Music all the time

Dorsetmike

Member
Since Last.fm changed a few months back I've been existing by selecting albums from my PC or occasionally longer Youtube items.

Today I thought "wonder if there are any free random playlist generators" that produce a continuous stream of music across different genres; so did a Google and found a few, chose the first that looked promising,
http://www.freewaregenius.com/random-mixtape-maker-a-smart-powerful-playlist-creator/

A link near the bottom of the page - "Go to the program page" takes you to

mixtape.zip

which I downloaded and unzipped, complete with a short manual, which I did glance at, opened the app and after a few minutes setting things like folders to search, how long a playlist should be, how long shortest and longest tracks should be and selecting up to 5 genres, then hit the go button.

It then searches the directories specified and selects tracks to fill your max duration (3 hours for me), you can then select play the list or save it. I saved it then transferred all the first list to a black list, ran a second make play list, repeated save then blacklist and repeated until I had 7 three hour lists and one of 2.27 before it ran out of files to add to a list.

The whole lot are in a separate folder now from which I can select a playlist which when selected starts playing in Windoze Media player, or your player of choice.

I now have over 26 hours of music to listen to I may make some changes by changing genres to give me some options to have music for different moods,or if a particular track falls from favour I can remove and black list. It's way better than having a full CD of one genre or artist, I like variety.

I'm impressed, (so far)
 
Last edited:

teddy

Duckmeister
Sounds great Mike. Now I have the time (and sometimes the energy) I may have a look at it

teddy
 

Dorsetmike

Member
Rip all your vinyl, tapes and CDs to your hard drive, download anything you can find free or cheap, tnen just run it through the playlist generator
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
You should try Internet Radio with thousands of classical stations you will always find something fresh.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
Colin, I want a mixture, variety, not solely classical, anyway most stations these days cater to the "top how many" syndrome and Baroque rarely gets a look in except for a few done to death works.

My playlists have a very wide range, from Elizabethan organ works, flute and piano jazz, Rameau harpsichord, baroque brass, followed by more of the same plus big band swing, modern and trad jazz, Monteverdi & Purcell choral works all mixed in together, rarely two of the same genre following each other. I doubt since Last.fm went commercial if there's anything like what I want, at a price I'm prepared to pay and with no adverts. Last.fm was less than perfect often repeating tracks frequently and ignoring other tracks from the same album, what I have now, if I play each playlist in turn, over a few days, will play every track of every selected album unless I delete ("black list") a track. It will probably take me 2 or 3 days to get through all 8 play lists, and I'll probably add more.

I will probably tweak some of the playlists to give me emphasis on say late night laid back, morning wake up, or more of one or two particular genre to suit mood or occasion. I've still got some vinyl and CDs to rip.
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
Are your play lists made up of tracks or complete works?? Whatever your interests its all out there plus stuff that may be new to you although that requires a lot of dedicated listening. You can get away with mixing tracks for Jazz etc but never for classical works, the only music I listen to on a PC is from the many radio stations on the www. they are not all pop classical.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
As I said Colin, I like variety, one or two tracks of baroque, followed by jazz followed by swing, not in any order: I don't have anything in the way of large complete works, no Beethoven or Mozart or similar symphonies or concertos, no operas nor ballet. Nearest I have are some John Stanley and Handel organ and harpsichord concertos, Croft and Boyce trio sonatas and symphonies as complete works each around 8 to 10 minutes duration.

I do look for new stuff, links posted here, an occasional youtube trawl.
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
Oh dear I had you marked as a classical man, sorry Mike, so you are really not a fan of Mahler :grin:
 

Dorsetmike

Member
Colin, in terms of classical very little after 1799, a few isolated works, Barber's Adagio, instrumental or vocal versions, some Satie Gymnopodies, hate Beethoven's 9th, Gorecki and Einaudi = instant switch off as do many others of recent years. I know what I like and ignore just about anything else. For the most part it needs to have a "proper tune/melody" not a cacophony.
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
I understand Mike, beauty is in the ear of the listener so to speak, do you have periods of jazz that you don't fancy ? I ask this because Traditional/Dixie jazz does not appear to have much of a following on MIMF but I love the simplicity of it.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
Colin, in the jazz genre I have both modern and trad, ranging from Muggsy Spannier through Dutch Swing college to MJQ, little if anything post about 1980 ish, no Sun Ra or similar, not too keen on some of the groups like McCoy Tyner that some others on here go for, never really got into Thelonius Monk either, I must get ripping as I still have quite a few albums to get through.

One or two of the big rock groups from the 70s like Renaissance and Focus and some stuff by Mel Tormé and Cleo Laine I haven't managed to get into the playlists yet, limited by the number of genres I can select.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
Further to the above, I got to wondering why some albums seemed to be ignored by the Mixtape app after much fiddling about I finally settled on the detail data defining Genre, Artists etc, Mixtape looks at the Genre tag, in many cases this was either incorrect or non existent; example I found some downloaded Baroque classified as Blues, or "other", some CD and vinyl rips had no details.

If there was an incorrect genre I was able to edit that in Windows Explorer, also could edit "Unknown Artrist" entries (where I knew them!) for the albums/tracks lacking anyh detail I was able to add that in Windows Media Player. I was able to cheat by re-classifying Big band and Swing all as Big band and classifying the vocal, Focus and Renaissance etc all as "other"

As a result of the editing I now have 35 playlists of about 3 hours and one of 2H30. Didn't realise just how much music I have!
 
Last edited:
Top