"Intelligent" Playlist Creator

[loubat]

After erroneously thinking a "Smart Playlist" was a term I dreamed up all by myself, I quickly found that Googling "Smart Playlist Winamp" pulled a bunch of results for a feature ITunes calls Smart Playlists, which isn't what I was looking for at all (I don't think so, anyway). I briefly monkeyed with "Smart Views" in the Winamp Media Library, which honestly I never use the Media Library at all, I just drag and drop the folders/files I want to listen to in to the Playlist Editor. But I didn't see the kind of options I was looking for, so if I just need to really dive into the Smart View options, just let me know.

I want to be able to make playlists with limits such as "Play [artist] no more than [x] times per [hour]." Or "Play no more than [x] songs per artist per hour." That kind of thing.

That way if I want to hear something by artist [x] and I've got 1000 songs by them, but only want to hear something by them once an hour or so, instead of having to pick each song myself, the pc would pick one of their songs randomly to play.

Does anything like this exist for Winamp? If not, does it exist for other media players like FooBar or something?

Thanks in Advance!

[Stone Free]

After erroneously thinking a "Smart Playlist" was a term I dreamed up all by myself, I quickly found that Googling "Smart Playlist Winamp" pulled a bunch of results for a feature ITunes calls Smart Playlists, which isn't what I was looking for at all (I don't think so, anyway). I

Dunno, but I wish the Winamp one worked more like Apples. You cannot do recursive presets with Winamp i.e This playlist must [NOT] Contain files from Playlist1 Modified in the last 7 days, with a Rating of 5.

Also some of the fields simply don't work.

[Jamil]

The only mixer application that I know of able to do anything of this sort is MusicIP Mixer. There are options where you can specify the number of times the same artist appears in the mix:

[loubat]

The only mixer application that I know of able to do anything of this sort is MusicIP Mixer. There are options where you can specify the number of times the same artist appears in the mix:

Thanks for the suggestion. Seems the app is now abandonware and there's no support for it at all. Even the Help links within the program link to dead webpages. Looks like it would do what I'm mainly looking for, but when I try to open a playlist it only loads part of the playlist and tells me "Unable to load all songs from playlist." It would be nice to know why it can't load the other songs, but there's no error log or anything like that, and no support. I'll keep messing around with it though.

I stumbled on another program that does the same thing, only much worse "Mixtape Maker." If you give it a huge directory to search through, it starts adding songs from the beginning and when it fills up the allotted time you gave it (say, 2 hours) it stops. So you basically get songs from the first couple folders and that's it.

Seems like this would be a relatively simple program for anybody that was a half-way decent programmer; scan music collection, read the tags, apply the filters, viola. Guess I'll keep searching! Thanks again.

[Aminifu]

Hi loubat,

Did you tell MusicIP where all your music is (File - Preferences - Watch Folders) and gave it time to analyze everything? It will take quite awhile with a large collection.

Are you sure the file locations for the songs in the playlists are correct for those that are not loaded?

What is/are the format(s) of the files that are not loaded? It's been reported that MusicIP has problems with some flac files. It also has trouble with files that have foreign characters in their path and/or file names.

While MusicIP is no longer supported, it somehow still mostly works. Are you using version 1.8.1b? Try a Google search for your specific problem(s).

[kabayan]

So frustrating with Winamp Playlist generator handling big ML. it always crash and so many bugs, like getting crash if you tried to stop scanning at step 2/4, adding more tracks to your lib after scanning then rescanning and countless more bugs. The playlist generated also give a lot of WTF result but better than MusicIP. MusicIP has more WTF result however musicIP has less bugs and scan ML much faster. What I did is, I reinstalled Itune to use genius then import the result to winamp. Make sure all ML of both software are on same directory. Winamp Smart playlist is good but has more tweaking to do like adding playlist option, live updating and perhaps would be able to display all songs that has the same name with the same artist, that way would be easier to find all duplicate songs.

[Aminifu]

Hi kabayan,

There is a 3rd party utility for managing playlists that you may want to try called "listFix()". Along with removing duplicate and missing files, it can also 'fix' entries for files that have been moved to a different location on the hard drive. Many other useful features. It is a Java app, so you need to have the Java run-time environment installed.

http://listfix.sourceforge.net/

[Jamil]

Thanks for the suggestion. Seems the app is now abandonware and there's no support for it at all. Even the Help links within the program link to dead webpages. Looks like it would do what I'm mainly looking for, but when I try to open a playlist it only loads part of the playlist and tells me "Unable to load all songs from playlist." It would be nice to know why it can't load the other songs, but there's no error log or anything like that, and no support. I'll keep messing around with it though.

You have to use the last version the company had created prior to ceasing development for it. It's version 1.8.1b that you can get here:

http://www.amplifindmusicservices.com/what/downloads.php

The difference with this version compared to the older ones is that this version will allow you to create mixes on songs that show in black as unrecognized. Since the software is no longer supported, many newly released songs will not be recognized by the mixer. This version will at least allow you to create a mix with those songs.

As previously posted, you will have to let the software analyze your music library over night if you have lots of files. I currently use it only with MP3 files. For about 7,000 MP3 files it completed analysis for me the next day after starting.

[Jamil]

So frustrating with Winamp Playlist generator handling big ML. it always crash and so many bugs, like getting crash if you tried to stop scanning at step 2/4, adding more tracks to your lib after scanning then rescanning and countless more bugs.

The playlist generator of Winamp is really poorly done. My A Series Sony Walkman MP3 player is able to create better playlists on its own in hardware than the Winamp software. This shoould not be the case, since software running on a computer should be able to do much more than a flash based portable MP3 player.

[kabayan]

Hi kabayan,

There is a 3rd party utility for managing playlists that you may want to try called "listFix()". Along with removing duplicate and missing files, it can also 'fix' entries for files that have been moved to a different location on the hard drive. Many other useful features. It is a Java app, so you need to have the Java run-time environment installed.

http://listfix.sourceforge.net/

@AMFUFU
Thanks for your suggestion will gonna try it, I have already fix all duplicate songs in my ML using the good Media Library Organizer plugin. There are songs in my ML not really duplicate file as some have different album, just the same tittle and artist that soemtimes we want to get rid for space reduction. Anyway I will try it as it is an open source, though I use window 7 manager to get rid of duplicate files in my machine and fix PC health issue.

[kabayan]

maybe sone one will be able to make a good playlist creator using echo nest platform. I read some review it is as good as genius. Dont know why win amp Playlist Generator giving lot of WTF tracks when it also uses gracenotes platform which genius also using. Win Amp playlist generator really needs a lot of overhaul.