In case you thought I was joking…

mplayer handles filesystem wildcards beautifully. This is playing anything by STP in any subfolder of my main “Music” directory. I use wildcards between words because it’s lazier than escaping the spaces.

Raktajino@laptop:~$ ssh rak@media-pc

rak@media-pc:~$ mplayer -shuffle /media/Music/*/Stone*Temple*Pilots*
MPlayer 1.5+svn38446-1build5 (Debian)
Playing Acoustics/Stone Temple Pilots - Plush (Acoustic).mp3.
Clip info:
 Title: Plush
 Artist: Stone Temple Pilots
 Album: Simply Acoustic
 Track: 10
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mpg123] MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 layers I, II, III
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/9.07% (ratio: 16000->176400)
Selected audio codec: [mpg123] afm: mpg123 (MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 layers I, II, III)
==========================================================================
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
A: 233.8 (03:53.7) of 234.0 (03:54.0)  4.5% 

Playing Rock/Stone Temple Pilots - Dead and Bloated.mp3.
Clip info:
 Title: Dead & Bloated
 Artist: Stone Temple Pilots
 Album: The Best Of Stone Temple Pilot
 Track: 7
 Genre: Grunge
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mpg123] MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 layers I, II, III
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/9.07% (ratio: 16000->176400)
Selected audio codec: [mpg123] afm: mpg123 (MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 layers I, II, III)
==========================================================================
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
A:   9.1 (09.1) of 310.0 (05:10.0)  4.5%
  • splendoruranium@infosec.pubEnglish
    10·
    16 hours ago

    What kind of mad person shuffles their whole collection? Do you preemptively purge all albums/artists of the songs you don’t like before adding them to your collection? 😮

    • Iced Raktajino@startrek.websiteOP
      2·
      8 hours ago

      What kind of mad person shuffles their whole collection?

      Me! lol

      The musical whiplash is strong. It’ll go Pantera, Slipknot, Lady Gaga, Children of Bodom, the theme from Three’s Company, Spice Girls, Waylon Jennings, N’Sync, Foo Fighters, STP, Britney Spears, etc. You never know what’s next.

    • Trigg@lemmy.world
      201·
      16 hours ago

      I actually use MPD unlike op, but whole-collection shuffle is correct.

      Nothing beats skipping from Bach to TMNT theme tune

      • Iced Raktajino@startrek.websiteOP
        2·
        8 hours ago

        The sad thing is I have a fully functional MPD + Snapcast setup I could use (including a TUI MPD client), but this is just what I’ve always done. Old habits and such lol.

      • splendoruranium@infosec.pubEnglish
        7·
        16 hours ago

        Nothing beats skipping from Bach to TMNT theme tune

        I agree with that sentiment, but that’s not what happens at all. It’s especially funny since you excplicitly mention Bach. My damn “Bach, Johann Sebastian” artist folder contains 226 different albums. Albums, not songs. And boy, that guy wrote some stinkers, too.

        I mean, I guess I could roughly see the system working if you have the same amount of songs for every artist, that would somewhat balance it. Otherwise your playlist will always be dominated by the prolific writers and you’ll get a few dozen Händel concertos and a handful of random Zelda dungeon sounds before the next TMNT theme tune plays.