Plex Playlists with Amazon Echo

Posted on by rcragun

My music library is stored on my NAS. On my primary desktop at home, I mount the music folder and use Clementine to listen to my music. Everywhere else, I use Plex to play my music. Playing my music through Plex via my browser at work, via my Roku in the family room, and via the Plex Amp app on my phone, all works great. What doesn’t always work great is playing plex with an Amazon Echo device.

The first issue is that sometimes after I open Plex and tell it to play something, it just ignores me and does nothing, which is really annoying. I don’t have a solution for that problem. I may try to figure that out at some point.

The second issue is the one that I finally figured out. I have a number of really generic smart playlists that I have auto-generated in Plex. Most of these are generated based on the genre of music – Folk, Classic Rock, Alternative, Classical, etc. I’m all about keeping things simple, so I originally named most of those smart playlists in Plex as just the genre. In other words, my Folk playlist was literally just named “Folk.”

Enter the problem. I would say to my Amazon Echo, “Open Plex.” Plex would open fine. Then I would say something like, “Play playlist Folk .” My Echo would then say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch what you wanted to play. Try asking again.” For months (maybe even years), I just assumed that the Plex Skill was subpar and couldn’t do what I wanted it to do. I even double-checked with Plex’s list of Alexa Voice Commands to make sure I was saying things exactly right. But one day, for some reason, I had an epiphany: What if my Amazon Echo is getting confused with the genre and the playlist?

It turns out, that may have been the problem all along. I don’t know that for certain, but I ran a little experiment and that may have been the case. I created the exact same smart playlist in Plex that contained all my music in the genre Folk but named it “Favorite Folk” instead of just “Folk.”

This video shows the results:

So, word of advice: If you want the Plex Skill to play your playlists, name them something unique that does not overlap with the genre. Otherwise, the Plex Skill and your Amazon Echo will get confused and not play them.

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Plex – How To Create Smart (auto updating) Music Playlists

Posted on by rcragun

I love my Plex server. I stream my music basically around the world (I travel regularly). But it took me a while to figure out how to create playlists that automatically update (i.e., “smart playlists”) based on search filters. At home, I use a native music client (e.g., Strawberry or Clementine) to play my music. Clementine, in particular, has excellent smart playlist functionality, allowing me to create a playlist with all of my music in the “Folk” genre or published between 1970 and 1980. With how amazing Plex is, I figured the same functionality had to be possible. I knew I could simply add songs to a playlist manually, but that seemed cumbersome. I’d rather let the software do it for me. Once I figured it out, I thought I’d make the steps clear for others.

Counter-intuitively, the place to start is not in the “Playlists” option on the Plex dashboard, but in the Music panel.

Click on the Music pane, not the Playlists pane.

You’d think that you would create Playlists in the Playlists area, but you don’t. You create all the Playlists in the Music area.

Once you’re viewing your music, you need to look for a drop-down menu. It’s all the way to the left and says “All” with a little arrow next to it.

Click on the little arrow next to “All” to drop down the menu.

What you want to do is click on “Custom Filter.” That will open this option:

Here’s where you create custom filters.

Using that filter option, you can search for, say, all the music in the Genre “Alternative” or “Classic Rock.” Once you’ve entered your search criteria, click the “APPLY” button on the far right and it will apply your search criteria to your music:

Once you apply the search criteria, Plex will show you the music that fits the criteria.

Now, creating a “Smart Playlist” is just one more step. Look to the right of the window for an icon with four little lines and a plus sign. That is the icon for creating a playlist:

This is the icon you want for creating a playlist.

Clicking that button will open a prompt for you to name the new playlist. I typically name mine based on the search criteria, but you can call them whatever you want:

Now, with your Smart Playlist created, you’ll be able to see it in the Playlist area. Click on “Playlists” in the left menu and, assuming you’ve done everything correctly, you’ll see your newly created playlist there:

All of your playlists are in the Playlists area.

The little gear icon that appears in the top left corner of the playlist indicates that it is a “smart playlist” that will automatically update if you add new music to your library that meet your search criteria. Playing the playlist is as easy as hovering over it and then clicking on the play arrow that appears:

Hover over the playlist, then click on the play arrow to play it.

There you go. You can now create as many playlists as you’d like using filtering/search criteria. (This guide helped me figure this out.)

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