In a couple of previous posts, I proposed a couple of ways to easily copy all or a portion of your music library to a thumb drive for playing in your usb-enabled automobile.  You can check out my solution at my Github page.

Recently, though, I encountered yet another frustration: my “copy” script iterates through a JSON file of the inventory of my music.  In the file, my music is listed in alphabetical order by the artist.  So, I copy my music to my thumb drive in alphabetical order.  Which means I’ll get Aerosmith on my thumb drive, but will likely never get ZZ Top.  Bummer!  So, I came up with a great solution: Get-Random!

All I need to do is alter one line in my “copy” script:



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# apply my selection criteria and get a list of the songs to copy over to the flashdrive

$mp3s_to_write_to_drive = $mp3_col | where {$genres_i_want -contains $_.genre} | where {$bands_to_skip -notcontains $_.artist} | sort {Get-Random}

I just need to pipe my $mp3_col collection object to “sort {Get-Random}”.  This will sort the mp3 files randomly such that they’ll be copied to my thumb drive in a random order.  Cool!

I’ll probably not update my script in Github with this minor change, but just tack this little command at the end of the line in your downloaded copy of the script and you’ll be set.