Random Button for Genre on Zen Touch

[Flavia]

For the Zen touch, is there a way to set the playmode to random, so it picks random songs within a genre? Because, you sometimes, when I just hit the random, I don't like going from hard rock to classical, it's just not the right mood change. SO is there a way to randomly play songs within genres, artists, albums, etc? So please help me.

[Shikamaru Nara]

After using my new 40 GB Zen Touch for a couple weeks, here's how I'd like to see the Random button work, via a firmware upgrade:
- Pressing Random cycles between Random Play Once, Random Play Continuous, and Random Play Off all of these applying to the currently-selected tunes. In other words, it would enable random-play within the album, artist, genre, playlist or other preselected collection of tunes. I do NOT want to hear random rock cuts if I'm in a Classical frame of mind!
- Pressing and holding Random would toggle Randomize All Music on/off. This would perform like Random does now, except that it would also turn the mode off instead of just on.
This would be a major ease-of-use improvement, as it would let us cycle in and out of Random Play intelligently, within currently-selected music or all tracks, without having to drill down in the Play Mode menus. Would be very handy when on the move. Randomizing within currently-selected music is MUCH more important to me than randomizing all tracks, and I'd like that function right on the front panel of the Zen Touch.
Oh, one more thing: when pressing the Random button, make it effective with the next track - don't abruptly kill the current track. Come on, Creative, you can do this! Firmware, firmware, firmware! The Random button is a great idea that just needs some refinement - it could completely put to shame that dinky little Random thing from the Cult.

[Abenaki]

One more thing I regard as important for Random play is the ability to permanently "lock out" tracks from ever being played in Random mode. For instance, Audiobooks and Christmas tracks are pretty specialized and really don't belong mixed in with other tracks in my world, unless I specifically want to hear them. Tagging them as "Random Ignore" in their properties would be VERY useful; hope this becomes part of a firmware upgrade.

[Beothuk]

In all the discussions about Random improvements, I haven't seen this one: I'd like to see Random Album as an option when choosing Random mode. After selecting a playlist, genre or artist, Random Album would randomly select and play an entire album, start to finish - then randomly pick the next album. As a Deadhead with almost 900 tracks loaded on my Touch so far, all those live albums would sound better played in their entirety, straight through. With Shuffle off, selecting Artist plays the albums in the same alphabetical order every time - I'd love a Random Album option.

[Erie]

Think about it, some are just not feasible. The programmers only have a limited amount of memory to work with, as well as processor power and battery power. Yes, it would be nice if it played a version of snake, or you could change the font, or you have speed warping, bass enhancement, pitch changer, or a shuffle feature with 10 different modes. But frankly, it's just a waste of the programmer’s time, you don't _really_ need any of it, and you can achieve the same effect by just making a playlist out of the entire genre and choose Shuffle mode. Like previous people have said.

[Suigetsu]

Well, let's let the programmer's figure out what they have the time and resources to do. I think it would be a disservice to Zen users and Creative itself if we were reluctant to post about the improvements we desire, simply out of concern that it might burden the programmers or the device. If I worked for Creative, I'd consider it important to hear what my users were saying. And to those who posted about the need for a "Random Play" for a genre, a "Random Album" play, and the ability to remove certain tracks from random play, may I say that I agree completely. Such a feature would make the Zen an even better player that would better fit how we like to listen to music. Can making a "playlist" accomplish this same purpose? To the extent that it can, that's cold comfort when you're away from your PC. And I would argue that playlists aren't a practical solution. Do you want to edit your playlists every time you add a new song, songs, or albums to your Zen? Because the more you rely on playlists for these features, the more playlists you'll be editing. After all, if the posters to this board didn't care about convenience, ease of use, and practicality, we would just bring our PCs everywhere we went.