Greetings, I'm new to the Forum.

[MysticDog]

16000 songs in a playlist? That would be a Library for many people!
Auto-shuffle works fine on Libraries with consume mode active to keep the apparent playlist down to 2 songs. Perhaps redefine your playlists as Libraries?

I must admit I'm confused... (a fairly common occurence)

My understanding is that there is the library, playlists, and the current queue. The library is all songs in the database. The current queue is what MPD is playing from. Playlists are groups of songs from the library which can be added to the queue as desired. How do I tell MPD to Auto Shuffle the Library without adding the library to the current queue?

I am still pretty green at this whole MPD thing but this is how I understand it to work. What am I missing?

If it matters any, my main playlist is larger than the number of songs in my library. Every song in my library is in the playlist at least once, except for Christmas music which is in its own separate playlists. Some songs are in the playlist two, three, or more times, depending on how much I like that song. This way I get a variety of all my music but I hear my favorites a bit more often. As with everything else, I'm sure there's other ways to accomplish this, but my way seems to work for me.

I have found the answer to at least one of the questions I asked in my original post. That is regarding my hourly news clip I insert into my playlist. I inquired whether I needed to update that directory each time I put a new audio clip in there, and the answer is no. Because it has the same title and MP3 tag as it's already in the database, it plays just fine without updating.

-MD