Question

Add Album Shuffle


Userlevel 1
I honestly cannot believe this doesn't exist. I understand that comments about the feasibility of adding features to software without any knowledge of the codebase are typically misguided, but come on, this is just an ordering a list based on random numbers. It's a very basic feature of every digital music player I've ever owned dating back over a decade. The fact that Sonos doesn't have it is a travesty and makes an otherwise A+++ system significantly less useful. I have to expend entirely too much thought/energy to work around this when I should just be able to add to queue, set album shuffle, and not worry about hearing everything in the same order or having songs nonsensically cut apart from each other.

Just add it.

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12 replies

Album shuffle? You mean play one album in order then play another randomly selected album in order and so on?
Userlevel 1
Album shuffle? You mean play one album in order then play another randomly selected album in order and so on?

Correct.

(Incidentally, good work on the Higgs Boson, but I'd really like to see some SUSY out of you.)
Album shuffle? You mean play one album in order then play another randomly selected album in order and so on?

Correct.


Interesting, is that common elsewhere? I looked at Poweramp on my phone and the closest it gets is providing every combination of shuffling or not songs and lists but as I don't use playlists I've only ever used shuffle all.

(Incidentally, good work on the Higgs Boson, but I'd really like to see some SUSY out of you.)


Yes, would be interesting but nothing so far unless the recent hints of a super-Higgs resolve into anything meaningful.
Userlevel 1
[Interesting, is that common elsewhere? I looked at Poweramp on my phone and the closest it gets is providing every combination of shuffling or not songs and lists but as I don't use playlists I've only ever used shuffle all.

I honestly don't know. IIRC it's been on the iPod/iTunes for as long as I've been in the ecosystem, which was like 2003 or so. I've made heavy use of it since 2009 so it's definitely fairly old. Foobar has it. VLC doesn't appear to. But since this really seems like a quite easy feature to add and people have been asking for it for years (so there's definitely a use case for it), I'd really like to see it thrown into the next Sonos release.

If you're primarily a streaming listener then it wouldn't be very useful for you, but I mostly listen from a large library and album shuffle is very nice for that.

Yes, would be interesting but nothing so far unless the recent hints of a super-Higgs resolve into anything meaningful.


Are you part of the collaboration or just interested in it? I'm a fellow traveler (physics grad but did very little advanced particle physics), but don't follow developments as closely as I used to, all of the blogs I read by particle physicists have gone defunct.
Album shuffle? You mean play one album in order then play another randomly selected album in order and so on?

OP are you asking for a feature for Sonos to randomly select an album and play in order as The LHC says above or are you asking to be able to shuffle songs within albums in the queue (release/album order stays the same, songs within the album are shuffled) as described in your op:

I have to expend entirely too much thought/energy to work around this when I should just be able to add to queue, set album shuffle, and not worry about hearing everything in the same order or having songs nonsensically cut apart from each other.
Userlevel 1
Is this feature really that unfamiliar that people need it described? Anyway those both say the same thing, I want to be able to shuffle *albums*, keeping the songs in any given album in the same order but not hearing an artist's/playlist's albums in the exact same order every single time. Right now there's no reasonable way to do this with Sonos.
No not unfamiliar. My bad, just trying to understand exactly as on some systems you can do album shuffle as you describe and/or shuffle by album which is keeping album order in queue, mix song order.

Anyway good idea I could see myself using it.
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I'd really like to see this feature added, it's one of the things I most miss having come from an iTunes-centric setup.
Just "upgraded" from Logitech media server to sonos and stunned to see this feature is missing. It's the only way I listen to my music collection...
Userlevel 1
I logged this 4 years ago:
https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/album-shuffle-4699519

I still think it would be a super simple feature to implement, but apparently they don't care.
Like Cad42 I also use Logitech Media Server (aka Slimserver) as well as my new Sonos One. It has the ability to play a random album and also random songs. As others have said amazed that there is no option with Sonos
Userlevel 2
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A Google search about this just brought me here and there are "Sonos Community" posts going back to 2012 requesting this feature.

How sad that in six years this simple option hasn't been added. It's been in iTunes and even the Sonos community forum for years and yet the devs have ignored it, presumably because they don't listen to music that way. Sigh.

The Sonos' limitations are so uniquely eye-roll inducing and exasperating—it's like a cartoon of an Apple product. I enjoy listening to mine, but not thinking about them. Lol.

PS: Choosing a genre and playing full albums by random is a great way to experience music—and get a full day's work done before you know it.