A way to link tracks together, so they always remain together even after shuffling

[Inclement Death]

I propose adding a special tag that makes sure "lead in" tracks are always followed by the correct track.

This functionality would be great for tracks like:

Brain Stew/Jaded - Green Day

Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall, pt.2 - Pink Floyd

Parabol/Parabola - Tool

In other music players, I can turn off the shuffle to hear the next track or skip backward to the "lead in", then re-enable the shuffle. Unfortunately, Poweramp's shuffle feature and track sorting differ from other music players and the workaround I normally use for linked tracks doesn't work.

Also, when sorting by Artist/Album, the track number should also be taken into account. I'll add another feature request for it.

[andrewilley]

I just merge tracks that I always want to play together into single MP3/FLAC files, then they never get played out of order. That would be a problem for concept albums though (e.g. War of the Worlds) where you might want access the tracks individually too. I leave those as separate tracks, and just live with the fact that Shuffle may start one track part-way through the story.
 

Shuffle can be turned on/off easily enough using long-press on the Shuffle icon. Note doing that will generate a new shuffle sequence when you activate the shuffle mode again, so you might some of the same songs from an album again.

@maxmp Did you give any thought to my old suggestion for an option where tapping on the Shuffle icon does a simple enable/disable, while long-press is used to select the Shuffle Mode? That would seem to address this poster's question fairly well. Or will that functionality be part of the bigger work of making that row of controls more customisable?
 

58 minutes ago, Inclement Death said:

Also, when sorting by Artist/Album, the track number should also be taken into account. I'll add another feature request for it.

Set the List Options for the songs level to 'By Disc and Track#'. Each Category and its song level can have its own List Options sorting order.

Andre

[Inclement Death]

I wasn't aware of the shuffle button long press toggle. I'll give that a try, but I still think there should be a setting to switch from the current (advanced) shuffle feature to a simple shuffle toggle.

I'm just so used to the garbage media player on my old iPhone, that all this customization and fine grained control is leaving me a bit confused. Love the UI and EQ customization though! Glad I finally got rid of that damn overpriced Apple trash and bought a OnePlus 8T.

[andrewilley]

One of the problems of adding a lot of features is that there is necessarily a learning curve to finding and using some of them.

The problem with having an option for 'simple shuffle' would be which simple shuffle to choose. I would want it to be the very simplest, 'All Songs' to randomly listen to my whole library. Whereas you would want 'Shuffle Just Songs' (so the Categories stay in order) or perhaps 'Songs & Categories'. While others might want 'Shuffle Categories' (keeping the songs within albums in order) 

Hence my suggestion of allowing the user to select their chosen shuffle mode via the long-press functionality - i.e. exactly as at present - but make tapping the Shuffle Icon act as a simple on/off toggle. That would do exactly what you want, but with more flexibility.

Andre

[Inclement Death]

I see your point and I'm just referring to the shuffle button in a playlist. If I click shuffle in one of my playlists, it should randomize the tracks within that playlist, with the exception of linked tracks. If I turn off the shuffle; it should delete the current queue, enqueue the playlist in the proper order, and continue forward from the currently playing track position. This allows the user to skip to previous tracks they may have missed because track linking does not exist.

If an album or artist list is shuffled, then that is where the advanced shuffle functionality would be the most useful.

A few years ago, I stumbled across a media player that supported track linking. If I remember correctly, you could link a group of tracks; which would prevent the tracks within the group from being randomized during a shuffle. The group itself would be randomly enqueued, but the tracks within would remain in the proper order. I just can't remember the name of the player.

[andrewilley]

The Shuffle and Play icons at the top of category/song lists are special cases in that they force specific Repeat/Shuffle modes in order to achieve their desired result, which may override what had previously been active in the Player screen.

Tapping the tap Shuffle Icon always sets the Shuffle mode to 'Shuffle Songs & Categories' - which in the case of a Playlist means PA will shuffle all of the songs in that requested playlist first, then (optionally) it will choose another playlist at random and shuffle that. If the current Repeat mode was set to either 'Single Song' or 'Repeat Song', that will get overridden to the default 'Advance Category'. However 'Repeat Off' (i.e. Play current Category only) or 'Repeat Category' will not get overridden and will remain active.

When tapping the top Play icon, Shuffle is turned Off and playback will commence with the first song in the requested list. If the current Repeat mode was set to either 'Single Song' or 'Repeat Song', that will get overridden to the default 'Advance Category'. However 'Repeat Off' (i.e. Play current Category only) or 'Repeat Category' will not get overridden and will remain active.
 

Of course this is all getting a bit off-topic from your original request for a way to connect several tracks together so they never get split during shuffling (and presumably also the same for the All Songs list, etc) which is up to @maxmp to decide whether he thinks there would be enough demand to make it worthwhile programming.

I would suggest that any such feature could be linked in with also-requested ability to remove certain types of song from shuffled sequences completely - either by folder location, or genre - so you can avoid hearing audiobook chapters, podcasts, radio shows, dramas, full concerts, etc while listening to shuffled songs.

Andre

[Lyle J]

Hello,

Was searching to see if linking tracks was possible and found this post. Doesn't appear that many users are interested but I certainly am.

Thanks!

[OldChicagoPete]

This is a big one for me as well, as I use it often with MusicBee on the desktop. My current workaround is to have MusicBee generate a shuffled playlist (with the linked songs correctly tied together) that I sync to my phone and the play the playlist with Poweramp with no shuffle.