music sequence

[klaatu]

I saw on the forum here that the clip plays whats in your music file by alphabetical order. Is that right? So in reality I could just name my music files like:

A-Minnie Ripperton-Lovin You

B-Sheena Easton-Morning Train

C-Whitney Houston-Didn’t We Almost Have It All

[donp]

Strictly speaking no because it doesn’t sort by file name.  You could tag them like that then they could play in that order, or put them in a playlist in any order you want.

[oxide]

It appears that what the Clip does in unshuffled “Play all” mode is that it plays the tracks alphabetically by the Name ID3 tag. So, yes, if you make the Name ID3 tags alphabetical like that the tracks will play in that order if you listen in unshuffled “Play all” mode.

I have used this behavior as the basis of a script that I wrote in Quickeys on the Mac. I load up a long mp3 playlist in iTunes and shuffle it. Then the script prepends strings like a1001-, a1002-, etc, … to both the Name ID3 tag and to the filename. So I produce a random sequence of tracks that appear to the Clip and to the Mac as being in alphabetical order. That way, when I hook the Clip up to the computer to charge, I remember the last track played and delete all the earlier ones alphabetically.

This gives the equivalent of a “Resume play” shuffle mode. This lets me set up long, long “random one time only” playlists, which is the way I always prefer to listen.