Genre and Playlist Shuffle

[vierwood]

First time here and could not find an answer for this issue:

When I am trying to shuffle songs that are in a single Genre (or Playlist), what is the correct shuffle setting to shuffle ONLY songs in that Genre? I've tried all of the settings, but it seems to jump to other Genres or Playlist a lot instead. So, what I'd like to set up is a setting that allows me to do this by swiping the album art to the left to shuttle to a different song in that Genre. That, or by pressing the "double arrow" or "triple arrow" next to the play button to shuffle songs in that genre. 

I'm playing this on my 2-year-old Motorola One 5g Ace phone, android version 11.

Thank you!

 

[maxmp]

It's either shuffle Songs or Shuffle Songs/Categories. The later is applied when shuffle button is pressed in the list header. Poweramp will still move to the next category (next genre) if repeat mode allows that.

[andrewilley]

@vierwood  There are two factors you need to consider when setting up a shuffle sequence, the Shuffle mode and the Repeat mode. Taking Genre playback as an example, you can trigger listening in several ways.

1) If you open the category view for a Genre (let's use "Electronic" as an example) you can simply tap on the 'Shuffle' icon in the header area for random playback to commence. The sequence will be to pick one album at random from that genre first, and shuffle all of its songs. After that album is finished, playback will move on to another randomly chosen Electronic album and that will be played in shuffled order, etc.

2) However If you want to listen to every individual electronic song in your collection completely randomly (i.e. with no album grouping) there is one extra step. First tap on 'All Genre Songs' at the top of the Genre list, and only then tap the 'Shuffle' icon. Playback will be a completely random selection from all of your Electronic songs - 176 of them in my example case.

Note: if you always want to shuffle all of the songs in a Category, i.e. never grouped by albums first, you can avoid that extra 'All Genre Songs' tap by choosing Settings=>Library=>Shuffle=>Category Items Shuffle = Shuffle Songs.

 

 

Finally (phew!) what happens at the end of each album - or at the end of the whole genre song list if that's the method you have chosen - is governed by the Repeat icon on the Player Screen:

• If you set it to 'Repeat Off', playback will stop at the end of each album (or at the end of the genre songs list).
• If you set it to 'Repeat Category', playback will restart again with the current album (or the same genre songs list) in a newly re-shuffled order.
• If you set it to 'Advance Category', then at the end of the current album (or the full genre songs list) playback will move on to a new album (or genre category). This is not what you asked for, so this is unlikely to be the right mode for your needs. 

The wording of those Repeat options is a bit of a legacy throwback - which hopefully might get updated in some future build to help avoid confusion for new users - but basically think of 'Repeat Off' as really meaning 'Play Current Category', while 'Advance Category' means 'Play All Categories'.

Manually pressing the '>>' or '>>>' buttons will override the automatic Repeat action by the way. So '>>>' will always move on to the next album/Category, as that is what you have explicitly asked to happen.

For more info on using the different Repeat and Shuffle modes, see:

Andre

[vierwood]

Andre,

You explained everything that I needed to know.  I was hitting the shuffle and repeat buttons AFTER I started playing, which gave me missed results. So here is what thinks look like when I follow your instructions, and everything works:

 

Related to your comments on always wanting to shuffle all of the songs in a Category, I have that set correctly, but did I also want to turn on the "Shuffle All Songs In Folder Hierarchy" setting, as shown here:

 

Lastly, some players keep "breaking up" some of my albums, basically showing one album as two albums, with some of the songs in one and the rest in the other.  I've created and checked the tags on my desktop using Media Monkey, and these albums show as one album there, not two. What's going on here? Example below where all of the songs are in one R.E.M. album and a single track is in the other album next to it:

 

I'm glad that I found the Poweramp app.  I was using Pulsar or Media Monkey for years and this one blows them out of the water!

Thanks a lot!

Vierwood

 

[andrewilley]

Most likely the Album Artist tag in one of the files for that album does not exactly match with the other songs from the same album. PA groups songs into albums based on the Album Title AND Album Artist tags.

Andre

[vierwood]

I'll take a look. Thanks again Andre. 

[andrewilley]

There's a bit more background discussion in this Guide, which might help:

Andre