Group Songs In Randomized Playlist?

[rtillery]

Is there a way to group songs together for play in a playlist?  I have a large playlist of my favorite songs, and I like to have them played randomly. But there are certain songs which are meant to be played together:

Van Halen: Eruption + You really Got Me
Van Halen: 1984 + Jump
Queen: We Will Rock You + We Are the Champions
Steve Miller Band: Threshold + Jet Airliner
The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band + With a Little Help From My Friends
The Beatles: Because + You Never Give Me Your Money + Sun King + Mean Mr. Mustard + Polythene Pam + She Came in Through the Bathroom Window + Golden Slumbers + Carry That Weight + The End
etc.

Is there a way to group songs within a playlist so that when these songs are chosen, they are played together?

rtillery

[maxmp]

At this moment, no, as Poweramp shuffle mode (or playlist resorting) is non weighted random. The weighted random (ability to make some tracks to play more or less frequently) is a planned feature, but I guess it won’t help with your usecase. The problem here is a usable UI for things like this.

[andrewilley]

The only way to do this is to merge the files that should always be treated as a combined entity (and thus always played together) into one audio file rather than several. There are lots of tools out there to merge MP3 files.

Andre

[rtillery]

A playlist, even if it had to be a pre-created m3u file (for example, in a first release), could be used as an entry in the playlist.

And yes, I know I can merge songs, but since I don't have to do this in an album, it would be convenient to not do this for a playlist.

 

rtillery

 

[andrewilley]

You don't have to merge songs for a playlist, they will play in the order you define. Just like Albums.

However if you want two different songs to always play back-to-back, even when you requested that the overall song order should be shuffled, then I can't see any other way.

The same would apply if you played the Album in shuffled order (the two different song files would no longer be played in their original order), so it's not just a playlist issue.

Andre

[rtillery]

Granted.

But allowing a playlist within a playlist would be fairly easy. (Recursion is your friend.)

 

rtillery

 

[andrewilley]

4 minutes ago, rtillery said:

But allowing a playlist within a playlist would be fairly easy. (Recursion is your friend.)

As far as I know, that is not in the M3U(8) spec.

Andre

[rtillery]

Perhaps not. But this isn't a new idea:

And technically, it's almost trivial.

 

rtillery

 

[flyingdutchman]

@rtillery it can be achieved with my app where you can either select a number of tracks and "add to playlist(s)) or by creating several playlists and merge those. The merging will append one playlist to another

[andrewilley]

I must admit I've always wanted to be able to create cleverer playlists too. The feature I would like (also technically trivial) would be to be able to insert a folder descriptor into a playlist, instead of just specific audio files. That way it could be processed dynamically whenever I listen to that playlist, and if the audio file contents of that folder have changed in the meantime, the playlist would play whatever files it finds at the time.

The problem is, while I'm sure it would be simple enough to code, it would make any such playlists incompatible with other music software - and the beauty of the M3U format is that it's so simple that anything should be able to handle it. 

Andre

[rtillery]

13 hours ago, flyingdutchman said:

@rtillery it can be achieved with my app where you can either select a number of tracks and "add to playlist(s)) or by creating several playlists and merge those. The merging will append one playlist to another

@flyingdutchman, how do you play sub groups of songs in order, while overall playing the playlist randomly (see above)? The consensus seems to be that Poweramp doesn't currently support this.

rtillery

[flyingdutchman]

Your subgroup could be a separate playlist, merged with a random playlist or simply by selecting songs in any of the library views, create a playlist of eg an artist, and again merge to the random playlist. Merging adds to another playlist so giving you your random - subgroup - random sequence

[rtillery]

2 hours ago, flyingdutchman said:

Your subgroup could be a separate playlist, merged with a random playlist or simply by selecting songs in any of the library views, create a playlist of eg an artist, and again merge to the random playlist. Merging adds to another playlist so giving you your random - subgroup - random sequence

 

Sorry. It sounds like you are saying that I merge a sorted playlist into a "random" one. But the point of a random playlist is to have it be different every time. It's just that for certain small groups of songs, whenever they are randomly chosen, they play together. If the merged "random" list is reshuffled, I'd lose the song groupings.

If I misunderstood, please forgive me.

rtillery

 

[flyingdutchman]

@rtillery ,yes true if you reshuffle. Sounds like you want those groupings to be permanent, not just for one playlist

[rtillery]

7 hours ago, flyingdutchman said:

@rtillery ,yes true if you reshuffle. Sounds like you want those groupings to be permanent, not just for one playlist

Yes. Groups that can be part of a random list.

BTW, another use case that has come up is that I have a playlist of tunes that have been covered. I'd like to randomly play a song from the list, but then play all the cover versions back-to-back:

Please Mr. Postman: The Marvelettes, The Beatles, The Carpenters

Smokin' In The Boy's Room: Brownsville Station, Mötley Crüe

Ain't That A Shame: Fats Domino, Cheap Trick

The Loco-Motion: Little Eva, Grand Funk Railroad, Carole King, Kylie Minogue

etc.

Thanks!

rtillery

[flyingdutchman]

@rtillery if there is enough interest I probably could come up with a method to create links between tracks and when you for instance add a track to a playlist, it checks if it is linked. If yes then add those tracks as well.

Your other example can be achieved by creating playlists where the title track = "some title track" but not dynamically.

Note I am talking about NPM not Poweramp 

[rtillery]

@flyingdutchman, I didn't quit follow, but I was wondering:
Can your app modify Poweramp playlists that are already loaded into Poweramp?

The idea would be to use your app to manipulate the playlist, but then play from Poweramp.

For example, your app would include a "Favorites" playlist (matching one already in Poweramp) that includes individual songs as well as short playlists of songs that should be played together. If the user wants to reshuffle the Favorites list, that would be done in your app (not Poweramp). Then the list could be exported to Poweramp, where it would replace the existing Favorites playlist. During the export, the sub-playlists would be expanded to the individual songs between the shuffled individual songs. At that point, from Poweramp, playing the list would give the effect of random play, but groups of songs would be played together when appropriate.

rtillery

 

[flyingdutchman]

Yes my app directly creates, modifies, etc native Poweramp playlists (and a lot more )