Replacing tracks in Smart Playlists

Hello
I am currently re-ripping my CD's into iTunes at the Apple Plus setting (256kbps) and then deleting the previous versions.
I have two songs that are in a smart playlist, and I want to delete them and replace them with the newer larger file.
I cannot see how to do that. I can delete a song, but cannot see how to add it's replacement.
When you right select the newer version of the song, and go to the "Add to Playlist" option, smart playlists do not show up in there.
Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can accomplish my task?
I'm not a power user of smart playlist and don't want to much around with this version of the playlist I have, nor do I want to hang on to the smaller file and coded song (mp3) in my library taking up unnecesary space.
Thanks for any help

Smart playlists will update automatically, based on the smart rules set for the list.
Seelct your smart playlist, ctrl-click it, and select "Edit smart playlist" from the contextual menu.
Look at the rules, and check, if your updated songs will match the rules.
In particular, check the "Life Updating" option, if it is enabled, and if you have set the playlist to include only checked songs, make sure, your new sonngs are checked.

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Tracks on Smart Playlists are not listed on my iPnhone

Smart Playlists I have created in iTunes show up under the list of play lists on my iPhone. When I touch/click a Smart Playlist none of the tracks are listed. I can go to the Now Playing track and start playing. I have reset my iPhone and restored from a backup but the problem persists.

Isn't iTunes 10.5 r 9 a beta release for developers? If that's the case then isn't there a special web site for developers to discuss issues (and they are not supposed to discuss them on the public forum)? If you're not a developer and have this through unofficial channels then I'm not sure you can expect full functionality.

Deleting tracks from library within smart playlists

I use iTunes 10.6.1 (7) on Mac.
I spend some time googling and searching for solutions for my problem, but everything is either outdated or simply doesn't work.
I have a smart playlist with all songs that are matched on iTunes Match, but which are below 256k bitrate. I want to delete them from the library, so I can download new 256k versions of them.
This is supposedly possible by using Option + Delete, but that doesn't work for me. I also tried all kinds of other combinations like SHIFT + Option + Delete or CRTL + Option + Delete and none of them work.
What am I doing wrong?

I should add that I have come up with one workaround, although its very clunky.
I add a comment to all tracks in that SPL, which marks them for deletion. I then go into the main music library and filter by that comment (after adding the comment column). This now has allowed me to delete and redownload the tracks.
However I will have to do this step again every time and ofc I need to remove the comment after it is all downloaded now.
I still don't get why Option + Delete isn't working for me, as all posts that I come across state that as the "solution"

Smart Playlists and Automatically Increasing a Track's Play Count

Any one know if there is a way to increase the play count of a track once it has been selected and included in a Smart Play List. Why? I have 92 GBs of music or 16, 665 songs on an external hard drive and I have an 8 GB mp3 player that I fill up every couple of weeks with music and I'd rather not hear repeated tracks. What I would like to do is include the rule in a Smart Play List that any track that has a play count of "0" is added to the Smart Play List without the risk that a track had already been added to that Smart Play List in the past. Any suggestions?

Haven't seen this myself, but then again I don't have any rated songs with no Last Played date. A couple of suggestions:
1- Try a Reset or Restore of the iPhone.
2- In your smart playlist criteria, add "Media Kind is Music". Strange, but sometimes this nudges a smart playlist into behaving.
3- Modify your criteria as follows:
Match All:
- Media Kind Is Music
- Rating > 3
(indent) ----> Match Any:
.....................- Last Played Not in the Last 8 weeks
.....................- Playcount is 0
That will "OR" the zero playcounts with songs that have not been played in the last 8 weeks, and "AND" all those with the required criteria of 4 or 5 stars as well as Media Kind being Music. If you don't know how to "indent" the criteria, click on the elipses (...) to the right of the last criteria you entered, and be sure to change the overall criteria to Match Any for the indented portion.

Smart Playlists Stop Playing After Each Track

After updating iTunes to version 10.0.1.22 my smart playlists stop playing after each track. All songs or Podcasts in my smart playlists are checked so they should be playing consecutively but they're not.
Any help would be appreciated.

Make sure the little boxes to the left of the song names are checked. If you need to check all the songs in a single view at once, hold the CTRL key and check any one of the boxes.

Smart Playlists and Track Count

Don't think this is possible - but is there anyway to access the track count field within the the smart playlist system (not the track number).
I'm tidying up my data and want a playlist which contains music without a set track count.
D

I have a very similar set of playlists and noticed that they have stopped working recently - I assumed that the 3.0 upgrage did it. Its very annoying, and I might end up reverting to the 2.x sofware if possible, becuase that feature is more important to me than the 3.0 imprivements...
iPhones also won't let you create folders of playlists or refer to folders in playlists. I was hoping they would at last include that functionality in 3.0, but it looks like they've taken a step backwards instead.

Cannot create Smart Playlist for tracks to upgrade using iTunes Match

I just subscribed to iTunes Match and am trying to use a Smart Playlist to identify the tracks that can be upgraded following the instructions in this article:
http://www.macworld.com/article/1163620/how_to_upgrade_tracks_to_itunes_match_fa st.html
When I try to create the smart playlist, I get "This smart playlist contains one or more conditions which are empty or conflict with each other. This will result in never matching a song. Are you sure you want to save this playlist?". I've narrowed it down to the iCloud Status settings. I can create a playlist with either Matched or Purchased; however, I get the message above when specifying both. Any ideas?

tcalvin1970 wrote:
I've narrowed it down to the iCloud Status settings. I can create a playlist with either Matched or Purchased; however, I get the message above when specifying both. Any ideas?
You need to make sure the rule for these 2 is Match Any, not Match all.

Smart playlist for duplicate track numbers?

Hi Folks,
With Regard to smart playlists is there any way to identify duplicate track numbers on the same disc?
During the import process the disc numbers (where it was a dual cd) we simply listed as disc 1 on the import process.
As a result, some albums have 2 x track 1 and 2 x track 2 etc.
So save me searching through the whole library manually, is there a way to create a smart playlist and search doe duplicate track numbers on the same disc.
In the same light is it possible to search for duplicate artists on the same disc?
Appreciate your help
Hope this makes sense.
Thanks
Simon.
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Hi Simon,
Missed this thread the first time around.. As Chris says this isn't something that you can pick up with a smart playlist. In principle I could write a script that runs through every track in a selection and notices when the same combination of track number, disc number, album title and album artist comes up. A second pass would then add every track from each affected album to a regular playlist for you to go through and fix up.
In practice when I'm hunting for inconsistencies in the library I've found that stepping through the albums using the column browser is quite effective. In my case I'm generally looking for instances where the same album title is reused by different albums, the obvious example being Greatest Hits, as these jumble together on my iPod classic. When this happens I retitle each album as <Album> - <Album Artist> to separate them. Using the column browser I reckon I can scan through the library at about 2 albums a second, stopping only when something looks amiss.
So, are you still hunting for your misnumbered double albums?
tt2

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.

Delete (as in Trash) a track from a playlist view?

Because I so despise Apple's new segregated libraries (I'd be okay if I could just shift a few tracks from one auto(cratic) category to another without major effort), I am toying with creating smart playlists of my various genres to ease my browsing. The problem is, there isn't any way (that I know of) to delete a track from a playlist. And I mean delete as in "remove from the library, ask me if I want to move it to the trash" delete, not "remove from the playlist" delete.
Does anyone know of a way to do this (easily)?
It almost seems like a philosophical issue -- I mean, why isn't there a "trash" option in the contextual menu for a track wherever I'm viewing it? There's a clear logic for deleting a track from a regular playlist meaning that it is only removed from that playlist, but left in the library. But in a smart playlist, when I hit delete, I can't remove it from the playlist -- delete has no functionality. I noticed this when playing with iFlicks, which does let you trash a video while viewing it in a smart playlist -- which intuitively made sense to me.
I honestly only go into the library view when I need to throw things out anyway, so having it segregated (and unpredictably, since it's based on filetype rather than genre -- i.e. underlying and indeterminant format, rather than conceptual and -- hopefully -- determinant metadata) makes it hard to predict where a track may end up.
Thoughts?
Windtunnel G4/500MHz & AlBook G4/1.25GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Bob, that does indeed solve the question. The panting rage has subsided, to be replaced by mere indignation.
Thanks!

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.

Multiple Artist, Genre... Separator (Semi-Colon) instead of Smart Playlists

In my opinion, one of the greatest features of ID3 tags is the ability to use semi-colons to differentiate between multiple artists, genres, albums, etc... for any given field. This feature has been available since ID3 tags for MP3's were first implemented over a decade ago.
With Windows Media Player 10, it's database was finally able to parse the information separated by semi-colons correctly. What this means is that if I have a song like "Picture" by Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock, in the ID3 tag, I type "Sheryl Crow; Kid Rock", and in WMP, if I click on Artist | Sheryl Crow, "Picture" appears. And if I click on Artist | Kid Rock, "Picture" appears. In fact, when I rip songs using WMP, it places semi-colons in numerous ID3 fields from the album description.
In iTunes, however, when I import a song with a semi-colon in an ID3 tag field, the database reads the artist as "Sheryl Crow; Kid Rock", or essentially, it treats "Sheryl Crow; Kid Rock" as a THIRD artist. The same is true if I have a song that I feel crosses two genres--like "Picture". In WMP, if I put in the Genre field "Pop; Country", when I choose Genres | Pop, "Picture" appears, and when I choose Genres | Country, "Picture" appears.
Does anyone know if a bug fix for this is in the works for iTunes? It seems Apple and iTunes have been trying to push Smart Playlists for this kind of organization, but that's the poor man's way of organizing songs and not nearly as efficient. I don't want to have to create Smart Playlist for all songs with "Sheryl Crow" in the artist field. It should be inherent based on the semi-colon.
Does anyone know if anything smarter than Smart Playlists is in the works that matches the intuitiveness of Windows Media Player's database?
Thanks,
Bill

Whereas in WMP & the ID3 spec. you would use a semi-colon to separate items you will find that iTunes & the Music store use a slash instead. However as you so rightly say iTunes takes the information and construes a new artist entity rather than two artists connected to the same track. (WMP might also respond to slash - I recall AC/DC always presenting issues so they exist as AC-DC in my library.)
If you'd like to make feature request go to: iTunes Feedback.
Working on the assumption that such ideas are unlikely to implemented any time soon however you might like to see my post on Grouping Tracks Into Albums which covers workarounds for this & other quirks.
tt2

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.

Multiple libraries/smart playlists for different disks, or sort by location

Hey.
My iTunes music is physically stored on my computer's local hard disk, on an external hard disk, and on a remote server from which I stream online. When my computer is disconnected from my external hard disk or from the internet, I don't want to seeing unreachable tracks in my iTunes library; I'd rather have a list of songs which are available for me to play. I'd like to create multiple libraries, one for each disk.
Or I'd like to create smart playlists which automatically fill with content from specified locations (as opposed to content added by artist, duration, last playtime, etc).
Or I'd like to be able to sort my library based on physical file location.
As far as I've searched, this isn't yet possible. Anyone know how to make this work, or know how to suggest this feature to Apple?
Thanks.
iTunes
iTunes 6.0.5.20 Windows XP Pro
iTunes 6.0.5.20 Windows XP Pro

Hi,
Thanks for your reply. This worked but it doesnt seem to be consistent.. not sure if the fact that I have a smart playlist based on another smart playlist (only because I want 5 anded conditions + 1 or'd which is playcount=0) and hence something goes wrong?
Any better way overall to manage these? I now have 4 pairs of these.
Also, any way to have a Smart Playlist that selects only video? They have the Media Kind = Podcast, but no Media Type = Video..
Many thanks,
Vik

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.

Replacing tracks in Smart Playlists

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