Adventures In Computing: Christmas Present
I used MusicBee mixers last Christmas as a present. Without naming names, I know someone that really likes Christmas music by Bing Crosby. But they also like Christmas songs from other sources. Except when they are too energetic.
In previous years, we would play the Bing CD until everyone had enough. Which took different amounts of time per person. Some people were at that point as soon as the dozen songs started repeating. Others were fine all day.
In an attempt to both mitigate these differing views on when enough Bing became too much, and add more Bing, I setup MusicBee. I had to go through and appropriately tag songs, but for the most part I either had or was going to do that already.
Once the tagging was done, I built a Mixer. It would grab 10 songs with Artist of Bing, 5 with occasion of Christmas, but not mood of energetic or rating below 2 stars. Shuffle those together and start playing. When that list ran out, randomly grab another group. Shuffle and repeat.
End result was a success, as the person it was for liked the mix. As the already existing collection was large enough, it could be left running for hours on end. Sure, there would be repeats. But there were enough songs, and it was random enough, that they didn’t mind. Or possibly didn’t notice, I know I didn’t.
In all fairness, the mix wasn’t perfect when first played. I didn’t know they objected to energetic songs as much as they did, so initially those were included. But once I knew, it only took a minute to modify the mixer. Then clear the playlist so it re-picks, and no more energetic songs.
Instead of people growing tired of the same dozen songs, played over a few hours, we were fine with the same couple hundred songs, played over a few days. And there were more then a few times some of the songs were happy surprises. Which makes for the best present, being able to see the expression of joy on the recipients face.
As it’s July, posting this for a little ‘Christmas in July‘.