hi all,

amarok is amazing!  love it!  will be donating asap (waiting for payday...).  i'm wondering, though, if someone can explain how the dynamic playlists work, or how i can get the tracks selected to be slightly less arbitrary.

an example- just now, i put on a 'best of nina simone' album.  eight tracks in the playlist, total.  here are the tracks/genres (my descriptions) that automatically followed:
ambient cookbook/ambient techno
hieroglyphics/90's hiphop
dropkick murphys/2000's punk
blue bedouin/experimental techno
ella fitzgerald/jazz
cubanate/industrial
king tubby/oldschool dub
drop the lime/minimal electro
offspring, "intermission"/just weird
blink 182/90's pop punk
spiritualized/electrojam band
ack kerouac/spoken word
underworld/acid trance
carl cox/old trancey rave
violent femmes/90's alternative.

...am i being stupid in failing to see a logical progression here?  'cause when i had some friends over the other day & the music suddenly switched from french reggae to speed metal, we were all equally surprised... 

thx for any insight.

well... it all depends on which particular dynamic playlist you're using.

Suggested Songs playlist uses the profiles of other people on last.fm who also listen to the current artist in your playlist to come up with the added track.
If you go to last.fm and look up Nina Simone, you'll find all those artists in the 'similar artists' list - probably because so much of her work has been remixed/sampled.

A different way to get random music of particular genres is to create Smart Playlists with Amarok, and use these as the source for a custom Dynamic Playlist. There are details on how to do this in the Amarok handbook.