Can select music tracks at random....

[jim]

Back in the 80s I had a Pioneer hifi system that took a load of cds in a cassette and, if you pressed "Random Play," selected tracks at random from any (and eventually all) of the cds in the cassette. Not cd by cd but literally would maybe just take one track from one cd and another from a different one and so on. I don't want all the bells and whistles that all these various players have but none of them seem to have this function. Unless I am missing something because I get bored with reading about all the other functions that I don't want.

[Anupam]

I think most of the music players have the option of random play. Did you try any music players?

[jim]

Thanks Anupam. I have sort of tried a few but they only random play within one album. I want random play within a whole bunch of albums. Unless it's a concept type album I don't like to listen to just one artist for an hour or so. I prefer one track from one album followed by one from another etc. Creating a playlist of (say) 100 tracks is a time consuming problem and then the next time you play music you will have exactly the same tracks in the same order so you have to go through the whole process again.

[rikishi19]

I've only used iTuned for years to organise/play music due to having an iPod. It has this feature you are after, but you may not want iTunes if you don't have the need for it, other than this feature.

[Anupam]

Originally Posted by jim

Thanks Anupam. I have sort of tried a few but they only random play within one album. I want random play within a whole bunch of albums. Unless it's a concept type album I don't like to listen to just one artist for an hour or so. I prefer one track from one album followed by one from another etc. Creating a playlist of (say) 100 tracks is a time consuming problem and then the next time you play music you will have exactly the same tracks in the same order so you have to go through the whole process again.

Ah OK, now I understand. Well, I just remember seeing the random play option on some players, but I haven't tried it to see how it works. So, have no idea if it does the way you want.

[George.J]

In MusicBee select the music library from the left pane ( which lists all the tracks on your computer and no need to create a playlist) and then select the shuffle hotkey to 'on' to shuffle between your tracks. If your view pane is in one particular album and when you randomize the play, it'll play only the tracks in the album randomly, for any music player. Even music players that provide directory type listing, you could select your songs directory from within the player and then randomize the play.

In directory listing players(music players that lists directories in their pane):
eg: E:->Music->English for english songs
E:->Music->Japanese for japanese songs

When you're within this directory, the songs would be listed here in the main pane and then most music players would give you a randomize play button to shuffle between the tracks in these folders(which includes various albums).

[George.J]

Or another easier option is, if you want to shuffle tracks between albums or artists or genre of your choice only , then in the uppermost pane of MusicBee you could see three colums for Genre, Artist, Album . Click Ctrl and select the desired artists or albums or genre you want to randomize the play (which lists all the related songs in the main pane) and then click the shuffle button to 'on'(right bottom). Or if you want to shuffle between tracks of all the albums then click the 'All' button under the album category and hit shuffle. Much Easier . Make sure you selected the required directory from the left pane which holds your specific songs for the 'album' pane to be filled. Hope I helped and this is what you wanted

[jim]

Thanks George. Will have a good look at that and, just for good order, will report back here.

[jim]

Yes! Brilliant job. Got lots of research to do for all the functions but it certainly does exactly what I want. Thanks again George.

[George.J]

Originally Posted by jim

Yes! Brilliant job. Got lots of research to do for all the functions but it certainly does exactly what I want. Thanks again George.

Glad to be of help. If you're going to stick with MusicBee, you might want to look at the weekly updates http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php#1 with lots of features added and fixes every week. You're bound to see everything that you want from the player and in case you couldn't find what you were looking for, the forum http://getmusicbee.com/forum/ is the most active of all I have seen, with the developer Steven, himself (and many others) helping you to get the job done, and you're needs( additional missing features) implemented in the next latest release by him, when requested.