Preset button to randomly play artist?

[damager]

Can I set a preset button to play tracks from a single artist from my collection in random order?

For example, if I want to push preset #1 to play all the U2 songs in my collection in random order?

[damager]

Beuhler.....Beuhler.....

[aubuti]

Can I set a preset button to play tracks from a single artist from my collection in random order?

For example, if I want to push preset #1 to play all the U2 songs in my collection in random order?
I don't know, but I doubt it. Have you tried doing it? I see two possible ways to go about it.

1) Make a playlist with the random tracks by U2. You could do that by going to Artists > U2 > Play all with shuffle play turned on, and then saving that playlist. Then load that playlist, and press and hold the #1 button. I honestly don't know whether that will (a) link the playlist to #1, (b) link the current song in the playlist to #1, or (c) do something else, including possibly nothing.

2) Same as the above, but without creating the playlist. That is, do Artists > U2 > Play all with shuffle play turned on. Then press and hold the #1 button. I strongly suspect this won't work, and if it does, getting random play will depend on shuffle being turned on when you press the #1 later, because I don't see how the #1 would remember the state of the shuffle toggle, or really, why it should be expected to do so.

Experiment -- you won't break anything.

[MeSue]

You can do it with erland's Dynamic Playlists plugin.

[damager]

Thanks for the lead on DynamicPlaylist. I installed it, but have no idea how to use it. Baed on the docs, it seems like a tool you might call from another plugin - is it something I can use from the Squeezebox menu structure?

Thanks in advance.

[MeSue]

I'm not sure, but you also might need Custom Browse installed. I use them both, so I can't check what the behavior is like with only Dynamic Playlists installed. The way I would do it is browse to Artists > U2 (for example) > then press and hold play, and you will get an option to play the artist as a dynamic playlist.

To make it a preset... I think I misled you... it looks like you would also need the SQL Playlists plugin. Or if you want to do it without SQL playlist installed, you would have to make yourself a static playlist of all the U2 (or whatever artist) songs, and then you can play it as a dynamic playlist.

Erland's plugins have a bit of a learning curve, but they really give you a lot of flexibility once you get a handle on them.

[JJZolx]

You can use favorites to mark an artist as a favorite and then you can assign it to a hot key (from 0 to 9). You can't set shuffle/random in a favorite, though, so it will take at least two button presses. First enable shuffle songs mode, then press the favorite hot key.

Edit: I just realized this is in the Boom forum, so the only hot keys you have available on the Boom are those on the front panel. This just means that you're limited to using hot keys numbered from 1 to 6.