Mix and Shuffle not alternating artists

[rsolorio]

Issue description:

Based on a feature I requested about implementing the ability to alternate artists in a playlist, I was told this behavior should be already working with the Shuffle and Mix functions, but it is not working for me.

I created a playlist with only two rules: matching any of two different artists. After I load the playlist and click either the Shuffle button or the Personal Mix button, the songs are indeed re-ordered, I can see a few cases where artists alternate but it doesn’t happen for all cases.

In one scenario, one of the artists has 36 songs, and the other one has 23; I thought this was probably a factor for not getting artists properly alternated, but I tried a second scenario where both artists have the same number of songs, and I see just some of the tracks alternate artists, but some other don’t.

Logs:

Attaching log recorded when the playlist was loaded, and when the Shuffle and Mix buttons were clicked.
debug.log (184.8 KB)

Screenshots:

Attaching screeshots of the orginal smart playlist and how the track list end up after applying shuffle or mix. As you can see, artists are not alternating.

Additional information:

Reference to the feature I requested:

Alternate songs by artist

I’ve tried both and I’ve never seen that behavior, that’s why I thought it wasn’t implemented, I’ll report a bug, thanks.

[Tolriq]

36+23 is 59 not 65

And I do not understand how you can reach a queue of 50 items with a playlist of 65.

There’s something odd in what you do here.

As a side note, the reorder is based on the artist display name so if you have one song that is Madonna, Britney Spears and the other is Britney Spears, Madonna they are not seen as equals and can be next to the other.

[rsolorio]

Haha, sorry for my bad math, I guess I need to go back to school.

I created a simpler scenario, two artists: Radiohead and Oasis. Both have the same display name: either Radiohead or Oasis. Both have 5 songs, 10 total.

I’m attaching three screenshots:

• The original playlist, 10 tracks
• The shuffled list, where you can see tracks 6 and 7 did not alternate the artist.
• The mixed list, only displaying 6 tracks (3 Radiohead, 3 Oasis) but again, artists do not alternate.

EDIT: after trying the Shuffle multiple times I noticed that some times alternating artists work ok, but most of the times it doesn’t work.

[Tolriq]

Well the mix does work it removes the last played stuff then does with what it have left.

The shuffle mostly works for you too, I can’t repro. Will try to generate the exact same playlist.

[rsolorio]

Ok. Let me know if I can get you more info to repro.

[Tolriq]

So mix works with the display artist and albums to ensure distribution, for the playlist it’s actually loaded in chunks for performance reason so can’t really work.

So you should use the mix function. And sorry I still have no intention to add the artist split sort as it’s not possible for smart playlists.

[rsolorio]

But even with the mix function alternating artists does not work, even the chunk being used is not alternating artists.

Or are you saying that the way it is implemented is by alternating artists in combination with albums?

[Tolriq]

Yes it ensure no close repetition of same album same artist.

There’s never the need for exact artist rotations that does not bring much to the listening.

[rsolorio]

Well, that’s exactly what I was looking for in the feature I requested: artist-only rotation. It’s a bummer you won’t implement it.

[Tolriq]

The perf impact or code maintenance necessary just for you can’t be justified.

[rsolorio]

Yeah, I find it really usefull, I wonder why people don’t really find a good use for it. Fair enough. Thanks.