Random Smart Playlists

I've set up a series of smart playlists which select songs at random from my library.
I thought that these would make a new selection of songs each time I synced my iPod but this doesn't seem to be happening. How do I get these to refresh?

iTunes has no 'refresh' button, so the contents of a playlist with random contents will stay the same.
To force iTunes to refresh the list:
Select all songs in the (smart) playlist and press the DEL-key.
iTunes will now delete the items from the list and repopulate it with different songs.
After that you can sync the iPod with the new contents.
Hope this helps.
M

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How can I create a randomized smart playlist?

When I create a smart playlist, pick a playlist and select add Random, it puts all the songs in alphabetical order. Randomizes the artists but not the music. In older versions of Itunes this worked.
Figurerd it out..the triangle at the top of the # column....Not very intuitive...

MVP video playlist app is the one you want download

Random smart playlist...how can I eliminate duplicates?

I'm trying to create a random 15 GB playlist to upload to my iphone, out of 100+ GB in my home digital library...but I want to have only unique selections in my list. My first attempt had a ridiculous number of repeats.
Any way to set that?
I can see exclusions based on any number of criteria, but no "no repeats" checkbox...
I'd really rather avoid having to go through and "uncheck" a few thousand songs by hand...

If you are trying to sync from the Outlook calendar on the PC and you are syncing with iCloud - that is probably why you are getting duplicate entries.
So therefore, if you are getting duplicate entries - it must be syncing the Outlook calendar on the PC.

Random Albums Smart Playlist: Is it possible?

In addition to the other smart playlists I have live updated onto my iPod, I wanted to add a 7GB limited smart playlist which selects random albums. I have had a very hard time doing this. Is this even possible?????
My current rules state:
Date Added is after 10/31/05 (first day I had my music library)
Limit to 7 GB selected by album
This unfortunately pulls the albums in alphabetical order, so the 7GB limit essentially caps me at albums starting with "B."
Is there a away to pull a true random smart playlist of albums that I can either recreate or reset each time I would like my ipod to live update?????

no responses. see other question of same nature.

Since I upgraded to IOS5, my Smart Playlists are in a random order. Since I use it for listening to Talking Books this makes it useless. How can I control the order of a Smart Playlist?

Since I upgraded to IOS5, my Smart Playlists are in a random order. Since I use it for listening to Talking Books this makes it useless. How can I control the order of a Smart Playlist?

It may be best to recreate the folder and the smart playlists from scratch.
tt2

Smart playlists that grab a random selection make zero sense.

Because the random selection only ever happens ONCE making it utterly useless.
For example: I have created a smart playlist that grabs 1 hour's worth or randomly selected 3 - 5 star rated tracks from my music library. But it NEVER re-randomises! This makes no sense.
Also: this forum remains very broken (it is impossible to login using another Apple ID once logged into another ID) and the Bold, Italic and Underline buttons don't work (I'm using Camino Version 1.6b3pre (1.8.1.12pre 2008012000) ).

Yeah, I've been to Doug's scripts before - great site.
As for just hitting the spacebar - no help when I want a falling asleep playlist. I don't want to wake up hours later to discover iTunes still playing in the middle of the night. Thanks anyway
You know - I do not properly comprehend the thinking behind having random selection mean random ONCE, then the same FOREVER

Create smart playlist - "shuffle randomly" - burn DVD

The above is all what I want to do.
I can create a smart playlist no problem. I can burn a DVD with the playlist no problem. BUT
I can not get the playlist to randomly shuffled in the itunes window before I burn the disk?!! Shuffle is on "By Song" and turning it 'off' or 'on' makes no change to the order of the playlist in the itunes window.??????
I am using itunes 9.0.1.8. I had done it once before a while back, and the DVD has tracks in random order (ie:shuffled) but not now the playlist does not shuffle.
itunes DJ only gives 100 songs, I need 400 approx.
what am I doing wrong or what has changed recently????
cheers for any help.
CD

Click the very first column header with the numbers.
If you have any other column selected, it will sort on that column. If shuffled, the songs will play shuffled but still be displayed sorted on that column.
itunes DJ only gives 100 songs, I need 400 approx.
Make a new blank playlist and add what you want.
Or make a smart playlist and select 400 songs by random.

Smart Playlist of random albums

I want to create a Smart Playlist that contains randomly selected albums...until the playlist reachs a certain size. I know how to tell it to "limit" the list to X GBs "selected by random". However, this won't give me complete albums.
Any help is appreciated!

Well, since there is no Smart Playlist option that allows you to specify whole albums, this currently appears not possible to do with a Smart Playlist.
Rob

I copied a smart playlist to a regular playlist in order to change the order of the individual selections. I then burned the regular playlist to a cd, but the cd burned it in alphabetical order as it appears on the smart playlist.

I changed the order, then burned a cd but the cd copied the songs in the order of the smart playlist, which was alphabetical. What am i doing wrong in this scenario, and is there a way to change the song order in a smart playlist? I am a new MAC user. Is this unique to the MAC format?

I'm trying to figure out a way to make a playlist of songs I generally like from a very large library to fit on my iPod. The songs aren't rated, and I don't want to have a totally random selection chosen by a smart playlist.
I usually make two playlists.
One playlist with favorites I do want on the iPod and another smart playlist to fill the rest of the iPod. Just limit the size to th esize of the iPod minus wthe size of my iPod selection playlist.

How can I make a smart playlist sort album by artist in order of size?

I'm trying to figure out a way to make a playlist of songs I generally like from a very large library to fit on my iPod. The songs aren't rated, and I don't want to have a totally random selection chosen by a smart playlist.
I thought a good way to pare down the list would be to sort album by artist, and then filter that list in order of the size that each artist takes up. It's more important to get rid of an artist that I don't like that also hogs a lot of space than one that maybe only has one track. I figure if I could scan down the list and exclude the worst offenders, it conceivably would make the task much simpler.

I'm trying to figure out a way to make a playlist of songs I generally like from a very large library to fit on my iPod. The songs aren't rated, and I don't want to have a totally random selection chosen by a smart playlist.
I usually make two playlists.
One playlist with favorites I do want on the iPod and another smart playlist to fill the rest of the iPod. Just limit the size to th esize of the iPod minus wthe size of my iPod selection playlist.

Why are my Smart Playlists so completely out of sync?

I created a smart playlist on my iTunes 10.6 that populates the list with randomly selected tunes that do not contain specific genres nor were played in the last 90 days to fill 3 hours. The songs that populate the list seem to meet those criteria. However, the songs that populate the list on my iPhone look nothing like the list on iTunes and includes songs I listened to yesterday even though I synced last night and this morning.
Any suggestions?

I've seen the similar behavior thing: songs that were supposed to be excluded because of playcount rules being included anyway on my iPhone. The playlist works fine on iTunes. I believe that the fact that the songs aren't matching is by design with randomly selected playlists, as it avoids complicated syncing issues between devices. However, the fact that songs are included which shouldn't be is simply a bug.
Smart playlists have ALWAYS been brain-damaged on iPods/iPhones/iPads in my experience; lots of bugs that don't go away on even major software updates, and when they do go away they are replaced by brand new bugs, often as not worse than the old bugs. So, I wouldn't get my hopes up. I think Apple's team for dealing with smart playlists on post-PC devices consists of three brain-damaged chimpanzees, recently reduced from the old team, which consisted of four brain-damaged chimpanzees plus a lemur.
In short, smart playlist issues are getting close to celebrating their tenth birthday. Hoping that they will get fixed only leads to madness.

Smart Playlist is not syncing onto my iPod

I have a smart playlist of recently added songs on my iTunes. I just got the 3.0 software for my iPod touch and now my recently added playlist is not showing up as the songs that are on my iTunes. The songs that are supposed to be in that playlist are correct on the iTunes, but are totally different songs on my iPod after I've synced it. I've tried restarting my iPod, restoring it and I've made a new smart playlist for my new songs and it still comes up as the same set of different songs as before on my iPod. How can I fix this playlist to have to right songs in it on my iPod?

im in the same situation.. i recently switched over to the 3.1.3 version and what a mistake that was. i wish we could go back because half the things dont work anymore. like the smart playlists... it says i have them correct on both itunes and my ipod but i check it ON my ipod and its random songs...

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.

Smart Playlists: a beginners guide

Hi all!
If you're like me, you probably couldn't wait to load all your music onto your iPod, but you very quickly realized that the twenty odd days of music in your computer will never fit into your iPod. Below is a guide for maximizing your iPod space while minimizing the amount of library shuffling you have to do to get the most of your music.
It's a fair amount of work up front, but once in place I think you'll find it worth the effort. It did take me some time to figure out how to best do this, so I figure some of you might still be in those early stages.
I assume the following:
1. You've got your favorites that you don't want to remove from your iPod because you listen to them often.
2. Your library is dynamic. You add new tunes from time to time.
3. You have much more music than will ever fit into your iPod.
4. You have many songs you'd like to hear from time to time, but not all the time.
5. You aren't 100% familiar with everything in your library (loaded a whole album with which you only really knew one or two songs?)
6. You, like my ex girlfriend, have many moods. And your desires change accordingly.
Here's what I did. (And if you can improve upon this, by all means post how!)
PREPARATION-
First, go to your library. Show the "rating" column so you can see how many stars your songs have. Sort them all by the number of stars. Then see all those ones without stars? Rate them. I'd say give 'em all 1 star if you're not sure what you want to give 'em yet. YOu can change this while listening to 'em in your iPod and you'll see later why that's key. Bear in mind, you can select a huge list of 'em by clicking on the first unrated song, then holding down SHIFT and clicking on the last one. Then you can rate 'em all 1 star in one fell swoop.
Second, check the genre of all your songs. If they haven't got one, consider adding a genre. This isn't critical, but you might find it's easier to build your playlists if you grab everything you might want by genres.
SOURCE-
Okay, create a new playlist. Make it a non-smart one. I suggest giving it a functional name like "SOURCE - Rock & Alterna". When you go to reference these while making smart playlists, you'll find it easier to locate if all your sources are together. This playlist will be huge. The idea is to take everything you might ever want to hear from these genres and toss 'em into this playlist. Now, you can use a smart playlist to do it, but I'm suggesting the regular playlist because you can freely add the occasional non-genre song to it. (ie: the one that sounds rock but is listed as pop.) For now, don't put too much thought into this. Just stuff it all in there. This playlist won't be going on your iPod as is.
Next, we've got the intermediary playlists. These do the thinking that give the playlists their "smart" title.
Make these three new smart playlists:
Rock & Alternative TOP 20
Rock & Alternative MID 30
Rock & Alternative BOT 50
Set the properties for them as such:
Rock & Alternative TOP 20
- songs follow all rules
- Playlist is "SOURCE Rock & Alternative"
- Rating is greater than zero stars
- Playcount is greater than 10 (adjust to suit your needs)
- limit to 20 songs
** Sort by Least Recently Played
Rock & Alternative MID 30
- songs follow all rules
- Playlist is "SOURCE Rock & Alternative"
- Rating is greater than zero stars
- Playcount is less than 11 (adjust to suit your needs, but keep below the 'top 20' playcount)
- Playcount is greater than 2 (adjust to suit your needs)
- limit to 30 songs
** Sort by Least Recently Played
Rock & Alternative BOT 50
- songs follow all rules
- Playlist is "SOURCE Rock & Alternative"
- Rating is greater than zero stars
- Playcount is less than 3 (adjust to suit your needs, but keep below the 'mid 30' playcount)
- limit to 50 songs
** Sort by Least Recently Played
You've now got a total of 100 songs from your "SOURCE Rock and Alternative" playlist. 20 are your favorites. 30 are 'up and coming' or quasi-favorites etc. And 50 are going to be ones you don't know as well. Mind you, you can change the number of each of these. Just keep track of how many you have in each. I chose for the "top" because that's about how many indispensible songs I have for the genre. If you've got 50 that you can't live without, adjust the numbers accordingly. The 'top' ones are the ones you want to keep in your iPod all the time.
Now, the actual playlist you're gonna put into the iPod:
Create a new 'smart' playlist. Name it whatever the heck you want (I'll call it "R&A". And add these rules:
- songs follow any rules
- Playlist is "Rock & Alterna Top 20"
- Playlist is "Rock & Alterna Mid 30"
- Playlist is "Rock & Alterna Bot 50"
- limit to 100 songs
** Sort by Random
It is important to keep the number of songs in this playlist equal to the total number of your 'top' 'mid' and 'bot' playlists.
So here's what you've got now:
A mix of 100 songs in random order. You're going to hear some songs you don't know well. If you don't like them, rate them zero stars from your iPod (center button twice) and they'll fall off the list from then on and be replaced by a new song you don't know well (because it's "least recently played"). As you listen to some of 'em more and more, they'll move their way from the Bot 50 to the Mid 30. Songs in the middle won't move as much, but if you really like them, they might squeeze their way up to the top 20. It's important to keep the "least recently played" option on, because that's the only way to guarantee these playlists update every time you sync up.
I also suggest keeping some empty space on the iPod as the size of this smart playlist will change every time you sync. (because the songs you just listened to will be dropped off and replaced with new ones which are different durations)
At first, you'll have lots of songs you don't know well. But as you rate 'em zeros if you don't want 'em on there, the list will shrink and you'll see some more consistancy.
Also, when you buy new songs, just toss 'em into the SOURCE playlist and they'll work their way up the charts as you listen to 'em.
I hope this multi-tiered smart playlist works out for you as well as it has for me. Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions.

There is no way on an iPod to say "Oh, I don't like this song. Take it out of circulation." You can do it from iTunes once you get home if you remember which song it was, yeah, but someone like me who has a hard time remembering as far back as the beginning of this sentence will likely forget the song title by then.
If you use ratings as a means of removing the song, then you can do it on the fly.
But you make an excellent point. Why rate songs you haven't actually determined a rating for yet?
It'd make more sense to change all the intermediary playlists to include the rule "Rating *is not* 1 star". That way zero star songs can be played as well as anything two stars or higher, but songs you've rated as bad will be removed next time you sync up.
Thanks for pointing that out.

Smart Playlists Not Syncing Correct CONTENT With iPhone 3G

Hi, I apologize about the length of this description, but I believe all or most of it may be relevant.
I have been having trouble synchronizing ANY of my smart playlists. I first noticed it in the playlists I had created which entailed "Most Recently Added" or "Most Recently Played" options. Now I realize that all of my smart playlists are no longer syncing their play order (some too big to determine if songs aren't making it into some of them). For instance, here is the criteria for a playlist I created just to demonstrate this problem (this is a brand new playlist just I made and synced with my iPhone):
Title: Recently Played 5
Criteria: Rating is in the range 3 stars and 5 starts
Checked Boxes-
(X)Limit to [5] items selected by most recently played
(X)Match Only Checked Songs
(X)Live Updating
Playlist as it appears in iTunes:
"Summer, Man" by Taking Back Sunday
"Sink Into Me" by Taking Back Sunday
"New Again" by Taking Back Sunday
"Error: Operator" by Taking Back Sunday
"Swing" by Taking Back Sunday
Playlist as it appears on my iPhone:
"Them Bones" by Alice In Chains
"Hands in the Sky (Big Shot)" by Straylight Run
"Lead Said (And A Paper Anchor)" by Atreyu
... etc
These playlist CLEARLY do not match and it drives me crazy because these types of playlists are what I generally listen to. I'm running iTunes 9.0.1.8 on Windows 7 OS (Dell Inspiron 6400), and OS 3.1.2 on an iPhone 3G. I just recently consolidated my library. I had a collection of over 7000 songs on my external hard drive backed up, and kept about 4000 of them on my computer stored in iTunes (i.e. only the 4000 songs were present in my iTunes library, originating from my laptop hard drive--NOT EXTERNAL). Upon switching to Windows 7, I wanted to have ALL my music on my laptop hard drive and thus copied and re-added all of the music (all 7000). I lost all my track info (ratings, plays, last played date, date added, etc) in this process until I opened the iTunes library file with iTunes(had backed up from before new OS installation) and, voila, all my playlists and track info was restored. I had to do some cleaning up of duplicate files, but nothing major.
I found this thread from Sept. 2008 which seemed to be in regards to the exact same problem under almost the exact same situation: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8066846#8066846. Unfortunately, it's unanswered and archived. My iTunes did not crash, but I cleanly installed a new OS and had to start fresh.
I cannot for the life of me figure this issue out. I thought about restoring my device and syncing it again (which I will try again tomorrow to see if I can manage any progress), but I want to retain my app info and text messages so I plan on restoring from a backup. If anyone has any solutions or even suggestions, I'm open to try anything.
Thanks!

This looks like yet another example of the "smart playlists with live updates are broken" bug, which has been discussed at length in this forum. Two "fixes" are known to work, at least some of the time:
1) turn off live updates (yes, I know that defeats the purpose of a "recently played" list; so does the current situation, where you have apparently random tracks instead of the right content).
2) add a "playlist is Music" rule to the playlist (in addition to the ones you have now).
In my experience the "playlist is Music" fix also has the effect of turning off live updates (regardless of what the checkboxes say), but other people report no such problem. So it might work for you.

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