Play Random Album from Specific Genre?

[ministryofsillywalks]

This is a pretty specific setup, but it's a pretty integral part of our daily life, so here goes:
I am currently using LMS and have a CLI script that plays a random Album from a certain genre in LMS library.
I use this, as my little daughter has a zigbee button in her room which she can press, which then plays a random Audio Book Album from a predefined Genre. Once that book is done the service calls the next random album from the genre etc.
Is there currently any way to achieve this in MA?

[OzGav]

I expect you would be limited by what you can do with HA scripts. For example https://community.home-assistant.io/t/trying-to-run-a-random-script/226402

but not sure how you can keep track of what has already been played…?

[ministryofsillywalks]

The new features just introduced look great
music-assistant/server#1228
"Random album from library" playlist now exists.
Is there any built-in way to play "random album from genre" now?

[marcelveldt]

Not yet, we will offer more builtin playlists as well as make Genres more prominent after the 2.0 release.

[ministryofsillywalks]

Looking forward to this feature.
Only thing still keeping me with Lms, as ma otherwise has completely replaced lms.

[ministryofsillywalks]

Is there a way using MASS Play Media when requesting an Album from a certain artist to not always play the first result?
If it could randomly pick a result, this could already accomplish what I'm trying to achieve.
Currently when asking MA to play an album from a certain artist it always plays the same album (I'm guessing the first result)

[ministryofsillywalks]

until this is natively implemented I hacked together a script to achieve what I wanted.
This script does a mass search for "ARTISTNAME" returns 9 results (can increase the number) then plays a random URI from the list.
Works great! Thanks for making this so flexible!

alias: Random Album
sequence:
  - service: mass.search
    data:
      limit: 9
      name: ARTISTNAME
      artist: ARTISTNAME
      media_type:
        - album
    response_variable: results
  - service: mass.play_media
    metadata: {}
    data:
      media_id: "{{ results.albums[range(1, 10) | random].uri }}"
    target:
      device_id: XYZ
mode: single

[OzGav]

Nice! I might add this to the how do I section!

edit: should the range be 0 to 8?

[ministryofsillywalks]

Good catch. I would probably have never noticed, that the first array entry was never played ;)
I stole the random range from another automation which I had, which needed to start at 1.

[JDogg016]

So relying on this to relate a call service node in node red to play a random playlist.

My json data for the service call mass 'play_media' is as follows:

{
"media_id": "{{ payload.playlists[array(1, 10) | random].uri }}"
}

I receive the following error:

HomeAssistantError: MediaNotFoundError: Could not resolve ['{{ payload.playlists[array(1, 10) | random].uri }}'] to playable media item

I use payload as the variable in mine instead of 'results' because the prior call service to search outputs the results to msg.payload. Also I use array because the results show in an array.

Any suggestions?

[OzGav]

I suggest you post the full yaml and format it correctly as you see done by the OP three posts above yours. Actually I see you are using node red. Not sure if you will get any reply as not many people use that but see how you go.

[napalmcsr]

I am trying to get X number of random tracks across my library. I am trying to see if that is possible out of this implementation. I am not seeing a way yet. Any advice?

[OzGav]

There is the 500 random tracks playlist which is auto generated by MA. Note that it is subject to an issue report at the moment though.

[napalmcsr]

yeah, I am trying to replicate that functionality due to it having an issue.. I can be patient :)

[marcelveldt]

it is fixed in the 2.2 release

[napalmcsr]

Nice! Thanks!