Refreshing Smart Playlists with song limits...

I have gone from a 20 gig down to a 4 gig and I would like to create a series of smart playlists to limit and 'control' the amount of music on my ipod nano... but not have 16 gigs of music collecting dust on my harddrive.
For example, I have create a series of genre specific playlists, one of which is 'Alternative' that includes a bunch of sub-genres that I have given a songlimit. W/o a song limit there would be approximately 1000 songs on that list, so I limit the songs to 150 as to not completely fill my iPod. However, it seems that the playlist randomly selected 150 songs and forgot about the other 850 songs. I understand it will change when I change my collection by adding or subtracting, etc. Is it possible for the smart playlist to refresh itself, so dust is not collecting on music? Such as, once I listen to a song it replaces that song with another song from the potential pool.
Thanks in advance.
pc Windows XP Pro

One of the rules you can set is Last Played NOT IN THE LAST x days. If you add this to your existing rules, you could use it to exclude songs you played recently.
Would this do the trick?
You would also have to have live updating checked.

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HT1801 Just wondering, does iTunes update my Smart playlist with new songs?

Does iTunes update my Smart playlist with new songs each time I download it or do I have to manually update it myself? If I do, can someone walk me through it. Thanks a bunch

Yes that should work.
Are you using an "Artist is ..." rule? If so, and if new stuff by onerepublic isn't showing up in the list, check the Artist name on the new songs to make sure it's exactly matching the one in your rule.
For example, I've got music in my library (by the same people) under the artist names Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Godspeed You! Black Emperor ... (different position of the "!") If I set up a smart playlist based on:
Artist is Godspeed You Black Emperor!
It doesn't catch the songs with an Artist name of "Godspeed You! Black Emperor".
To get all the songs showing in a smart playlist, I'd need to adjust the Artist name on one or the other sets of songs so it matches a rule. (Haven't done that myself yet for GYBE, because I haven't worked out where the exclamation mark is actually supposed to go.)

I'd love to see a way to create Smart Playlists with a raw (SQL-like) lang.

I'm not sure if this is the proper place to put a request, but if any of you developers are out there looking for ideas here's one I (and I'm sure many other power users) would love.
Give is a way to create smart playlists with nested logic or using an SQL-like query language. Currently when matching multiple properties of songs we have an all-or-nothing approach to AND's and OR's which is quite limiting if you want to do something like.
"All songs with a rating of 2+ and a genre of electronica or metal"
Currently the only way to do this is to first create a smart playlists for all songs with a genre of electronica or metal, and then create a second playlist which is songs with a rading of 2+ and in the first playlist.
While this trickery will allow you to achieve any goal you could imagine, it get's quite messy very quickly.
It'd be much easier (for someone like me) to just be given a raw interface that would allow me to do something like
[Songs matching the clause]
rating > 2
AND
genre = 'Metal'
OR
genre = 'Electronica'
AND
artist 'Iron Maiden'

Great idea.
Tell Apple -> http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

6.0.2: not able to make smart playlists with rating criteria=3 stars!

hi there,
installed 6.0.2 and wanted to make a smart playlist of all songs that match the criteria "rating is from 3 to 5 stars".
wasn't able to drag the first ("from") stars box to three stars with the mouse! it always snapped to 2, 4 or 5 stars! entering 3 stars is not possible!
can anybody confirm this? is it a known bug?
thx,
Stefan.
p.s.: entering one star isn't possible either!
p.p.s.: mac os x 10.4.4 (not available in the dropdown list here...;-)

well, that's nice of Apple but just for those guys who want to make a smart playlist with rating=3.
doesn't solve my initial problem to make a playlist with 3<=rating<=5.
but they say they'll update as more information comes available.
I'm quite sure we'll see iTunes 6.0.3 soon. This is not the only bug according to the postings in this discussion board.
What's going on at Apple? QuickTime 7.0.4 had critical bugs, too. And Aperture 1.0 was a huge flop, too. (And 1.0.1 is snail slow on my dual g5 2.7 GHz PowerMac...)
I guess all the money went to the hardware departments to speed up the Intel switch...
oh, but I'm off-topic. sorry!
just my $0.02.
Stefan.

Smart Playlists with Implied Criteria

Discovered a cool feature in iTunes last night. The basic idea is that when you rate a track [1-5 stars], a "ghost" rating appears for the whole album that contains that track. You can then create a smart playlist which queries for that "implied criteria." So you can, for example, create a smart playlist that includes all music you have not yet heard AND that does not include any tracks that belong to any album that has another track that received a low rating.
Wrote a little blog post about this:
http://birdhouse.org/blog/2014/02/03/how-to-create-itunes-smart-playlists-with-i mplied-criteria/

So I went through technical support because I had this exactly some problem. Smart playlist shows up in iTunes on my iMAC, as well as via Apple TV (both via iCloud and Home Sharing options.) It also fully populates those smart playlists.
For my pre-existing Smart Playlists (that only have criteria for the GROUPING field) show up, have songs, but are quite a few songs short. I then created a brand new play list with brand new tracks... and its empty on iPhone 4S and iPAD2. Apple TV and IMAC are fine.
So technical support provided me with this response: For smart playlists to work on iOS devices, the songs must be downloaded to the device.
My feedback was this: So this is chicken and the egg. You create the playlist to easily locate and download those songs to your device, but you cant because they have to be on your device before they will show in the playlist.
I suppose the only work around is to create the smart playlist w/ your filters. THEN create a regular playlist and copy everything in the SMART Playlist into the regular playlist.
I have not used Apple products for very long... approaching 2 years. I moved everything to Apple. Computers, laptops, portable devices, etc... I have been VERY impressed. HOWEVER, this makes the point of Smart Playlists completely manual when it comes to your iOS device.
I will for sure be launching a compliant to www.apple.com/feedback.

Smart Playlists with Date Criteria

It seems any smart playlist with a date criteria (ie: Date Added) will not show up on any device that access the iTunes Match Service. I have several smart playlists with a date criteria and they show up blank on my iphone and ipad. Yet, if I delete the date criteria, the playlist populates on the device. I tried creating a smart playlist with just the date criteria and then in a new smart playlist referencing the date criteria smart playlist and the new playlist will not upload to icloud because an icloud smart playlist can not reference another smart playlist

So I went through technical support because I had this exactly some problem. Smart playlist shows up in iTunes on my iMAC, as well as via Apple TV (both via iCloud and Home Sharing options.) It also fully populates those smart playlists.
For my pre-existing Smart Playlists (that only have criteria for the GROUPING field) show up, have songs, but are quite a few songs short. I then created a brand new play list with brand new tracks... and its empty on iPhone 4S and iPAD2. Apple TV and IMAC are fine.
So technical support provided me with this response: For smart playlists to work on iOS devices, the songs must be downloaded to the device.
My feedback was this: So this is chicken and the egg. You create the playlist to easily locate and download those songs to your device, but you cant because they have to be on your device before they will show in the playlist.
I suppose the only work around is to create the smart playlist w/ your filters. THEN create a regular playlist and copy everything in the SMART Playlist into the regular playlist.
I have not used Apple products for very long... approaching 2 years. I moved everything to Apple. Computers, laptops, portable devices, etc... I have been VERY impressed. HOWEVER, this makes the point of Smart Playlists completely manual when it comes to your iOS device.
I will for sure be launching a compliant to www.apple.com/feedback.

I need a COMPLETE tutorial on how to make a smart playlist with 'conditions'

Ok, I have read discussions in the Support Communities, looked on iTunes Help and I think my brain is going to explode. I need a simple (for dummies) tutorial on how to create a smart playlist with 'conditions' and Live Updating. For example: instead of going through my Library music list and unchecking all my Christmas music and all my Comedy stuff so it won't play year round and at innapropriate times and having to skip them manually when playing on my ipod touch or my iphone4 in my car or through headphones or home sharing and using my AppleTV.
Also, if my comedy is individually all unchecked (in my iTunes Library), and I have a regular playlist in my ipod and one in my iphone (titled Comedy), when I go to the playlist list in my ipod or phone (when not connected to my Mac), and select shuffle: will that playlist play all the way through even though they are all unchecked?
AND, if I have 'sync only checked songs and video' box UNCHECKED in my summary page for a device what exactly does that do? Or more precisely, WHY would I want or not want that box to be checked?
I really hope someone can help me as I am a complete idiot when it comes to understanding long explanations.

katinak67 wrote:
AND, if I have 'sync only checked songs and video' box UNCHECKED in my summary page for a device what exactly does that do? Or more precisely, WHY would I want or not want that box to be checked?
If the box is unchecked, it won't do anything. It will sync everything.
If it is checked, songs that are unchecked will nto get sync'd to the iPod.
katinak67 wrote:
For example: instead of going through my Library music list and unchecking all my Christmas music and all my Comedy stuff so it won't play year round and at innapropriate times and having to skip them manually when playing on my ipod touch or my iphone4 in my car or through headphones or home sharing and using my AppleTV.
Select all the Christmas stuff, right click - get info.
Set the sure the Genre is Christmas.
Go to the Info tab and set Skip when Shuffling to Yes.
Do the same for Comedy.
Create a new smart playlist (named My Music or something similar).
Match all rules;
Genre is not Christmas.
Genre is not Comedy.
Play this playlist on the iPod/iTunes to listen to everything except Christmas & Comedy.
Or if you have Shuffle turned on, just listen to anything and Christmas & Comedy will get skipped.
Also, if my comedy is individually all unchecked (in my iTunes Library), and I have a regular playlist in my ipod and one in my iphone (titled Comedy), when I go to the playlist list in my ipod or phone (when not connected to my Mac), and select shuffle: will that playlist play all the way through even though they are all unchecked?
It depends.
In iTunes, unchecked items will get skipped.
If unchecekd items get sync'd to the iPod (you do NOT have Sync only cheked items ticked), they will play unless you have them set to Skip when shuffling.

I create a playlist with songs that I purchased from itunes and when I try to sync it to my iphone some of the songs are missing but when I go to the playlist in itunes the song is there. What could be happening? What am I doing wrong?

I've created playlists with songs I've purchased from iTunes and also added songs I've purchased from iTunes to existing playlists. Everytime I go to sync the playlist to my iPhone I find some of the new songs missing from the playlist. I've deleted the playlist from the phone and reinstalled it. I don't know what I"m doing wrong. Anyone have any idea what could be the problem?

Wondering if you haven't been bitten by the new "feature" of iOS 5, as was my son. turingtest2 explained it very well in reply to my own query about "missing" songs in playlists.
Here's that thread...
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16903613#16903613

Bug? Smart Playlists with Video Kind as Music Video.

Can someone confirm? If you make a Smart Playlist with the rule "Video Kind is Music Video", nothing happens. If you edit the playlist, no rules are displayed...
Strangely, however, my legacy Smart Playlist from a previous version of iTunes that contains similar criteria continues to work.
Steve.

Yup, I can confirm. The whole Video Kind rule doesn't seem to work. I did report it but more voices couldn't hurt.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Smart Playlist with certain criteria not syncing

So this is an issue that has haunted me for months now. I thought it may be a problem with my iPhone 4 in particular, but now I have an iPhone 5s with the same issue.
So I have a couple of smart playlists on my iTunes. One of them in particular is for Recently Added Singles. When I add new music to my iTunes, if it is a single or a new individual track, I want these tracks to populate my smart playlist. When the album that the single appears on is finally released and I get it, I don't want these albums, including the tracks that were singles, to populate the recently added singles smart playlist as I instead add the entire album to a different playlist all together. The only way I could figure a way around these full albums populating my singles playlist was to add a disc number of '1' to all tracks in a full album, just leaving singles without a disc number and add a rule to my smart playlist that would only populate tracks with a disc number of less than 1. The playlist appears fine in iTunes, but the playlist is empty on my phone.
When I sync the playlist and you watch it adding tracks on the phone, you can see the tracks being added, but as soon as the sync is finished, the playlist is empty. Experimenting a little further, I changed the rule to populate the smart playlist with tracks with a disc number that is '1' only. iTunes populates and appears correctly, but when I sync the playlist, my phone it appears to ignore the rule completely and just abides by the other rules I have on the smart playlist, which are 'date added in the last 12 weeks' and 'media kind is music,' which includes, as you'd expect, all music added in the last 12 weeks, and not the intended, all music added in the last 12 weeks with a disc number of 1.
So does the iPhone ignore the disc number of tracks? I know that if disc numbers are used, the iPhone doesn't actually display or specifiy where one disc ends and the next begins, like it does on the new iTunes, but is this meta data not actually used by the iphone all together? Or does it handle it differently to iTunes?
It's not a major issue of course, it just bugs me because I sort my music quite particularly. The way I've been getting around it is by creating a smart playlist based on this smart playlist, naming one with 'iTunes,' and the one to sync to my phone with 'iPhone.'
I thought this just should be pointed out and reported so maybe it can be fixed in a update or something. It's quite a particular fault so maybe it hasn't come up before?
Anyways, all and help and advice welcome.

In another thread it was suggested to edit the Smart Playlist in iTunes for podcasts and uncheck Live Updating. This worked for me and my podcasts were again on my iPhone.

Why on the Smart Playlist options more limited on Mac's iTunes vs. Windows iTunes? kind of Ironic?

I have been using iTunes since the iPod mini was introduced! Over the years I have been a huge fan of making smart playlists! However the funny thing is... is that up until this year I have owned a PC and now that I own a MAC it is ironic that its version of iTunes LIMITS the options you have to make Smart playlist. The option that says "Match the [then you choose] following [or] all rules:" is only given at the top of the list of parameters. Where os on the PC version you can assign a parameter at the beginning starting with "Match all rules:" followed by something like "Rating... 5 stars" then you can choose "Match the following rules:" follows by a series of parameters; such as list various artists. This allows you to customize a playlist of your favorite song by some of you favorite artists. This is just one example... The "Match the 'following' vs. 'all' rules" (at any point in the sequense of rules, not just at the beginning) has really added to the dynamics (a new dimesion, if you will) of how I listen to music over the years. It is kind of wierd that such an option does not appear available in iTunes on Mac computers.

It's still there on the Mac. As with many things on the Mac they kind of hid this feature. When making your smart playlist pressing the Alt/Option key on the keyboard will switch the "+" button to a "..." button to add another "Match" rule.

Smart Playlist with TV Shows

I recently imported a whole season of a TV Show. I pre-ordered an iPod Touch and because of its limited space (only an 8GB-model) I would like to create a smart list which gives me the 3 unplayed episodes with the lowest episode ID or episode number - if I have a show with several seasons I would like to have that with lowest season number as well.
E.g. I watched already season 1, now I'm at season 2 and watched until episode 13 I would like to have episode 14, 15 and 16 in the smart playlist. Is something like that possible? I didn't find options like these but maybe someone has an idea… - maybe with "nested" smart playlists? (therefore smart playlists based on other smart playlists).

Hello Niels!
I went on my iTunes and tried to solve your problem.
What I did was AltAppleN, which is the shortcut to "New Smartlist".
You want your iTouch smartlist to have two rules (basically the criteria): play count equal to zero, and with the lowest episode number.
When the window of the Smartlist comes up, it comes automatically with one rule. At the end of that rule is a plus sign. Click on it and you will therefore have two rules to fill in.
For the first rule, select Play Count > is > 0, meaning it has not yet been played.
For the second rules, select Track Number > is in the range of > 14 > 16 (This is according to the example you gave). You can also select "is less than" > 17 for instance.
Under that second rule, select Limit to > 3 (for only episodes 14, 15 and 16, or the three episodes that had a track number lower than 17, depending on what you chose for the second rule) > items > selected by > least often played.
You may also check "Match only checked items" and "Live updating".
Since there is no Episode ID in Smartlists, the closest thing I could find was Track Number. There may therefore be a risk that songs will go in the smartlist, but that is very improbable. If it does happen, play that song at least once, and it will be taken out of the playlist, since its play count will no longer be zero.
I hoped this helped you Niels, and please keep me informed if it worked!
Thanks,
Vincent

Sync "smart playlist" without song-titles?

Is it possible to synchronize only a smart playlist without all the song-titles what are included?
A example; In i Tunes i have a very large song library on my mac. Then i have synchronized some titles, with "Check Selection" mode. Now i have a "Smart Playlist" on i-tunes, that includes only song-titles, that i haven't "rated" before. Now, is it possible to import/sync only the "Smart-Playlist" without all the song-titles that are included on Itunes?
So i want only have the smart-playlist on my ipod-touch, to hear the unrated songs, that are already synced.
Other example, i have a smart playlist that includes only the song-titles, rated from 1 till 3 stars. Now i want that smart playlist on the iPod, to hear only the songs, rated from 1 till 3 stars, i already synced on the IPod.
Problem is this..: When i sinc a smart-list like that, the memory on my IPod is prompt overloaded...
I hope you understand what i mean, and would be great to have a solution for that...
regards...

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3044
2. Deselect the option for "Live updating."
Solved.

Using smart playlists with my iPod to manage podcasts

I see that a few people had the same problem as me, where I can't advance my podcasts to the next segment without returning to the main menu each time. My old iPod did this without a problem, but the bad thing was that podcasts were treated the same as songs and when I hit "shuffle songs" on the main menu, I'd have to forward through the podcasts. I don't have that problem on my new iPod which is great, but I'm afraid if I use the smart playlist solution that was suggested here I will go back to having podcasts shuffle in with songs. Anyone know if that's the case?
iPod video 30GB

All you can do is the standard fixes:
Try:
- Reset the car system
- Reset the iOS device. Nothing will be lost
Reset iOS device: Hold down the On/Off button and the Home button at the same time for at
least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
- Unsync all music and resync
- Reset all settings
Go to Settings > General > Reset and tap Reset All Settings.
All your preferences and settings are reset. Information (such as contacts and calendars) and media (such as songs and videos) aren’t affected.
- Restore from backup. See:
iOS: How to back up
- Restore to factory settings/new iOS device.
If still problem, make an appointment at the Genius Bar of an Apple store since it appears you have a hardware problem.
Apple Retail Store - Genius Bar

How do you update smart playlists with live update turned off?

If I create a smart playlist in itunes and deselect live updating then how exactly does the smart playlist load up?
The reason I ask is that started setting up Smart Playlists for all of the artists on my computer and they're all set to live update which is consequently slowing down my itunes. I realize that I may not necessarily need that. My question is though...how exactly would I go about manually updating a smart playlist that has live updating turned off?

Well, the problem is that I have smart playlists for every artist in my library (which is literally hundreds). With every live update turned on, every time I edit tags for a new single or something it'll scan all the smart playlists for matches. The reason I'd like to have smart playlists instead of regular playlists is that I tend to add a lot of singles, and, especially in the hip hop genre, they tend to have a lot of guest appearances so I'd like the smart playlists to do tehir job.....I'd just prefer to not have it set to live update so I can avoid delays during tagging.
Apparently this is a known side efffect of having many smart playlists in your itunes. I realize my way of working with them might be slightly unconventional in comparison to how they are typically used but it's great for me. If I could leave live update on without any performance degregation then I would but it seems I have to pick.
I read somewhere that if you shut down itunes and restart that it'll refresh all your smart playlists (if live update is turned off).

Refreshing Smart Playlists with song limits...

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