Sorting new songs (automatically) added to a playlist the same way current songs were sorted with the "Re-Sort" option

[TBAce11]

Good afternoon everyone,

After a lengthy conversation with Andre that convinced me to opt for playlists for the shuffling of my entire music library and other activities, I noticed they have a small shortcoming when adding new songs since they are placed at the bottom of the playlist regardless of which "Re-sort" option has been used to organize the whole list. While he did point out that a playlist is a "pre-written group of songs to play, stored line by line" in regards of the complexity of an operation on new songs, I would really love if PA could organize the new songs I add to a playlist with the exact same selected sort method chosen (random sort in my case).

It could also be a feature to toggle on/off in the Settings -> Collection -> Playlists menu to avoid forcing it to every member, though I highly doubt that they're happy seeing their newly added songs at the bottom of the playlist, making the sequence of songs very predictable once the player gets there and a manual organization too big of a chore.

[Fitzian]

Andre also suggested (among several options and forgive me if I'm misremembering) a prompt when adding songs to playlists, that could add songs to the top end, back end, or randomly throughout the playlist.

 

HOWEVER.

 

Randomly adding songs into a playlist presents you another problem.

 

You seem to be trying to play through your entire collection in some randomly generated (but once created stable/permanent) order.

 

Let's say you've got this playlist of say 10,000 songs in their randomly generated order. You've gotten to song #3,764 out of those 10,000. Now you've added 11 new songs to your library and want these inserted into the playlist randomly.

 

What on earth are you supposed to do if ANY of these 11 new songs are then randomly inserted BEFORE the song that was previously song #3,764 in the playlist? Is Poweramp supposed to only place the newly added songs randomly amongst the remaining 6236 songs?

 

Anyone else's head hurt?

[MotleyG]

57 minutes ago, TBAce11 said:

Good afternoon everyone,

After a lengthy conversation with Andre that convinced me to opt for playlists for the shuffling of my entire music library and other activities, I noticed they have a small shortcoming when adding new songs since they are placed at the bottom of the playlist regardless of which "Re-sort" option has been used to organize the whole list. While he did point out that a playlist is a "pre-written group of songs to play, stored line by line" in regards of the complexity of an operation on new songs, I would really love if PA could organize the new songs I add to a playlist with the exact same selected sort method chosen (random sort in my case).

It could also be a feature to toggle on/off in the Settings -> Collection -> Playlists menu to avoid forcing it to every member, though I highly doubt that they're happy seeing their newly added songs at the bottom of the playlist, making the sequence of songs very predictable once the player gets there and a manual organization too big of a chore.

The reality is this - a playlist is a fixed file of songs in an order defined at the time it was created. When you add new songs to your library, these songs are not in that list. You can choose to have Poweramp add them to that list manually, to the end of that list. Even with some previously chosen re-sort method, how could Poweramp somehow add these in some shuffled method without affecting the rest of that order?

Just choose to re-sort again after adding these new tracks, and you can have a whole new playlist order played at random. Seems as simple as it gets.

[MotleyG]

19 minutes ago, Fitzian said:

Anyone else's head hurt?

@Fitzian Exactly.

Poweramp is not a playlist manager, metadata editor, karaoke machine, video player, or some cookbook recipe organizer. It is a premium music player, with a robust UI to browse your library and choose what to play. For all of these other functions… well there is an(other) app for that, but it is not Poweramp.

[TBAce11]

1 hour ago, MotleyG said:

The reality is this - a playlist is a fixed file of songs in an order defined at the time it was created. When you add new songs to your library, these songs are not in that list. You can choose to have Poweramp add them to that list manually, to the end of that list. Even with some previously chosen re-sort method, how could Poweramp somehow add these in some shuffled method without affecting the rest of that order?

Just choose to re-sort again after adding these new tracks, and you can have a whole new playlist order played at random. Seems as simple as it gets.

Until you realize that the whole point of using a playlist is to emulate a "Shuffle All" option that PA already offers, but without losing your progress when another playlist/shuffle mode is triggered with no options to undo the choice. I do understand Fitzian's query and how the consequences of adding new songs randomly before the current one are hard to visualize, but the thing is PA does just that flawlessly (for about 2 years now) with the same "Shuffle All", which until late February somehow retained my progress even when I ventured in a different shuffle mode/playlist while adding new songs in my library as well. Perhaps they were always added after song #3764 if I were to reuse his scenario, but the bottomline is that it works and it wouldn't be too far fetched to assume playlists can do something similar considering all the impressive and complex tools Max has conceived so far. Using a different app to support an automated task that ressembles more of a convention than a feature sounds more bothersome than anything else. I do plan on re-sorting the playlist again after adding these new tracks, but only once the entire "old" library has been played through once.

Edited March 13, 2022 by TBAce11

[andrewilley]

As discussed in the other thread, the 'Shuffle All Songs' mode does exactly what you want, and any songs newly found by the scanner and added to the Library will be inserted randomly somewhere within the forthcoming songs sequence. This will remain your playback order until every song has been played - so you can listen to your whole Library that way if you want, and your progress will be remembered even between Poweramp listening sessions and/or phone reboots.

However should you actively interrupt and change that order by (for example) choosing a different Shuffle mode or choosing some other playback mode/category, a brand new playback sequence will need to be generated to replace the old one. PA does not have an infinite series of memories for old Categories/Shuffles/Repeat modes/etc, a new sequence is generated each time you change modes. Thus if you later choose to go back to listening to 'Shuffle All Songs' again, you will hear a new random sequence - i.e. it will Shuffle All Songs for you. 

So to listen to your whole Library in random order, simply enable 'Shuffle All Songs' and continue to listen without making any mode changes.
 

If you want something that you can stop, listen to other music selections, and then return to exactly where you left off (using the Position Memory feature) then a Playlist is your only option. However a Playlist is a curated and defined list of songs, rather like the contents page of a book, and is a snapshot of the moment it was created or edited without any dynamic List Options sorting applied.

A playlist can easily be created based on your whole Library, and you can later add to it or edit it at will - for example by moving songs up or down, using the one-time 'Re-sort' option, or editing the contents of the list externally. However the contents or order will NOT get changed automatically, nor will new content be added to any particular playlist just because the scanner found a new song on your device. Playlists are fixed song-by-song lists, with no dynamic sorting order, which are played exactly as they are found.

Andre 

[TBAce11]

Thank you for the clarification Andre. I believe I have misused the word "automatic" in this context since I was refering to the random sort taking care of the songs' order once I submit them myself to the playlist. However, based on what you just said in even more details, it doesn't seem like static playlists can support this dynamic process.

[andrewilley]

4 hours ago, TBAce11 said:

it doesn't seem like static playlists can support this dynamic process.

Now if we'd all just said that in the first place this thread could have been significantly shorter and saved a lot of typing.

One thing that may make a difference for you in the future is an existing Feature Request to introduced an 'Insert shuffled into playlist' feature accessed via long-pressing the '+Playlist' icon. Once implemented, you could periodically view the 'Recently Added' category and insert any newly found content into your master playlist in a random manner rather than just adding to the end of the list. I'm sure it would be possible to design the code so randomly inserted items get placed somewhere beyond the current playback position if the Playlist is currently playing or has List Memory enabled.

Andre