mpdq

Automatic MPD playlist or party mode creator to provide weighted randomness while autoqueuing MPD without relying on external services.

Change from prior versions!

The program has been rewritten for simplicity and to avoid subprocesses; each run will add a configurable number of tracks to the queue. Adding a self-contained idle loop is in the roadmap.

Dependency on ffmpeg/exiftool/etc is removed, because I somehow didn't think to just query mpc. Sigh.

Contents

1. About
2. License
3. Prerequisites
4. Installation
5. Setup
6. Usage
7. TODO

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1. About

mpdq is an auto-queuing system for MPD to create a flexible and configurable "party mode" effect with randomization and (re)discovery of your own music. It is inspired by the eclectic soundtracks of Letterkenny, High Fidelity, Doom Patrol, and many more. In-depth explanation: my blog.

mpdq will autoqueue random tracks from your existing music library, with per-genre weighting and simple defaults.

Because it uses mpd's own data, new tracks and changes to your music library will be incorporated when mpd is updated.

mpdq also now has a "radio station" toggle to let you easily switch between presets with an optional station-tuning effect.

2. License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. For the full license, see LICENSE.

3. Prerequisites

Required (non-basic Linux packages):

• mpd
• mpc

Optional:

• fzf for interactive station selection when using mpdq -s without a station name.

Everything else used by mpdq is part of a standard Linux userland (bash, GNU coreutils, grep, sed, awk, findutils, procps).

4. Installation

Place mpdq.ini in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpdq:

[SERVER]
musicdir=/directory/to/music
mpdserver=localhost
mpdport=6600
mpdpass=hackme
songlength=15
queuesize=10
# in hours
rotate_time=1
# in minutes
album_mins=30
artist_mins=30
# Genres to exclude from the above two checks
genres_exclude_album_check=Sound Clip,Classical

5. Setup

From the INI file

rotate_time in the ini file defines how long mpdq keeps a log, in hours, and helps define how often each genre will be played.

no_replay_rotate in the ini file defines how long you will not hear a particular track again, in hours, like how radio stations used to promise you wouldn't hear the same song twice in a workday. This checks the track filename, not the title.

album_mins and artist_mins will separately define the minimum interval, in minutes, before a specific album or artist will be played again. These should be shorter than no_replay_rotate.

genres_exclude_album_check is a list of genres where the album_mins and artist_mins checks will be disabled, for example if you have a genre with only one or two artists or albums in it.

Instruction files

The behavior of mpdq is governed by simple instruction files, as many (or few) as you desire. The location of the instruction file does not matter and must be specified on the command line. Without an instruction file, mpdq will shuffle through your entire library with an equal weight to each genre.

Each instruction file is a series of lines in the format genre=weight, like this:

Default=1
Rock=3
Classical=0

That "weight" is the maximum number of times that genre will be played in the interval you set for rotate_time in the ini file. The Default line is applied to all genres that are not explicitly named in the instruction file.

In the example above, all genres will be played a maximum of 1 time per rotate_time, except Rock, which may be played up to three times per rotate_time, and Classical, which will never be played per rotate_time.

Additionally, the weight will increase the chances of that genre being selected. It increases the number of chances of that genre being selected as well as the maximum number of times per rotate_time. Without that, playlists are very eclectic at first, then slowly get more and more homogenous, which isn't what we want here.

This allows both very eclectic selections (as with the example above) and very focused selections, such as:

Default=0
Industrial=1
Gothic=1

Capitalization Matters

mpdq can also create an example instruction file with all genres listed so that you can check your genre names properly. It won't hurt to have all genres listed, but it is totally unnecessary.

The instruction file should end in a newline. If it does not, mpdq will add one automatically.

If the instruction default.cfg exists in the configuration directory, it will automatically be used. If that file does not exist, the default value (1) will be applied to all genres.

mpdq now ignores the genres Bumper and Sound Clip entirely.

6. Usage

mpdq [-d #][-c /path/to/file][-khe]

mpdq has the following command-line switches:

• -c: Which instruction file to use.
• -d: Override the default priority in the instruction file.
• -k: Kill a currently running mpdq process.
• -e: Create an example instruction file at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpdq/example_instruction.
• -f: Force MPD to have the right playback settings (see Pausing the program below).
• -s: Choose a "station" (config file), automatically crop the queue, and switch to it.
• -h: Show a short help message.
• --loud: Give more terminal feedback (the default is quiet mode).

It should be run as a single-run process or using the watch command (for example, watch -n 60 mpdq).

With each run, mpdq will add queuesize (from the ini file) tracks to the MPD queue and then exit.

• If mpdq.ini is set up properly, you can do "random mode" by running mpdq by itself and setting the frequency with -d.
• If you've got default.cfg set up as well, you can run mpdq with no switches.

Because you define the hostname, it does not have to be on the same machine running MPD. If it is not on the same machine, set REMOTE=1 in the ini file so it does not doublecheck the file path.

mpdq logs what songs it has played and will not repeat the same song during the time specified in mpdq.ini. It does not log songs played or added in any other way.

Changing the station

If you run mpdq -s [name of configuration file], it will trim the queue to just the currently playing song, load that configuration, and follow those instructions to fill up the queue. For example, mpdq -s rock will load the instructions in $HOME/.config/mpdq/rock.cfg. That lets it finish playing the current song before switching. If you leave off which station to use and have fzf installed, it'll let you choose interactively.

You can put genre-based instruction files in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpdq/stations to allow selecting those as well. There is also a helper script to prune down some of the many genre names and eliminate instruction sets that have no valid genres in them. While they'll work as-is, they're meant to be templates you quickly adapt yourself.

If you have any tracks with the genre Bumper, mpdq will add one before queuing more tracks when changing stations. You can use this for your own "station tuning" effects; there are some from Freesound in the repository.

Pausing the program

Whether running in single-run mode or the (upcoming) ongoing loop mode, mpdq will keep checking the queue and adding tracks, which isn't always what you want.

mpdq will not add any tracks to the queue unless:

• random is off
• repeat is off
• consume is on

If you toggle any of those, mpdq will do nothing (not even rotate the song log).

Advanced Usage

With single-run mode, mpdq reads from the instruction file with each run. This means you can create different instruction files and either copy them to default.cfg or use the -c switch to change your upcoming (random-ish) music.

7. TODO

• Add loop back in and utilize relay mechanism to change instruction file.
• Switch between loop mode and single-run mode.
• Add in what to do when all genres run through in logrotate time period.
• Add a lighterweight way to handle log rotation, since it's called frequently.