Revision as of 09:55, 28 January 2011

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Dynamic Playlists

Introduction

Some media players are designed to load the entire collection of music in a single playlist, then play it in random order, or search/ sorted, then queued. With a larger collection, this way of managing your playlist isn't efficient. Amarok's Dynamic Playlist is a better way to explore your music.

The Dynamic Playlist is reached from Playlists -> Dynamic Playlists in the Media Sources pane.

Biases

Biases are what makes your dynamic playlist special! The default value for the dynamic playlist, with no biases, is random play. Biases of various sorts will alter that in different ways.

Proportional Bias

Proportional biases match a certain portion of the playlist to a specific value, such as Artist, Composer, Title, Genre, Year, etc. You can specify as many biases as you like to work together. This is a very flexible way of choosing your playlist.

Don't be confused, though -- a dynamic playlist containing the following two biases: 50% Artist: Michael Jackson, 50% Genre:Rock can contain tracks that are neither from Michael Jackson nor have a Rock genre. This is because while they are both used, half the time a track will be chosen which is Jackson, and half the time not, and the same is true for Rock. If you want 50/50 Jackson/Rock, set the biases to 100% each.

Custom Bias

This is where you will find the new Last.fm and Echo Nest biases. Use Last.fm or Echo Nest to bias the playlist towards artists who are similar to either the currently playing artist, your weekly top artists in Last.fm, or for Echo Nest, the current playlist as a whole.
This function will use whatever song is playing when the playlist is repopulated so your music evolves as you listen, while remaining somewhat similar to whatever is currently playing.

Fuzzy Bias

Fuzzy bias will match an approximate value and has a strictness field, as opposed to a percentage one. More strictness means more exact matches.

The resulting playlist will consist of tracks normally distributed around the requested value.

Using your Dynamic Playlist

To enable the dynamic playlist you have created simply check the On box in the upper-left corner of the pane. To regenerate the entire playlist at any time, click Repopulate, to the right of On.

The default number of items in the playlist is your 5 previous plays plus 10 upcoming items. With the currently playing track, this makes 16 items in the playlist at any given time. This number can be changed right below the On checkbox.

Below that are is the dropdown menu for loading saved playlists, the Save button, and the Delete button.

A dynamic playlist in use

@@ Line 15: / Line 15: @@
 [[Image:Dynamic_playlist.png|center|300px]]
-==Biases==
+== Biases ==
-Biases are what makes your dynamic playlist special! The default value for the dynamic playlist, without any biases, is random play. Biases of various sorts will alter that in different ways.
-===Proportional Bias===
+Biases are what makes your dynamic playlist special! The default value for the dynamic playlist, with no biases, is random play. Biases of various sorts will alter that in different ways.
-Proportional biases match a certain portion of the playlist to a specific value, such as Artist, Composer, Title, Genre, Year, etc.
-Once you start having several The Proportional Biases it start's to get funny and tricky.
+=== Proportional Bias ===
-The portion of each bias will be the number of songs matching the bias.
-For example, if you select "0% Rating > 3 stars" then no track in the resulting playlist will have a rating above three stars.
+Proportional biases match a certain portion of the playlist to a specific value, such as Artist, Composer, Title, Genre, Year, etc. You can specify as many biases as you like to work together. This is a very flexible way of choosing your playlist.
+<br /><br />
+Don't be confused, though -- a dynamic playlist containing the following two biases: 50% Artist: Michael Jackson, 50% Genre:Rock can contain tracks that are neither from Michael Jackson nor have a Rock genre. This is because while they are both used, half the time a track will be chosen which is Jackson, and half the time not, and the same is true for Rock. If you want 50/50 Jackson/Rock, set the biases to 100% each.
-The result of this bias will be a very flexible way of choosing your playlist.
+=== Custom Bias ===
-On the other hand it might lead to confusing results.
-A dynamic playlist containing the following two biases "50% "Michael Jackson"" "50% "Rock"" can contain tracks that are neighter from Michael Jackson nor have a Rock genre.
-That can happen if a track match both biases, leaving space for tracks that match neighter.
-===Custom Bias===
+This is where you will find the new Last.fm and Echo Nest biases. Use Last.fm or Echo Nest to bias the playlist towards artists who are similar to either the currently playing artist, your weekly top artists in Last.fm, or for Echo Nest, the current playlist as a whole.
-This is where you will find the new last.fm and Echo Nest biases. Use last.fm or Echo Nest to bias the playlist towards artists who are similar to either the currently playing artist, your weekly top artists in Last.fm, or for Echo Nest, the current playlist as a whole.
+<br />
+This function will use whatever song is playing when the playlist is repopulated so your music evolves as you listen, while remaining somewhat similar to whatever is currently playing.
-This function will use whatever song is playing when the playlist is repopulated so your music evolves as you listen, while remaining somewhat similar to whatever is currently playing.
+=== Fuzzy Bias ===
-===Fuzzy Bias===
 Fuzzy bias will match an approximate value and has a strictness field, as opposed to a percentage one. More strictness means more exact matches.
+<br /><br />
 The resulting playlist will consist of tracks normally distributed around the requested value.