder be played completely before moving on to the next subfolder (randomly chosen from the same parent folder) *. 

* The option to move on to the next list, or stop at the end of the first list, should be under the control of the Repeat>Advance List option.

Andre

This is what I expected it to do and for me is the most logical. +1

[Ve6etable]

8 hours ago, blaubär said:

So, does the shuffling of an artist's albums by pressing shuffle in the list view of the artist work for anybody ?

Meaning, does it play an album in shuffled order, then if you switch to next album, either manually or automatically, do you get an album of the same artist ?

I get the "Shuffle songs/categories" same as you ...Been driving me crazy thought I wasn't understanding something, I expect it to shuffle whatever is showing on that screen but then some random other album starts playing. Surely this isn't supposed to be this way.

[blaubär]

14 minutes ago, Ve6etable said:

Surely this isn't supposed to be this way.

Yes, if we take maxmp's statement above

"It actually shuffles artist, but in shuffle songs, shuffle albums mode."

then he expects Poweramp not to change the artist in the scenario discussed here.

So that is a bug.

Allegedly shuffling hasn't changed since V2. If I might venture a wild guess:  But the filter is gone, and perhaps that filter was used to restrict the choice of songs to the current artist.

[Motdog]

For the love of God fix this.  I used to love shuffling through an artists catalog.  Shouldn't be difficult 

 

Please & thank you 

[blaubär]

3 hours ago, Motdog said:

For the love of God fix this.  I used to love shuffling through an artists catalog.  Shouldn't be difficult 

 

Please & thank you 

I linked this discussion to a new bug report.

I suggest we continue there, as it is a bug in V3 , not just this build.

[maxmp]

I see what you mean here. I'm adding a specific logic to limit artists/albums shuffling to just that given artist (alternatively, there will be other artist albums, but only when given target artist albums finished - so <<< >>> buttons are not blocked and continue to navigate further),

+ I'm adding option to shuffle strictly all (artist) songs when shuffle button is pressed in artist albums page (so shuffle button behaves the same way as shuffle button in artist/all songs page).

[blaubär]

50 minutes ago, maxmp said:

I see what you mean here. I'm adding a specific logic to limit artists/albums shuffling to just that given artist (alternatively, there will be other artist albums, but only when given target artist albums finished - so <<< >>> buttons are not blocked and continue to navigate further),

+ I'm adding option to shuffle strictly all (artist) songs when shuffle button is pressed in artist albums page (so shuffle button behaves the same way as shuffle button in artist/all songs page).

👍

Thank you ! That would be great !

[andrewilley]

Thanks Max, I think that will make a lot of people happy.

I would suggest that if it's going to be an option, you make it the default as it's the most intuitive method. Since drilling down one more level and playing Shuffled from an Artist>Album level would presumably give the same result as the current system, so I really don't think it even needs to be an option as users would still be able to get at the old system that way anyway. 

Are you going to apply this beyond just the Artists and also to folders/etc, as I think the same logic applies to any category which can have subgrouping below the main level.

Andre

[maxmp]

By default now (819+) it shuffles first given artist albums (when they end, it then continues to other random albums). 

[Mr. Make Believe]

3 hours ago, maxmp said:

By default now (819+) it shuffles first given artist albums (when they end, it then continues to other random albums). 

Thnx! 

[Motdog]

13 hours ago, maxmp said:

By default now (819+) it shuffles first given artist albums (when they end, it then continues to other random albums). 

Are you saying it's fixed? Playstore shows last update in Dec. 2018. 

I just want to go to click on led zep in artists & be able to shuffle all songs by them. It used to be so easy to do. Seems like there are extra steps in everything since upgrade.  

Had program for well over 5 years and loved it 

 

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, Motdog said:

Are you saying it's fixed? Playstore shows last update in Dec. 2018. 

819 has not been released yet, the latest publicly available build is 818 which was issued a couple of days ago (see the Downloads tab at the top of the page). The Google Play store will often be a little behind the forum download version though.

Andre

[Cpasley]

Thanks Max for addressing that this was an issue, I thought perhaps it just took a different approach. I am currently running 816 so am eagerly waiting for the update, as I'm usually driving (for Lyft) while using this the simple operation is a great add.

[andrewilley]

Oh, and while you are working in that part of the code, I think that the settings option to commence playing and go the Player UI should also be respected when you tap the Shuffle or Play icons, in the same way it works when you tap a song title. At the moment, even if you have "Settings > Library > Lists > Click Action" set to "Play and go to Main UI", tapping the Shuffle or Play icons still remains in the library view.

Andre

[Motdog]

18 hours ago, andrewilley said:

819 has not been released yet, the latest publicly available build is 818 which was issued a couple of days ago (see the Downloads tab at the top of the page). The Google Play store will often be a little behind the forum download version though.

Andre

Gotcha.  Thanks, Ill be waiting for the update like Charlie Brown waiting at his mailbox for a valentine from the litttle redheaded girl

[MotleyG]

14 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Oh, and while you are working in that part of the code, I think that the settings option to commence playing and go the Player UI should also be respected when you tap the Shuffle or Play icons, in the same way it works when you tap a song title. At the moment, even if you have "Settings > Library > Lists > Click Action" set to "Play and go to Main UI", tapping the Shuffle or Play icons still remains in the library view.

Andre

+1 for this plz

[Urchin]

This is the missing feature that made me revert to V2. Since I almost always have my music on shuffle and it didn't work right, that made V3 unusable for me. I hope this resolves the problems and makes shuffle work like it used to be on V2. Please add this to folder mode as well, which is what I always use. Just to clarify how it works on V2 and how I think it should work on V3:

 

In Folder View mode:

• If I'm at the root of my "Music" folder and choose shuffle, it should randomly shuffle all subfolders (artists, albums, songs) one song at a time. There should be no correlation between one song and the next, other than random chance. One song might be Artist X / Album C / Song 5 and the next could be Artist Z / Album A / Song 2.
• If I'm at the root of one of my "Artist" folders, it should randomly shuffle all subfolders, which at this point would be different albums/songs by that artist. Again, this should RANDOMLY play the tracks. It should not be based on album or anything else.
• If I'm in the folder for a specific album, it should shuffle only the songs in that folder/album.
• In all of the above examples it would be nice to have some options about what happens when all songs are finished. Maybe we could choose what it does such as stop playback, reshuffle and play again, etc.

 

[blaubär]

Boys, it finally works ! Tested it with the new build 819 for artist's albums. Shuffled all albums of artist, only then switched the artist.