Auto album ratings breaks smart playlists - hollow stars

I've seen this discussed a few times but the given answers don't seem to work, maybe it has changed again in the new release of itunes (I'm on 9.1.1.12 on XP). I have a smart playlist of all the songs which have not been rated. Once I'd rated 19/29 of them they all disappeared as itunes had calculated an album rating (which is fine) but then applied that rating to all the unrated songs. In some views the songs are listed as unrated but the key thing is that the smart playlist thinks they're rated when they're not. Previous postings say to unrate the album but whenever I do that it just automatically rerates again. How can I create a playlist of songs that I have not yet rated?

Hi, welcome to Apple Discussions.
I've just had a look at this under V9.1.1.11 current Windows build (is yours 64-bit perhaps?) and, as far as I can tell, rating tracks (filled stars) will produce an automatic rating (hollow stars) for an album. Likewise rating albums will produce an automatic rating for each of their tracks. If you only rate some of the tracks of an album without explicitly setting an album rating then the remaining tracks should stay unrated. I can set ratings for all but one track of the album and the last will stay happily unrated. What rules are you using to determine what should be in your unrated playlist?
tt2

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Album ratings and smart playlists

Hello all,
I was wondering if anyone can help me with the new iTunes functionality. I am trying to create a smart playlist with album ratings between 0 stars and 5 stars (basically all albums) and limit the playlist to 4 gb. I am trying to just create a random list of albums to sync to my iphone. Everytime I create a random list it always truncates the final album to exactly match 4gb so there is always an album that is incomplete.
Can anyone think of a different way to accomplish this so you can get ALL complete albums? There must be a way. Sorry if I sound picky about this but I am an album guy, not a random song guy.

Hi there. Try the following:
iTunes -> Preferences... -> Playback -> Shuffle: Albums
Now take your smart playlist you created, and set the 4GB limiter selected by "random" instead of "album". Because we forced shuffling to be by album only, this "random" will select entire albums, randomly. I just figured this out a few minutes ago and it seems to work great.
If you want all albums, you can probably omit the album rating rule (you might need to set Kind to "MPEG audio file" or something to skip podcasts, etc.)
To refresh your list, select and delete all tracks in the playlist, or use the Reshuffle Smart Playlists script available at dougscripts.com/itunes. Or you could add a criterion saying that Last Played must be greater than a month, or so.

Problem with ratings-based smart playlists in iOS5.

I use ratings-based smart playlists to organize my music. For example, a typical smart playlist will include all songs from a given genre rated 3 stars or better. Playlists work perfectly on PC/iTunes and iPad (and used to work perfectly on iPhone/iPod before iOS5), but on iPhone 4S (iOS5) and iPod touch (iOS5), only the lowest-rated songs show up; higher rated songs omitted from the smart playlist. However, I also always have a playlist that has the higher ratings. So the songs are on the iPhone/iPod, but just not in all the correct playlists. Anyone have help for me? Thanks.

I'm having the same problem-- my "Smart Playlists" don't seem to update. I created a new smart playlist with a single artist, and nothing comes into it-- so if I make one just for artist=devo, for example, no tracks come through despite their being hundreds.
I also employ smart playlists on my podcasts-- so when plays=1, it disappears from the list. These are not updating, despite my making no changes to them other than upgrading to iTunes 10.
My "recently played" list DOES seem to be updating, and I don't understand why I'm seeing this despite making no changes.

There is an album on a smart playlist on my ipod that is not on the music section of my ipod. I am not synced to any computer. How do I delete this album from the playlist and presumably my computer?

There is an album on a smart playlist on my ipod that is not on the music section of my ipod. I am not synced to any computer. How do I delete this album from the playlist and presumably my computer?
Thanks!

You will need to restore your phone as a new one using the itunes on your computer. This WILL erase everything on the phone but it will let you change the name of the phone and then you can add content to it.

How to import albums into a Smart playlist

How to import albums into a Smart playlist?

Change the criteria of the smart playlist to select the album.

Suggestion for Album Rating in Smart Playlist - let me choose

First just want to say I love the Album Rating feature, especially the ability to make a "Smart Playlist" that includes all my top rated albums.
However, I have a suggestion to make this feature better. Right now, it lets you choose albums that have integer ratings such as 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 stars BUT due to rounding this really means 0.5-1.49, 1.5-2.49, 2.5-3.49, 3.5-4.49, and 4.5-5.0 stars. Apple should let you specify any number of stars, including decimal points. In other words, if I want all albums that are 3.8 stars and up, let me do that.
This may not seem important, but the way I sync my ipod with my playlists relies on these smart playlists (and not on rating every single song in my library) because my ipod is too small in hard drive size for my library.
Any one else out there agree?

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

'Playlist is' criteria breaks Smart Playlists on iPhone 3G?

I am using the 'Last Played and' 'Playlist is' criteria for my 3G's Smart Playlist. This method works great in iTunes but does not seem to update on the 3G. Essentially, the music track I just played does not remove itself from the playlist.
Using 'Playlist is', I have tried to target static and smart playlists. Neither work.
Interestingly 'Last Played' does update when used by itself on the 3G.
Has anyone seen this behavior and is there a work-around?
many thanks in advance
Graham

I am having the same issue. It's really frustrating trying to figure out what criteria will or will not break the live updating of the smart playlists on the iPhone 3G. Is there a maximum number of critera you can specify? Please Apple could you document this?

ITunes 7.1 breaks smart playlists for podcasts

All previous podcast-supporting versions of iTunes built smart playlists that reflected the order of the files in the RSS feed... but not iTunes 7.1! Its smart playlist order reflects the order the files were added to the iTunes library.
You know how iTunes downloads multiple episodes in newest-to-oldest order? Well, that's how they show up in a smart playlist now.
And no, it's not a problem of sort order. I have tried every option related to sorting by name, artist, and album - nothing makes a difference.
So, in one of my podcasts (a radio feed recorded from 13:00 to 16:00 Monday-Friday), I now have:
- CH0703151335
- CH0703151306
- CH0703151435
- CH0703151406
- CH0703151506
- CH0703151535
- CH0703161306
- CH0703161406
- CH0703161335
- CH0703161535
- CH0703161506
- CH0703161435
Those are dates & times (2007-03-15, 13:06, for example), and of course the files are in correct date/time order in the feed. You might be able to guess how I figured out what it's doing. (If you didn't figure it out, here's the story: I updated the podcast while the episodes were being recorded.)
If you have seen this, did you figure out a way around it? Thanks! So far, I haven't, and it's really annoying. As I said, this is new in iTunes 7.1, and it persists in 7.1.1.

After more tinkering, I have figured out what's going on here, and I think there's a bug here.
For all of the podcasts I mentioned, the "Sort Name" is identical. In the case that the "Sort Name" is identical, I would think that the "Name" field would be used when sorting by name. Instead of sorting on name, however, iTunes is sorting on the date the file was introduced into the iTunes library. That seems to me to be a bug.
I have made a change to see if I can empty the "Sort Name" field, to see what that will do. Hopefully that will sort correctly.

Hollow stars.... itunes assigns an album average based on my star ratings, but in what scenario do Songs get assigned a hollow star? does itunes acquire info from other media programs or solely from what ive rated in itunes, orrr....

Hollow stars.... itunes assigns an album average based on my star ratings, but in what scenario do Songs get assigned a hollow star? does itunes acquire info from other media programs or solely from what ive rated in itunes, or does itunes use other peoples ratings... Hollow Star assignment basis?

If you assign songs a rating an unrated album gets an automatic rating, which you can override by rating it.
If you assign an album a rating unrated songs get an automatic rating, which you can override by rating them.
iTunes doesn't import ratings from tags, or third party services. You set them.
You can't turn automatic ratings off.
tt2

Rebuilding (smart) Playlists incl. ratings

I have finally received my new iMac and would like to transfer the itunes library from my MB Air to it complete with all the (smart) playlists and star ratings etc.
What is the best way to do that?
I have copied my library and the content is there but without the ratings and playlists.
Thanks

van D wrote:
Hi, copied the entire Library/music/iTunes to new iMac.
There is no /Library/Music/ folder.
You need to copy ~/Music/iTunes/ folder.
First quit iTunes.
Then copy the entire folder, replacing the folder already there.
Then launch iTunes.

How do I create smart playlists for albums?

Hi,
I have a lot of albums and each album has their proper track listings meaning their proper track songs. I would like to create smart playlists for all my individual albums and for every individual album has a smart playlist with the proper track songs in the smart playlist for the album?
1.) Would doing this be possible?
2.) If so, how could I do this?
I forgot to mention a lot of my albums are multiple CDs, and a lot also include bonus CDs.
I don't know many tracks or CDs off the top of my head, but here are some album names as an example.
Road Trips vol. 1 no. 1
Road Trips vol. 1 no. 2
Road Trips vol. 1 no. 3
Road Trips vol. 1 no. 4
And the list goes on.
Thank you,

An album in iTunes is a collection of tracks that have the same Album name and the same Artist or Album Artist. Older iPods only work with Artist. The iPod has menu listtings for Artists & Albums built in, so again no need to duplicate with playlists. Any tracks you put on an iPod will, if correctly tagged, show up in their relevant album, and in the artist listing, the genre listing, any playlists that you include, etc.
For tips on organizing tracks in iTunes and on an iPod see the Grouping tracks into albums article. It needs some updated images, but the information is otherwise still relevant.
tt2

ITunes11 smart playlists not working

I can't get a smart playlist to work on the new iTunes11.
I created one with the search criteria to show all files added after 11/20/2012. Although there are 231 files that fit that criteria, none are listed in the smart playlist.
So I created a smart playlist with the search criteria to show all files with the word "vinyl" in comments. [I record old vinyl albums onto my computer, so I add the "vinyl" comment so that I can isolate them.] This playlist resulted in zero items even though my old smart playlist -the one that was constructed in iTunes10 but transferred into iTunes11- does work. However, my iTunes10 vinyl smart playlist does not list any "vinyl" files added after upgrading to iTunes11.
So I created a smart playlist with the search criteria to show all files where the artist included the word "Smith". Considering that I have many Chris Smithers tracks and many tracks from the Smiths, I would expect those files to appear. And yet this smart playlist also resulted in zero items.
I am having zero luck using smart playlists with iTunes11.
Smart playlists are nothing new to me. I have successfully created dozens of them over the years. Has something changed that I am overlooking?

I seem to have the same problem.
If this is confirmed (or if this is just a plain bug, which would be no better) than this is a disaster.
I use smart playlist for sorting albums. For example:
- normal playlist for "must have"
- normal playlist for "nice to have"
- normal playlist for "can live without"
-> and a smart playlist with "none of the above" (ie "not sorted")
Then I just have to move albums from that smart playlist to any of the above and it is now sorted.
Well today with iTunes 11, whatever I do with the album, it stays there.
Pointless Apple, fix that bug!!!

Smart playlists and hollow stars

Does anyone know how to make iTunes' smart playlists distinguish between hollow (iTunes generated) and solid (user generated) stars? I like rating albums, but I also want to be able to create playlists that only include tracks with four or five user-generated stars. When I rate an album, iTunes automatically rates all of unrated tracks. As a result, my ratings-based playlists then include these hollow-star tracks, and I don't want them there.
If there is no way to make smart playlists distinguish between hollow and solid stars, is there a way to turn the automatic ratings off?
Thanks for the help with this.

I now do this, it's not a definitive solution, it's rather a tournaround but it works.
If i rate an album with 5 stars, all the songs then go to the smart playlist (with the checked option "only 5 stars songs") even if a single song itself it's not 5 stars, so i rated every song I don't want to be on the playlist with one star so that it will not appear.
Obviously this does not work if you use the 1 star rating for example for songs you like only a little.
hope this helps.
Message was edited by: cecered909

Album ratings and clear stars are ruining my playlists. Help turn them off.

I understand that if you give an album an album rating, it will give all unrated songs on that album clear stars based on the album rating. Because of this, I have not rated any of my albums, since all of my playlists are based off of the song ratings.
All of a sudden, now when I rate a single song, it puts clear stars in the album rating column, and ALSO assigns clear stars for all of the unrated tracks on that album. It is ruining all of my playlists.
Is there any way to turn off the album ratings, or turn off the clear stars, or do something to get rid of this, rather than going through manually and adjusting each song individually?

Is there anyway to make itunes recognize the difference between clear stars and filled stars when making smart playlists? This may work to make things work for me.
If you use "album rating" field in your playlist, it will use the clear stars that appear in that column. If you use "rating" field in your playlist, it should ignore the clear stars that appear in the "album rating" column.
As for an example of how things are not working right now, I have a playlist that is just unrated music, so that if I feel like rating some of the newer songs I added in, I can just load that playlist, and everything in there has no ratings. Now, some of the albums that are mostly unrated are not showing up in that playlist, because instead of all of the unrated songs being blank, they all have clear stars next to them.
When you say "unrated music", what precisely is the rule you use? When I set up a playlist with the rule "Rating is less than '1 star'", even albums with clear stars in the "album rating" field show up (as long as the individual track doesn't bear a rating, obviously). But when I change that rule to say "Album rating is less than '1 star'", then as soon as I rate one song, the entire album is removed from the playlist.
And just to make sure I am being very clear on this, I have NOT used the album rating at all, those stars are clear as well.
Ok, I think this may answer some of the questions in my previous post. I infer that you are seeing clear stars in the "rating" column, not just the "album rating" column. Can you confirm this? If that's the case, then this is truly a mystery. I was hoping the problem was an innocent confusion between the "album rating" and the "rating" columns.

Smart playlists and half-star ratings

Is it possible to make a smart playlist for songs less than 3-1/2 stars? I saw one post from 2008, but it's too complicated and beyond my computer skills. I am on a Macbook.
Thanks for any help.

Chris Milligan wrote:
Is it possible to make a smart playlist for songs less than 3-1/2 stars? I saw one post from 2008, but it's too complicated and beyond my computer skills. I am on a Macbook.
Thanks for any help.
Yes, just put two rules: "Rating" "is" "3 stars" and "Rating" "is less than" "3 stars." Set the 2 rules to "Match Any."

Auto album ratings breaks smart playlists - hollow stars

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