If I Shuffle by Group, will all songs with a blank in the grouping field play together?

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If I Shuffle by Group, will all songs with a blank in the grouping field play together?

If I shuffle by group, will all the songs not grouped together (i.e. they have nothing in the group field) play as a group?

EX: On the Beatles Abbey Road, I can group the Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam & She Came in Through the Backroom Window by placing the same content in the GROUP field, say "Sun>Mustard>Pan>Window."

Every other song on the album does not need to be played together so I place nothing in those song's GROUP fields.

Will the result be that all the other songs will be played as a group, or will they be treated as separate, so if I suffled by group I can possibly here Come Together, then the Joined Group, then Octopus's Garden in that order? Or will iTunes just play all the other songs in the album and then the Joined Songs or vice versa?

I am just trying to see if I should just put some random or sequenced numbers in the grouping field of the other songs to keep them separate.

Lastly, grouping only works within albums, not across albums, correct? I am just wondering if I have to worry about duplicating numbers and possibly creating groups across albums unintentionally.

Windows, Windows 6

Posted on Aug 16, 2021 9:32 AM

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Answer 1

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esumsea Author

Level 1

12 points

Aug 16, 2021 12:31 PM in response to esumsea

OK, so I did some testing and have found that the shuffle by group:

-does NOT group songs across albums, so you can only group songs within the same album.

-does NOT treat songs with nothing in the GROUPING field as a group, so if you have some grouped songs in an Album and others that are not, it wont play all the songs with nothing in the GROUPING field as a group and then move on to the grouped songs, and vice versa. The shuffle will truly be random other than following the order of grouped songs when playing them.

I hope this helps someone in the future. :)

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Answer 2

the fiend

Level 7

22,980 points

Aug 16, 2021 11:08 AM in response to esumsea

I think the easiest solution is for you need to try this for yourself in order to make sure that it does exactly what you want.

I suggest this as I suspect it's unlikely that anyone (especially the regular contributors here) will have tried this before. My attempt to achieve what you are asking was not successful, possibly because I don't make enough use of Grouping. Not only that, but even if you achieve this feat in iTunes, if you want to replicate it on an iPod or iPhone etc. you will need to experiment on that device as well.

Perhaps you could try making a short playlist, as an experiment, to test out your idea.

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Answer 3

esumsea Author

Level 1

12 points

Aug 16, 2021 11:22 AM in response to the fiend

OK, I will try a test run and report back in case anyone else wants to use this method. I was checking if someone knew. I really wish there was a manual explaining all the functions of iTunes.

I have read that groupings only work in album, but I am not sure that was correct. I guess I can experiment with that as well.

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

274,988 points

Aug 16, 2021 11:32 AM in response to esumsea

Blank songs should be treated as unique groups. E.g. if you have 5 tracks in the current view and 2 & 3 are grouped together then shuffle by groupings play might yield 5, 2, 3, 1, 4, or 1, 5, 4, 2, 3 etc. Groupings also need to be contiguous blocks of tracks within the same album to play together. In other words say you have 10 tracks and label alternate pairs Group A and Group B then shuffle by groupings, what you get is a random ordering of the pairs, with each pair playing its two tracks in sequence. You won't get all of Group A followed by all of Group B. Shuffle by Grouping won't merge content from different albums to be played together, even when tracks from different albums have the same value in the Grouping field.

I don't use this feature often enough to be completely familiar with it, so had to run a couple of experiments to check.

tt2

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Answer 5

the fiend

Level 7

22,980 points

Aug 16, 2021 11:38 AM in response to esumsea

esumsea wrote:

OK, I will try a test run and report back in case anyone else wants to use this method.

Excellent idea.

I really wish there was a manual explaining all the functions of iTunes.

There is online information about iTunes' functions and features, often in the form of Apple articles, which we here sometimes refer people to, but a full manual, in online document form, would probably run to more pages than you'd wish to wade through, while a paper version would probably be the height of a house, and you'd be lucky to find the specific information you want in such a vast tome.

I hope your experiment goes well.

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