About smart playlists

i created a new smart playlist and selected live updating. but i wonder if there's a way to make the smart playlist add songs ALREADY in my itunes library that match the conditions? or do i have to delete and re-add the songs all over again?
thanks

wyndslash wrote:
... add songs ALREADY in my itunes library that match the conditions?
that's what a smart playlist will do. it doesn't do that for you ?
JGG

Similar Messages

Please help, simple question about Smart Playlists and Live Updating

PLEASE for some reason I've never gotten an answer on this.
I have a Smart Playlist called "Recently Played" with Live Updating. No matter how I set the parameters, the most recently played *song will ALWAYS appear on the bottom of the list when using my iPhone on the go.* I bolded that because I want you to be aware I'm not talking about on iTunes - I'm aware you can change how the list is viewed on iTunes.
When using your iPod/iPhone on the fly and Live Updating is enabled, is there any way to make the most recently played song appear at the very top???
Thanks so much

Haven't seen that problem before but try the following: in iTunes, right-click the playlist name and enable the option "Copy to Play Order." Then sync.
The normal use of "Copy to Play Order" when you have the playlist displayed in iTunes in some sort order, but you want it to display in the iPod in shuffled order (as it will actually play). Different problem than you are observing, but the same thing "might" help.... Let us know.

Another question about smart playlists

Hi,
I have been experimenting a lot with smart playlists lately and have 3 now that I have set up with help from this forum so far. However, I have a question I don't see an obvious answer to. That is, I have every song in at least one playlist, and some songs are in multiple playlists. I can add a playlist to a rule, but how can I tell ITunes to create a playlist containing songs that are in more than one playlist? For example, I want ITunes to create a playlist from songs that are in more than one of the following playlists, top 25 most played, purchased, and tagged. How can I set up ITunes to do this?

The checkmark on the right side when you're editing smart playlists adds more rules. Make as many rules as there are playlist that you're looking into and make each rule say "playlist _is_ (fill in the playlist from the dropdown." If you want songs that appear in ALL the selected playlists you select match ALL of the rules at the top. If you want songs that appear in any of the playlists you've selected you have to select match ANY rule at the top. If you have three playlists and you're looking for any songs that appear on any two of the playlists, but they don't necessarily have to appear on all three, then unfortunately there's no way to do that with one smart playlist. You'd have to make a smart playlist with one saying playlist top 25 most played+purchased (match ALL) another saying with playlist top 25 most played+tagged (match ALL), another saying playlists purchased+tagged(match ALL). Then you could make a 4th smart playlists saying to add the other three playlists and you'd end up with one playlist that has only songs that appear in ANY of the other three.
Note: there's an option that appears to make subrules as if you could do the above all in one playlist but unfortunately these don't actually work the way they appear they should in my experience.

Question about smart playlists

hello all:
i was wondering if someone can help me out with something. i really, REALLY need my iPhone to start behaving the way an mp3 player i had almost 5 years ago worked.
what i am looking to do is to have a playlist that has a bunch of my music, and after i play a song, i want that song removed from my playlist WITHOUT having to sync with iTunes and WITHOUT having to do it manually. i created a smart playlist that has "playcount = 0" as the only requirement, but after playing a song, the song is still in the playlist. i tried stopping the iPod app and after restarting the iPod app the song that i played is still in the playlist. i even tried rebooting my iPhone, but that still doesn't make the playlist update.
i have done a lot of testing to see if i can make this work, but i keep running into roadblocks. i even tried changing all of my music so iTunes would think it is a "podcast" so that i could get that blue dot which signifies an "unplayed" status, but it was messing up my play order and i did not see any way of making it work the way i wanted it to.
does anyone have any suggestions that may help me with my problem? any insights would be greatly appreciated!
thank you!
jason

Sandra, THANK YOU!!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
something i have noticed is that for some reason, if i play the song from the playlist that has the 'Media Kind = Music' and 'Plays is not 0' as the playlist rules, then the song is not always marked as listened to. if i play the same song from a temp playlist, the song gets updated and disappears from my iPhone smart playlist. however, i have been using another playlist that i can easily clear and add the songs from the smart playlist, and bang, my problem is solved.
you have no idea how happy i am with this. it may not be the absolute very best solution, but i am happy with it. i no longer have to relisten to music just because my iPhone does something stupid.
thank you yet again!!!

A question about smart playlists

how do i get a smart playlist to automatically uptade my added songs everyday

Another option I have found very useful with iTunes and my iPod is to create a smart playlist of songs that haven't been played yet.
Simply create a new playlist and tell it to only play songs that haven't been played yet (play count = 0). Shuffle still works with this play list so when you use it you still get a random assortment of tunes, but also only the stuff you haven't heard yet (well hasn't yet been played since adding it to iTunes). Very useful for when you add new albums and songs to your iTunes and iPod as they automatically get added to this playlist.
Further more, once they get played, they no longer have a play count of zero and so no longer belong to this playlist, therefore, no repeats are possible. With the iPod/iTunes set to automatic update, when you sync you iPod to iTunes, anything you played on your iPod gets the count updated in iTunes.
Patrick

Quick question about smart playlists.

Is it possible to edit a smart playlist used to show recently played songs to recognise multiple plays of the same song? To say it another way, if I listen to 'X' once it records it with the correct time etc, but if I play 'X' again it overwrites the first play with the second. Is there anyway to stop this?
Thanks alot.

Make a Smart Playlist and choose "Selected by: most often played" as one (or the only) option.
I have Smart Playlists that track
Top 10 most played
Top 20 most played
and so on.......
That is just one way way of doing it.

How can I change the order of songs in a smart playlist?

Hi there,
I have a question about smart playlists.
I have a smart playlist where all songs rated 5 stars are ordered in descending order, meaning the latest additions first. That works well in iTunes and I can rearrange the songs there without a problem.
But when I start the iPod on my iPhone the order of songs in this playlist is always the same. In my case the latest songs are always put last no matter how I sort the songs in iTunes. I tried to delete and create a new smart playlist but the result is always the same.
Is there a solution?
Thanks for your answers....

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3044

Smart Playlists Question

Who knows a lot about Smart Playlists? I want to create a playlist that has all of my songs sorted first by "Play Count", then by song title. Does anyone know how to do this? I could write a MySQL query to do this in 2 minutes, but I don't know enough about iTunes to do it. Is it possible?
Thanks!!!

Smart playlist are for selecting specific songs, not sorting.
If you are sorting everything you don't need a playlist.
Select Library /Music and sort on *Play Count*.
Can't select a secondary sort column though (with either a playlist or the library).

Restore default Smart Playlist

I accidently deleted the default “Recently Added” Smart Playlist. I was just attempting to clear that playlist, not delete the folder. Oops, I use it often.
I have been trying to restore it by creating a new Smart Playlist with the same title, but it’s not working. Perhaps I don’t understand which rules I should be selecting. I’ve tried it a dozen different ways.
Thanks in advance.

Have you tried it like this?
Recently Added:
Match the rule "Date Added">"is in the last">"1">"Days" make the days and the interval to suit yourself, you can have days, weeks or months.
Check the box "Live Updating"
You can read more about smart playlists here:
How to create a Smart Playlist with iTunes
Smart Playlists.com

Stolen laptop, now need to recover smart playlists... how?

My Powerbook was stolen. I've received a replacement, and used Senuti to recover the music back onto my laptop. However, I spent a ton of time creating smart playlists, and really don't want to do it all over again. Senuti allows me to copy the smart playlists, but they lose their 'intelligence' and become regular playlists. Is there anything out there that will transfer and preserve the smart playlists? Thanks - and I hope Apple doesn't remove this posting, this is legit, shoot me an email and I'll send you the police report.

If you're copying tracks back from your iPod, the iPod knows nothing about Smart Playlists, since these are handled in iTunes, which is why Senuti copies them back as ordinary Playlists.
Unless you've got a backup of your iTunes Music Library.xml file you're out of luck. It's this .xml file that holds the definitions of the Smart Playlists.

IPhone 4 Fails to Start Sync Wifi, Smart Playlists Won't Sync Wifi or Wired, and Missing Artwork iTunes Screensaver

Hi all,
I recently deleted a few gigs worth of photos off my iPhone 4. Ever since I've been having trouble with a few things. All software is up to date. So far here are the things I've noticed that seem suspicious.
iPhone fails to start sync using wifi. It times out on Step 1 (starting sync) or Step 2 (backup). I've tried closing and reopening iTunes, restarting the MBP and iPhone, and deleting my iPhone backup. In some cases iTunes loses the connection to phone and won't come back. It syncs fine using a USB cable, but won't get past step 2 using wifi. I hate wires so I would prefer to do this over the air.
My smart playlists no longer sync. I've tried unchecking the boxes and selecting them again, but nothing. Duplicating an exisitng smart playlist and selecting it to sync seems to have worked for now, but I'm concerned about now being able to add my original playlist. Sounds like a larger issue to me.
My iTunes screensaver on my MBP no longer displays artwork. It says there is no artwork to display, but iTunes still has artwork in it.
I've read numerous threads about all these issues. I know there are many people out there having these problems. I just haven't found a good solution for any of them. Everything was working beautifully until I tried to clean up some old stuff on my phone. Apple is playing dumb according to the people that have contacted them.
I'm running:
OSX Lion 10.7.4
iTunes 10.6.3
iOS 5.1.1
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

Just nudging this one back to the top in case anyone has some input.

The 10.4 upgrade smart playlist editing has removed the ellipse as the 3rd button option along side the adding or removing a parameter. Why? And can we get it back?

I just did the iTunes update to 10.4 (80) from 10.3 on a MacPro OS X 10.6.8 . I am extremely nervous and saddened by a subtle change to the smart playlist editing features. I have 178.26gb of music, and a very extensive array of playlists and smart playlists taking full advantage of all the wonderful features and complexity someone has taken the time to develop. I have taken years of time developing my library, and this one little change will set me back substantially. The change? Removing the ellipse as the 3rd button option along side the adding or removing a parameter. The button allowed one to create levels or groups of parameters within the dialogue window that could act independently within one smart playlist. For example, songs from artist "A" needs at least 2 stars to be included, while songs from artist "B" need three stars, and they both can be in the same smart playlist which has its first level of complexity. I have lists that go dozens of layers beyond. And dozens more that cross reference. Is there any way we can get the hierarchy back, ie. Reintroduce the ellipse button? Or is there something new I do not know about? Thanks!

I would like to second this.
This subtle yet life-changing removal is a total loss for advanced users that (used to) take full advantage of "logical and hierarchical" playlists. It tremendously impairs the "smartness" of the feature, effectively removing the possibility of mixing "and" & "if" parameters—which was the real beauty of the whole concept of "smart playlists" à la iTunes.
Here's a simple example. I would like to create a playlist combining two genres (rock and electronic) with only songs that have a rating higher than 3. I cannot do that anymore. I need to create two playlists:
a first playlist (A) that displays [Rock] OR [Electronic] (note that this playlist will never be played, it's an intermediary step required for B)
then a second playlist (B) that displays [songs from playlist "A"] AND [with a rating higher than 3].
It's a pain. And it clutters up browsing lists on my iPad/iPhone a lot.
Smart playlists should get the ellipse button back!
Moreover, the possibility of creating / editing smart playlists on iOS via a nice menu would be just… awesome. I would have thought Apple was going in that "smart" direction with iTunes. In hoping it's just a delay… until iOS 5 maybe?

Smart playlists no longer live update

I wrote in about this once before but got no solution. I use a smart playlist on my ipod touch to give me only podcasts with less than 1 play, so that I only get the new ones. When I got the ipod for Christmas, and until about late January it was working fine. All of the sudden it stopped live updating, and now only does it when I sync. This really ***** because I listen to about 25 podcasts a week, so it can be very confusing as to which I've heard and which I haven't. Is there any solution for this? I've tried using podcast = true and genre = podcast, but neither will smart update. As I said it worked fine previously, so it's not that podcast = true is completely broken, as I've heard it said elsewhere.
Any help much appreciated.

Sorry about that, I must have misunderstood.
This is the situation in detail.
When it worked:
A podcast would download. It would instantly appear in my smart playlist labeled "podcasts".
The playlist has the rules "podcast = true" and "playcount = less than 1".
I would sync my ipod.
I unplug the ipod.
When I listened to a podcast on my ipod completely (until the very end), the podcast would be removed from the smart playlist immediately, even though my ipod wasn't plugged in.
Now:
A podcast downloads. It appears instantly in my smart playlist.
I sync my ipod, and it appears in the smart playlist there too.
I unplug the ipod.
I listen to a podcast (every second of it) through the playlist. When the podcast is over, that podcast remains in my playlist, despite having a playcount greater than 1.
When I listen to podcasts on my computer directly via the smart playlist, it IS live updated. That is to say that when the podcast ends it is immediately removed from the playlist. That's what I want to happen on the ipod when it isn't connected to my computer, just like it used to.

IPod touch / iPhone: Smart Playlists empty / missing after 3.1.3 Update

Dear all,
the following problem is very persistent and it happened to me and a friend of mine (iPod touch / iPhone), in both cases, smart playlists created in iTunes (Mac), latest version, are home to several tracks. These tracks are being transferred to the iPod/iPhone - but the playlist doesn't show up or is shown as empty (both cases happened). The tracks are on the iPod/iPhone if you select them manually.
Re-Creating the playlists helped, but this is not the solution as the problem pops up with other playlists after having done that (however, the re-created playlists work).
The iPods/iPhones have been reset, freshly installed etc., music has been taken off completely from them - the problem remains / comes back.
It seems as if 3.1.3 has a problem with smart playlists and dubious one at that. Annoying at the very same time.
I'm a bit disappointed about having wasted several hours of my life on this problem, that is not what I expect from Apple. :/
Any permanent solutions out there?
Alex.

"Some sort" of solution.
So after having dabbled with Apple's attempt for a solution, I seem to have found one that seems(...) to work for me when it comes to audio books:
- create a new smart playlist
- filter the current cd "Terry Pratchett (Disc 2))
- counter is 0
and(!)
add:
maximum of X hours, sorted by NAME... that actually did the trick.
Of course, you need one more thing: you have to add the track's name to the name of the audio track... (see Doug's apple scripts for that script).
Honestly... I'm a bit disappointed that I had to become smarter than Apple. Don't you want to give me a job, guys?

Smart Playlist Problems (Since Ver 5)

I have come across a problem, which I believe started when I installed Version 5.
I have many SMART playlists set up that are really for my iPod usage. They are set to pick certain tracks that have not been heard in xxx amount of days, and usually set to a certain number of songs, or a particular amount of time.
The ones I use most often:
SLEEP MUSIC - a playlist of random songs not played in the last 5 days limited to 90 minutes. I listen to this when I go to bed.
WORK MUSIC - a playlist of 100 random songs not played in the last 5 days. I play this through my inMotion dock at work.
Previously, all the smart playlists worked fine. When the songs were played, the playlist would update on the iPod and the next time I would enter that playlist on the iPod, the tracks would be different.
It still works this way as long as I don't connect my iPod to my PC and sync with iTunes. If I do, it always resets the iPod playlists to the songs that appear in the iTunes library. I rarely use these playlists on the PC, so they almost always stay the same.
It seems like in previous versions, iPod would update the iTunes library and the smart playlists would also be updated in iTunes, so that the iPod versions of the playlists would continue to be random. But now, if the playlist is different on the iPod, it will not transfer over to iTunes. Instead, the iTunes playlist is copied back over to my iPod, and I keep getting the same playlists over and over.
This is a major annoyance, as I usually sync my iPod every day since I am constantly updating my library.
I've also noticed that when I synch my iPod, it is copying over songs that are already there, and it always seems to be copying songs I recently played in the iTunes library.
I know that if the tag info is changed, or I add album art to a track, it will be copied over to the iPod again, but I am not making any changes to these tracks, just playing them in iTunes. I don't know if this is related to the smart playlist problem or not.
I thought about unchecking LIVE UPDATE on those playlists that cause a problem, but that doesn't work, as now I'd ALWAYS have the same playlist.
So, my next thought is to use the "Only update selected playlists" option in the preferences to exclude those playlists that have this problem. If I do this, will new music I add still be copied over to my iPod?
Has anyone else encountered these problems?
FYI - I have not updated to the latest iPod update because of smart playlist problems people were having. I have version 1.1 on my 60GB photo. Would updating perhaps fix this problem?
My bottom-line thought on this is that iTunes updates the iPod, but the iPod no longer updates the iTunes library as it previously did. My reasons for thinking this are 1) The playlist problems I am having as stated above, and 2) I notice when I change the ratings on the iPod, they are not changed in iTunes. I am going to do a test and change the rating on a track on the iPod, then I will synch my iPod to see if the track is updated in iTunes, or the file is copied back to the iPod with the old rating.

Reagrding tracks being copied over again, I've seen another post in iPod Lounge where that person indicated the same thing. He stated that the play count was not being updated between the iPod and iTunes, but that the tracks were being copied over again. This sounds like a good explanation of this problem.
I have now noticed many of the tracks which I know I have played in the past show a "0" play count. Are the play counts kept in the iTunes library files (iTunes.xml and iTunes.itl)?
I always save the library files, so that when I reinstall iTunes I can just copy these 2 files back to their proper locations and I have my entire library intact - playlists and all. My music library is on a different drive.
Anyway, I KNOW I have played these tracks on the iPod, and yet they show unplayed on iTunes. This is probably another symptom of the re-copying tracks problem.

About smart playlists

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