Author Topic: Why do the same albums always show up in my auto playlist?  (Read 2600 times)

Mr. Trev

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Firstly, its not all the same, but I find that specific albums are always in my lists.
ATM, these are the auto playlist settings I'm using:

Simply I want to fill a 64GB card with unplayed albums (using a guide I found here), excluding "Various Artists" and multi disc albums.

I've noticed that even with completely different parameters quite often my playlists will contain many of the same albums
Any ideas? (I can upload a bunch of playlist if you want to check them yourselves)

Mr. Trev

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A bit more info about my library…

Currently using the above rules, I have ~2300 albums to choose from - some badness went down and I had to rebuild my library from scratch, losing all my play counts.

Considering that it takes around 200 or so albums to fill a 64gb card, I wouldn't expect so many repeats.

…or am I just wrong?

Dryst

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You have to work around this issue by adding more criteria to Auto DJ to stop it from choosing the same songs.  I have noted this in the past and commented about it.  The randomization used for song selection is very predictable and results in the same selection of songs.

This is what I do to help mix things up--

* add filter criteria that prevents the same song from be repeated within X number of days
* add filter criteria that excludes specific album artists from being selected (I do this when I have a huge number of songs from a single artists that gets played too much; this is temporary and I remove this filter later)
* add filter criteria that excludes all music from a specific artist except if it is the artist's latest release; I use this lots because I have a huge music library).
* add filter criteria that specifically selects songs never before played in addition to your usual mix.  this increases the odds of new music being selected greatly.

Adding filter combinations as above have helped me hear more random selections.

MusicBee code changes to random selection is needed to fix the root cause.  This is outside of our control, but using a secure random API call helps here:  https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/c-cookbook/0596003390/ch14s07.html
Last Edit: March 21, 2020, 11:43:35 AM by Dryst

frankz

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If you're choosing 2 things out of a list of 23, the chance of one of the 2 being the same of the last time you made the choice is pretty high.  Same with 20 out of a list of 230 or 200 out of a list of 2300.

You're noticing the ones that get repeat-chosen more than you're noticing the others.  We're programmed to notice patterns more than randomness.  I'd expect that, if you quantified it, the repeats each time the list is regenerated would be about 8-10% of the list.

Freddy Barker

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A bit more info about my library…

Currently using the above rules, I have ~2300 albums to choose from - some badness went down and I had to rebuild my library from scratch, losing all my play counts.

Considering that it takes around 200 or so albums to fill a 64gb card, I wouldn't expect so many repeats.

…or am I just wrong?

Try adding Last Played is not in the last 30 days, and experiment with the days value to suite...
Freddy

Mr. Trev

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If you're choosing 2 things out of a list of 23, the chance of one of the 2 being the same of the last time you made the choice is pretty high.  Same with 20 out of a list of 230 or 200 out of a list of 2300.

You're noticing the ones that get repeat-chosen more than you're noticing the others.  We're programmed to notice patterns more than randomness.  I'd expect that, if you quantified it, the repeats each time the list is regenerated would be about 8-10% of the list.


I get that, but the fact I generated 5 playlists back to back and the same album appeared on 3 of them seems dicey to me. There are probably more repeats like that, just the example I mentioned happened to be near the top of the list.

What's the best way to compare playlists anyways? I've been trying to use the compare plugin on Notepad++ and its just giving me a headache. Ideally, I'd like to test your 8-10% theory.

Cheers

Bee-liever

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Statistically speaking the 'random' selection is doing everything correctly.
If you generated an infinite amount of playlists you would find that each Album is represented about 50% of the time.
It's because each refresh is new random selection.  MB takes no notice of what was selected before.

As Dryst said, you need to add filter criteria that stop recently played albums from being reselected.
MusicBee and my library - Making bee-utiful music together

Mr. Trev

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Statistically speaking the 'random' selection is doing everything correctly.
If you generated an infinite amount of playlists you would find that each Album is represented about 50% of the time.
It's because each refresh is new random selection.  MB takes no notice of what was selected before.

As Dryst said, you need to add filter criteria that stop recently played albums from being reselected.

In theory, the filter Album Play Count (sum) should be preventing any played album from being selected (https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=13729.msg82645#msg82645).
Granted I'm using it in an autoplaylist not playlist mixer.

Maybe I should create a new custom tag <synced> and manually update it when I put music onto a card. That'd also have the bonus of letting me find what music is on what device, so I don't end up with dupes there either. On the other hand, keeping things straight when I change albums on the cards would be a pain.

Bee-liever

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In theory, the filter Album Play Count (sum) should be preventing any played album from being selected (https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=13729.msg82645#msg82645).
Granted I'm using it in an autoplaylist not playlist mixer.

If Album Play Count (sum) has been set up as per that post it should be filtering out played albums but only if they are complete albums.  Check the Albums that are occuring frequently for correct track# and total track count.
And make sure you are using the latest version of Additional Tagging and Reporting Tools plugin as there was some problems with the Auto Library Report in earlier versions.

Don't forget that if you have only a small pool of unplayed Albums left (not enough for your 59GB limit) MB will redo the search until it fills the size requirement, creating several duplicate selections.
MusicBee and my library - Making bee-utiful music together

Mr. Trev

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In theory, the filter Album Play Count (sum) should be preventing any played album from being selected (https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=13729.msg82645#msg82645).
Granted I'm using it in an autoplaylist not playlist mixer.

If Album Play Count (sum) has been set up as per that post it should be filtering out played albums but only if they are complete albums.  Check the Albums that are occuring frequently for correct track# and total track count.
And make sure you are using the latest version of Additional Tagging and Reporting Tools plugin as there was some problems with the Auto Library Report in earlier versions.

Don't forget that if you have only a small pool of unplayed Albums left (not enough for your 59GB limit) MB will redo the search until it fills the size requirement, creating several duplicate selections.

I did spend the better part of a day making sure the tags were set for the complete album to work. Its possible I missed some, I'll double check.

I'm using whatever version of ATR that is included with my MB v3.3.7367 P (does the "P" mean portable version?). I'll check for an update.

Based on the feedback so far I think this is probably just the nature of how random works in MB. Maybe some tweaks to the algorithm would mix things up. Or maybe it wouldn't

phred

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I'm using whatever version of ATR that is included with my MB v3.3.7367 P (does the "P" mean portable version?). I'll check for an update.
Additional Tagging & Reporting Tools is a plug-in. It is not included with MB's distribution/installation files. You have to install it manually.

And yes, the P in the version number indicates it is the portable version.
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

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The FAQ
The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here

Mr. Trev

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I'm using whatever version of ATR that is included with my MB v3.3.7367 P (does the "P" mean portable version?). I'll check for an update.
Additional Tagging & Reporting Tools is a plug-in. It is not included with MB's distribution/installation files. You have to install it manually.

And yes, the P in the version number indicates it is the portable version.

Well, silly me.I thought it was included in the MB installation now. Must have been using the old plugin for a while. It was 5.0.something. The patch I found is 5.2.something

phred

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The patch I found is 5.2.something
Yes, the current version is 5.2.7357.
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

----------
The FAQ
The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here