OK fellow ROON Linux/Ubuntu Users. This ones for you. I would chalk this up as a nice rainy day project if you feel inclined enough to give it a try.
So after losing faith waiting for a permanent fix to the above mentioned issue that’s been around since version 1 (basically) I set out to try and come up with a fix of my own. This goal has been accomplished 100% for my purposes; maybe it will be good others also?
Summary of Goal:
I want to be able to select a Playlist (That I created) within ROON and “Shuffle” just that specific Playlist. This Playlist is typically based on the contents of some Child Sub-Folder living below the Primary ROON Music folder on my NAS. In many cases, this Playlist also consists of only one specific Genre of Music.
Most importantly here, I want those tracks found within that Playlist to be “Shuffled” in such a way that I should never find myself saying “Hey, didn’t I just hear these tracks last time I played this Playlist yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that…etc?”. I mean, some of these Playlists are very large so there is no reason\excuse to be hearing the same tracks again and again. If the “Shuffle” function was truly Random this would not be an issue. Clearly, it is not Random at all. I believe the Shuffle mechanism instead uses “intelligence” that thinks those songs most often played are also the same songs someone wants to hear more often. Of course there is a problem with that when the Shuffle feature keeps picking the same crap every time thus skewing the results of any process relying of this form of decision making.
Anyway…enough with the Rant and onto the solution. Below is a Highlevel List of what I did for those wanting to get a general idea. I will follow up with specifics at the end.
- Create a Master PlayList of every track/album found within each music genre Sub-Folder found on my NAS. These folders are organized based on my definition of what Genre of Music lives inside it. Like So:
MUSIC…(ROON Parent Folder)…
.............ROCK
...........BOSTON
................THIRD STAGE
.......................Track #1
.......................Track #2
…METAL
…MELLOW
…BLUES
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These Master Playlists will be used as the “Source” for generating additional, very RANDOM, additional Playlists based on the Genre in question.
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Using the folder/genere/band/album/track data within each of these Master playlists above, assign each and every line a randomly generated up to 10 digit long numerical string.
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Using that randomly generated number string, sort the list of numbers from smallest to largest
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Pipe the output of that now random list of music tracks into a new .M3U Playlist
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Do all of this using only 2 scripts that are placed on the ROON Core server and are kicked off via a CRON Job that runs at some interval of your choosing.
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End Result…Depending on your choice/schedule frequency you will always have a Truly Random Playlist at your fingertips for any given Genre you care to listen to.
Continued in Next Post