Table of Contents:
ashuffle is an application for automatically shuffling your MPD library in a similar way to a more standard music player's "shuffle library" feature. ashuffle works like any other MPD client, and can be used alongside your other MPD frontends.
In ashuffle's primary mode is to create a 'stream of music'. To do this run:
$ ashuffle
ashuffle will wait until the last song in the queue has finished playing, then randomly choose another song from your MPD library, add it to the queue and continue playing. Songs will be continuously played, at random, to infinity. Since ashuffle adds only one song at a time, after the last song in the playlist has finished playing, you still retain control over your queue. When using ashuffle, more songs can be added to the queue, and once those songs finish, the random music will resume.
ashuffle uses MPD's "idle" command to listen for MPD events so it won't drain cpu polling to check if the current song has advanced.
If you only want to enqueue a set number of songs, use the --only flag like
this:
$ ashuffle --only 10 # ashuffle --only <number of songs to add>
This particular command adds 10 random songs to the queue.
In addition to these two basic modes, ashuffle supports many other features like:
- Custom shuffle filter rules, using
--exclude. - Shuffling based on a list of MPD URIs, like would be output from
mpc searchusing the--fileoption. - MPD authentication.
- Crossfade support using
--queue-buffer. - Shuffling by album or other groupings of songs using the
--by-albumor--group-byoption.
If any of these sound interesting, read on!
When running MPD on a non-standard port or on a remote machine, ashuffle
will respect the standard MPD_HOST and MPD_PORT environment variables,
used to specify the host and port respectively of the MPD server.
Also following standard MPD tools, a password can be supplied in the MPD_HOST
environment variable by putting an @ between the password and the host name.
For example, one can run ashuffle as follows:
$ env MPD_HOST="<password>@<hostname>" MPD_PORT="<port>" ashuffle ...
Or without the password by just omitting the <password> and @ from the
MPD_HOST variable.
ashuffle also supports providing a host or port via the command line with the
--host and --port options. --host, and --port, will override MPD_HOST
or MPD_PORT if provided.
For example:
$ ashuffle --host <password>@<hostname> --port <port>
Once again, the password can be omitted.
By supplying the -f option and a file containing a list of song URIs to
shuffle, you can make ashuffle use an arbitrary list of songs. For
example, by passing -f - to ashuffle, you can have it shuffle over songs
passed to it via standard in:
$ mpc search artist "Girl Talk" | ashuffle -f -
As explained in more detail below, if song URIs are passed to ashuffle using
this mechanism, ashuffle will still try to apply exclusion rules to these
songs. If the song URIs you want ashuffle to shuffle over do not exist
in your MPD library (for example if you are trying to shuffle URIs with the
file:// schema), ashuffle will exclude them by default. If you pass the
--no=check option to ashuffle, it will not apply the filtering rules, allowing
you to shuffle over songs that are not in your library.
By default, ashuffle will only enqueue another song once the current queue
has ended. This gives the user a lot of control over what will be playing next.
One unfortunate side-effect of this is that it breaks MPD's built-in crossfade
support. If the next song is only added once the previous song has finished
playing, MPD doesn't know how to crossfade between the two songs. As a tradeoff
between queue control and cross-fade support, you can supply the
--queue-buffer n flag. This flag will have ashuffle ensure that there are
always n songs in the queue after the currently playing song. This way you
still retain some queue control, while making sure that MPD can crossfade
effectively. Most crossfade users will probably want to use this flag like so:
$ ashuffle --queue-buffer 1
If you'd rather shuffle songs in groups, instead of individually, ashuffle can
group songs by any combination of tag values using the -g/--group-by
option. For example, you could run:
$ ashuffle --group-by album
In this mode, when loading songs from MPD or a file, ashuffle will first group the songs by the given tag. Album in this case. Then, when a song needs to be added to the queue, ashuffle will pick a random group (e.g., album) and enqueue all songs from that group. Once the end of the queue is reached, a new group is picked and the process is repeated.
Multiple tags can be provided to --group-by, and songs will be grouped
together as long as all the given tags match. A --by-album option is provided
for convenience that is probably what you want to use when shuffling by album.
It's equivalent to --group-by album date.
Note that -g/--group-by/--by-album can only be provided once.
Tweaks are infrequently used, specialized, or complicated options that most
users probably don't want to use. These options are all set via a single
--tweak/-t flag to avoid cluttering help pages. All tweaks have the form
<key>=<value>. For example: --tweak window-size=7. Here is a table of
tweaks, and their meanings:
| Name | Values | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
exit-on-db-update |
Boolean | no |
If set to a true value, then ashuffle will exit when the MPD database is updated. This can be useful when used in conjunction with the -f - option, as it allows you to re-start ashuffle with a new music list. |
play-on-startup |
Boolean | yes |
If set to a true value, ashuffle starts playing music if MPD is paused, stopped, or the queue is empty on startup. If set to false, then ashuffle will not enqueue any music until a song is enqueued for the first time. |
reconnect-timeout |
Duration > 0 |
10s |
Configures the amount of time ashuffle will spend attempting to reconnect to MPD after a temporary disconnection. After this amount of time, ashuffle will give up attempting to reconnect and quit. |
suspend-timeout |
Duration > 0 |
0ms |
Enables "suspend" mode, which may be useful to users that use ashuffe in a workflow where they clear their queue. In this mode, if the queue is cleared while ashuffle is running, ashuffle will wait for suspend-timeout. If songs were added to the queue during that period of time (i.e., the queue is no longer empty), then ashuffle suspends itself, and will not add any songs to the queue (even if the queue runs out) until the queue is cleared again, at which point normal operations resume. This was add to support use-cases like the one given in issue #13, where a music player had a "play album" mode that would clear the queue, and then play an album. See below for the duration format. |
window-size |
Integer >=1 |
7 |
Sets the size of the "window" used for the shuffle algorithm. See the section on the shuffle algorithm for more details. In-short: Lower numbers mean more frequent repeats, and higher numbers mean less frequent repeats. |
Value types:
| Name | Representation |
|---|---|
| Integer | An integral number, like -1, 0, or 15. |
| Boolean | The strings on, true, yes or 1 mean "true" or "enable", and the strings off, false, no, or 0 mean "false" or "disable". |
| Duration | A duration of time that can be parsed by Abseil's ParseDuration. The general format is <number><unit>. <number> can be floating point, and negative. <unit> is whatever time units Abseil supports, but the expected ones like ms, s, and m should work. Example: 250ms would represent 250 milliseconds. |
usage: ashuffle [-h] [-n] [-v] [[-e PATTERN ...] ...] [-o NUMBER]
[-f FILENAME] [-q NUMBER] [-g TAG ...] [[-t TWEAK] ...]
Optional Arguments:
-h,-?,--help Display this help message.
--by-album Same as '--group-by album date'.
-e,--exclude Specify things to remove from shuffle (think
blacklist). A PATTERN should follow the exclude
flag.
--exclude-from Read exclude rules from the given file. Rules
should be given in the YAML format described in
the included readme.md
-f,--file Use MPD URI's found in 'file' instead of using the
entire MPD library. You can supply `-` instead of a
filename to retrive URI's from standard in. This
can be used to pipe song URI's from another program
into ashuffle.
-g,--group-by Shuffle songs grouped by the given tags. For
example 'album' could be used as the tag, and an
entire album's worth of songs would be queued
instead of one song at a time.
--host Specify a hostname or IP address to connect to.
Defaults to `localhost`.
--log-file Path to write log output to. Defaults to stderr.
-n,--no-check When reading URIs from a file, don't check to
ensure that the URIs match the given exclude rules.
This option is most helpful when shuffling songs
with -f, that aren't in the MPD library.
-o,--only Instead of continuously adding songs, just add
'NUMBER' songs and then exit.
-p,--port Specify a port number to connect to. Defaults to
`6600`.
-q,--queue-buffer Specify to keep a buffer of `n` songs queued after
the currently playing song. This is to support MPD
features like crossfade that don't work if there
are no more songs in the queue.
-t,--tweak Tweak an infrequently used ashuffle option. See
`readme.md` for a list of available options.
-v,--version Print the version of ashuffle, and then exit.
See included `readme.md` file for PATTERN syntax.
Patterns are a list of key-value pairs given to the --exclude flag. A pair is
composed of a 'field' and a 'value'. A 'field' is the name
of an MPD tag (e.g. artist, title, album) to match on (case insensitive) and
'value' is a string to match against that field. So, if I wanted to exclude
MGMT's album 'Congratulations' in ashuffle I could supply a command
line like the following:
$ ashuffle --exclude artist MGMT album "Congratulations"
Since typing in an exact match for all songs could become quite cumbersome, the 'value' field will match on substrings. You only have to specify part of the search string. For example, if I wanted to match Arctic Monkeys album 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not' I could shorten that to just:
$ ashuffle --exclude artist arctic album whatever
Multiple --exclude flags can be given. If a song matches any exclude pattern,
it will be excluded. For example, if I wanted to exclude songs by MGMT and
songs by the Arctic Monkeys, I could write:
$ ashuffle --exclude artist MGMT --exclude artist arctic
MPC and the -f flag can be used with --exclude to shuffle over more
complex matches. For example, if we wanted to listen to only songs by
Girl Talk except the Secret Diary album, we could use mpc to generate a
list of Girl Talk songs and then use an --exclude statement to filter out the
Secret Diary album:
$ mpc search artist "Girl Talk" | ashuffle --exclude album "Secret Diary" --file -
ashuffle allows exclude patterns to be passed via a YAML formatted file with the following structure:
rules:
- <tag1>: <value1>
<tag...>: <value...>
<tagN>: <valueN>
- ...Where <tag> is replaced with the tag to match on (e.g. artist) and <value>
is replaced with the value to match (e.g. arctic). Tags are matched to values
based on the rules described in the patterns section above: a case-insensitive
substring match. All tag values must match their values for a given rule
(one item of the rules list) to match and exclude a track. Rules are not
updated when the underlying rule file changes. ashuffle must be re-started
for changes to take effect.
For example, if there was an exclusion rules file excludes.yaml, with the
contents:
rules:
- artist: arctic
album: whatever
- artist: MGMT
album: CongratulationsAnd ashuffle was invoked like:
$ ashuffle --exclude-from excludes.yaml
Then ashuffle would not include tracks from the album 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not' by the 'Arctic Monkeys', or the album 'Congratulations' by the artist 'MGMT' in the pool of songs to shuffle.
ashuffle uses a fairly unique algorithm for shuffling songs. Most applications fall into one of two camps:
- true random shuffle: With true random shuffle, no restrictions are placed on what songs can be selected for play. It's possible that a single song could be played two or even three times in a row because songs are just drawn out of a hat.
- random list shuffle: With 'random list' shuffle, songs to be shuffled are organized into a list of songs behind the scenes. This list is then scrambled (imagine a deck of cards), and then the scrambled playlist is played like normal. Using this method songs won't be played twice in a row, but the once the playlist has been played it will either loop (playing the same random set again), or be re-scrambled and played again, so it can still get repetitive. Also, since there's no chance that a song can be played again, it won't feel very random, especially when listening for a long time. Every song has to be played once before any song can be repeated. I often start noticing song order once the random-list wraps around.
ashuffle's approach is an attempt at a happy medium between these two styles. It keeps two lists of songs: a 'pool' of the songs it's shuffling, and a 'window' which is a short, ordered, playlist of songs. When the program starts, ashuffle builds the window by randomly taking songs out of the pool, and adding them to the window. When a new random song needs to be added to the MPD queue, the 'top' song of the window is removed, added to the queue, and then put back into the pool. Then, another song is taken from the pool and added to the window so that the next request can be fulfilled. This ensures that no songs are repeated (every song in the window is unique), but you also don't have to listen to every song in your library before a song comes up again. I like this style a lot better, because I can "skip" between songs I want to listen to.
ashuffle aims to be compatible with several versions of MPD, and libmpdclient, so users don't have to bend-over-backwards to get ashuffle to work. Specifically, ashuffle aims to be compatible with the latest MPD/libmpdclient release, as well as all MPD/libmpdclient versions used in active Ubuntu releases. If you have an issue using ashuffle with any of these versions, please open an issue.
ashuffle is officially distributed via pre-compiled binaries, and via its
source. Linux-compatible binaries are currently available for x86_64,
and several ARM flavors that should support most ARM users, including
Raspberry Pi.
First, install 'libmpdclient', the library ashuffle uses to interact with MPD.
It can be obtained from most package managers. E.g. via sudo apt install libmpdclient2, or brew install libmpdclient. Once libmpdclient is installed
you can download the latest binary release for your platform on the releases
page. Binaries are currently
available for the following platforms:
| Binary | Architecture | Minimum CPU | Popular Devices |
|---|---|---|---|
ashuffle.x86_64-linux-gnu |
x86_64 |
Most Desktops, Laptops, and Servers | |
ashuffle.aarch64-linux-gnu |
aarch64 |
cortex-a53 |
Raspberry Pi 3B+ running 64-bit OS (not RPi OS) |
ashuffle.armv7h-linux-gnueabihf |
armv7hl |
cortex-a7 |
Raspberry Pi 2B+ Running RPi OS (f.k.a. Raspbian) |
ashuffle.armv6h-linux-gnueabihf |
armv6hl |
arm1176jzf-s |
Raspberry Pi 0/1+ Running RPi OS (f.k.a. Raspbian) |
Once you've downloaded the binary, it should "just work" when run
(e.g. $ ./ashuffle.x86_64-linux-gnu). If they do not, please file an
issue or send an email to the
ashuffle users list at [email protected].
If you'd like to add binary support to another platform, pull requests are welcome.
For platforms without a binary release, you'll have to build from source. ashuffle is designed to have a small number of dependencies, and we try to keep the build relatively straightforward. That said, you will need a relatively recent C++ compiler. Clang 7+, or GCC 8+ should work.
If you have any trouble building ashuffle, please file an issue on Github, or email the ashuffle users group. Make sure to your compiler version, meson version, the commands you tried to execute, and any errors that were produced.
The only dependency is 'libmpdclient' which, you can probably install via your package manager. For example on debian based distributions (like ubunutu) use:
sudo apt-get install libmpdclient-dev
or on OS X using brew:
brew install libmpdclient
ashuffle is built using ninja, and the meson build system, you can obtain meson
by following the instruction's on
meson's site. Meson version
>=0.54.0 is required. Ninja is available on most distributions. On
debian-based distributions (including ubuntu) it can be installed like so:
sudo apt-get install ninja-build
ashuffle relies on git submodules to track libraries it depends on. These libraries are not distributed in the source tarballs provided by Github, so you need to use git to get ashuffle when building from source.
Start by cloning ashuffle:
git clone https://github.com/joshkunz/ashuffle.git
cd ashuffle
The check what the latest release is on the releases page, and checkout the corresponding git tag. For example, If the latest release was v1.22.3 you would run:
git checkout v1.22.3
Then init and update the submodules:
git submodule update --init --recursive
Now you have the source needed to build ashuffle. Next, you need to configure the build, using meson. Luckily this is easy:
meson -Dbuildtype=release build
Then run
ninja -C build install
to build and install the binary. If you want to use a prefix other than
/usr/local you can supply an alternate by running meson like so:
meson build -Dbuildtype=release --prefix <prefix>
You can uninstall the program later by running
sudo ninja -C build uninstall
Note: See meson's documentation for more information on configuration.
Oh, and in case you're wondering why it's called 'ashuffle' it's because it implements 'automatic shuffle' mode for mpd.
These repositores are not maintained by ashuffle. I cannot vouch for any of them, your mileage may vary.
- AUR (Arch linux): ashuffle-git
- Fedora COPR:
tokariew/ashuffle - Homebrew (macOS):
hamuko/mpd/ashuffle - MacPorts (macOS):
ashuffle
If you find bugs in ashuffle, or have a feature suggestion, please file a Github issue. ashuffle also has two mailing lists you can subscribe to for discussion and announcements:
[email protected]: For (very) infrequent announcements of major ashuffle releases. Posts only allowed by the project maintiner.[email protected]: For general ashuffle questions, or discussion of ashuffle features. Allows posts from all users.
Below are some projects that use ashuffle. If your are using ashuffle as part of another project, feel free to open a pull request to include it in this list.
These projects do not use ashuffle directly, but are related to ashuffle in some way.
- ashuffle-rs: An experimental transpile of ashuffle to Rust: https://tech.labs.oliverwyman.com/blog/2018/11/27/experiments-in-converting-code-from-c-to-rust/
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