Cusomized playlists

[superuserlaptop]

I have seen similar questions asked, but not like this.

I wish to create a dynamic playlist off of hard drive music. I have genre music folders. I occasionally add music. I wish the playlist to play a random song from music folder 01. Then I wish the same from music folder 02, and so on until every thing is played. The playlist will not play a song already played until everything has played.

If I quit, the playlist will start up where it left off. This is so that songs already played won't be included.

I will list the folder to be played, I don't care which song comes up for playing, then it will move to the next folder listed and finds a song.

This is different than randomly creating playlists with all the songs randomized.

This allows me to do something like this: Folder 01, Folder 01, folder 03, Folder 05, Folder 02

I have seen radio automation systems creating such music logs. Normally a log per day. I have also seen automation systems, such as the one from Smarts (win95 OS) that will play a song from a listed folder and block until everything has played.

What this creates is fresh music mixes. When the mix gets tiring, remixing by placing the folders in a different order will freshen the music. I don't care what the song is from the folder as long as it hasn't been played before everything else has played, at least in the folder. If a particular song gets annoying, I add a semicolon in front of the name to knock it out without deleting the song.

I do have automation software, what I want to avoid is my creating logs. I want the music playing in the background without me fiddling with it after it is set up. I may even leave it playing and only mute the speakers if I don't want music.

I would imagine that most folks would like this type of mixing. The trick is in the logs, not the player. Most players will cross-fade, but if they don't, so what. Make the files tight and it will be almost steady music.

But I don't even know where to begin. Maybe someone else may want to include outboard links, I don't.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions.

As added info: Folder 01 could be songs from the 70s, Folder 02 could be songs from the 80s. Folder 03 could be Love Songs. Folder 05 could be instrumentals. You could mix the folders however you want and change the mix later on with the same music to make it fresh again.

I don't need time steps, nor any of the fancing things found in radio automation. This should, however, be something that will work on any OS because it is a music log (Playlist) that VLC can read.

Thanks in advance for any help. I find music very boring being played as it would normally be played in most players.

Just for the record: Debian 6.5 on some computers, 7 on some others. Mate desktop Environment.

Thanks again.