Smart Playlist bug?

Anyone else having this problem? My music library consists of primarily contemporary Christian music. I attempted to set a Smart Playlist that would auto update music selections in two genres of music, "Gospel" and "Gospel & Religious" as per the album tags that were associated with the selections I wanted. iTunes won't do it - I end up with only the selections that are tagged with the "Gospel & Religous" genre, it will not include the selections tagged "Gospel" in the Smart Playlist.
I've considered retagging all the files to the same genre, but would rather not. Is this an iTunes issue, or is the "&" character in the genre causing Windows to burp?
Just trying to figure it all out ...
Thanks for any help in advance.
Dell Deskop Windows XP Pro

That's not a bug, RuRod. It's what we refer to as a "feature". ; - )
A Smart Playlist defined by Genre, i.e. Genre is Gospel & Religious, will include only songs identified specifically as Gospel & Religious - not Gospel and not Religious.
The solution is to change the playlist rule to either -
1) Genre contains Gospel
or
2) Match any of the following rules:
Genre is Gospel
+
Genre is Gospel & Religious.

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Workround for Smart Playlist bug in iTunes 6.0.5

I'm using iTunes 6.0.5 on MacOS 10.2.8 (hence I can't upgrade iTunes to a later version 'cos my OS is too old).
When I try to use Smart Playlists, the program closes down whenever I create a Playlist featuring a date-type condition (like "Last Played") and change from "is" to something else (like "is not in the last" ... ). This seems to be a bug common whenever iTunes 6.0.5 is used on MacOS 10.2.8.
Is there any work-around for this problem? (The computing administrator here is unlikely to allow me to upgrade the OS just so that I can play music more conveniently!) If it were possible to make copies of Smart Playlists, then I might be able to adjust the standard "Recently Played".
Thanks (hopefully!) in advance,
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ih1, that one is often caused by a damaged itunes preference file. try the technique described in this user tip:
b noir: iTunes won't let me change a preference

Workaround for iPhone smart playlist bug

There is a bug (do a search for smart playlist in this forum) with smart playlists not displaying the correct songs on the iPhone.
I just tried something that seems to have worked...
I have a playlist in iTunes called "Recently Added" which I want to keep synced with my iPhone.
I created a new smart playlist called "Recently Added (iPhone)". The playlist has one rule: "Playlist is Recently Added" with live updating checked.
I now sync this second playlist with the iPhone and all the correct songs show up in it.

Excellent idea Jeff.
Your approach works for the same reason that my original idea works.
The inclusion of another playlist as a condition in a smart playlist, causes the playlist to become "rasterized" or static.
The developers wanted smart playlists to be really smart - instead of copying a static list of songs from the smart playlist to the iPhone/Pod, they simply send the definition of the playlist to the iPhone and let it calculate which songs from it's own library belong on it.
The nice thing about their approach is that the playlists will continue to live update on the Phone in-between syncs - so if you have a playlist called "Last 25 played" it will have the last 25 played songs on your iPhone, instead of the last 25 played songs that you played in iTunes.
The problem of course, is that there's a bug in the way the iPhone calculates these rules (probably related to the porting of code to a new architecture).
So why does this fix work?
Well, my theory is that when you create a smart playlist that references another playlist, iTunes simply calculates the songs that should appear on the smartplaylist and sends a literal list to the iPhone/Pod.
This solves the problem that would be created if you only sync the parent playlist, and not the playlists it references. (IE, if you would want to be able to sync the "25 most played" playlist without also having to sync the "MusicOnly" playlist).

10.2.1 Recently Played smart playlist (bug)

Like most users, I often skip around from song to song before the song is finished. These songs used to be added automatically to the "Recently Played" smart playlist (set to Last played in the last 30 days, live updating).
I have noticed since 10.2.1 update, that a song must be fully played before being added to said playlist.
It is very time consuming to scrub through the entire song of each song you play to get it added to the recently played smart playlist.
Has anyone else noticed this?

Vicki:
You might like to have a quick gander at our discussion of the Smart Playlist issues...?
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1514307#1514307
Kind regards,
Gopha.

IOS 6 Smart Playlist Bug

Hey, recently updated to iOS6. Having smart playlist issues when attempting to add songs purchased through iTunes, from the iPhone. (eg, attempting to add songs to the playlist on the handset). Adding songs to these playlists from ripped CDs works fine. Is anyone else having this problem?

I actually am having an issue with not having any playlists sync to my phone at all. All my music is there but not one playlist. But the funny thing is, if I clike on my phone within itunes to see all the content, the playlists show up and I am able to play them from my phone, from the playlist, in itunes. You are the closest one that seems to be having the same problem I am.

Top 25 smart playlist bug fixes.....yay!!!!

Just noticed that with my iphone 4 & iTunes 9.2 the top 25 playlist is fixed, with live updating checked.
I must assume this is to do with iOS 4 as it was never working with 3x.
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I have a couple of issues with the iPod Touch.
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2) I have songs from Creed's Greatest Hits CD and from Queen's Greatest Hits CD. When I look for songs by artists, by songs, or by playlists I find them with no problem. But, when I look for them in Cover Flow it puts the Queen's songs under the Creed's album cover. The odd thing is that when one of those Queen's songs is playing, the cover art displayed is the correct one... and on the top it reads:
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Bug in iTunes 6.0.2 - Smart Playlist - music rating criteria

There's a bug in the smart playlist music rating criteria. It's impossible to select stars. if you choose one, iTunes selects two. If you want to reduce stars, you will go mad.
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This bug is known and discussed in this Forum.
Apple has published an article about it:
iTunes 6.0.2: Wrong number of rating stars when configuring Smart Playlist rule
M
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Bug: iOS 5 and iTunes 10.5 podcast smart playlist sort order and how to fix.

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Confirming this incredibly annoying bug. Basic list sorting not working... real bottom shelf work apple.
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This is the latest in a long string of debacles which is making me seriously consider swapping to debian stable. (snow leopard to lion was a severe downgrade in performance for anyone doing heavy multitasking.. scheduling is FUBAR... when a command option escape beachballs on a brand new core 17 machine, your OS has serious problems with nice levels)

Temporary Fix for Smart Playlist order bug

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Hopefully this will help everyone who reads this get by until Apple fixes this bug, which they seem to reintroduce about once a year.

I'm sorry but none of these suggested fixes work, including sort before sync, media kind as music, not referring to other smart playlists, turning live update off, setting Play Order; nothing worked. Plus, on large smart playlists (2000+ songs), not only were they not ordered correctly but the phone (4S no less) pauses 20 seconds to think every time you go into the playlist after a sync.
In fact the only "fix" for me was Apple's last suggestion in their KB article on the subject of smart playlists not syncing in order: in iTunes select my smart playlist, then select all, then make a new playlist (using I believe Edit/New Playlist) based on that selection (which is now not smart), order as needed and sync. It works great but of course the list is now is non-self-updating and I have to manually update it when I add new songs. Not a big deal but still a pain.
For me, order is critical only on my Recently Added playlist, so I went manual with that one. The others I tend to shuffle so the lack of ordering isn't as big of a deal.

Possible bug with iTunes 11 ?? (with Smart Playlists)

Hi folks
New to Apple Support, but after upgrading to iTunes 11 earlier today (on my Mac Mini) I've discovered a potential bug / difference in the way it operates compared to earlier versions. Can someone else try something similar and see if they get the same result - I think I read somewhere that v11 is not available on Windows yet, so I cant compare what happens there
I've imported all our CD's into iTunes, and we've set up several Smart Playlists (SP). Using the Rating setting for the songs, we can break them up into groups, eg
Rating 0 = not yet processed
Rating 1 = not interested in listening to again
Rating 2 = kids songs (for our children)
Rating 3 = christmas songs
Rating 4 = songs i like, but my wife probably wouldnt
Rating 5 = songs we both like - good for background music etc
Using Home Sharing to our iPad's rocks !!
Now, onto the bug.
Using the SP that has just songs with Rating 0, I could play any song, set the Rating to whatever, and naturally once set, that disappears from the SP
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With iTunes v11, playback stops as soon as I set the Rating.
How can you help ?????????? Set up a smart playlist with whatever criteria you like - make sure you have a number of songs returned and ensure Live Updating is set, have a song playing, and make that song no longer valid for that SP. Anyone doing this in earlier versions of iTunes should have the next song begin, and if this is a bug, then those using iTunes 11 will have playback stop
Sorry for the long post, but in order to determine a potential bug, you need to describe the situation and how to test it.
Thanks for reading
PS I'm on a 2010 Mac Mini with OSX v10.7.x (whatever the current release of that is) and just upgraded to iTunes 11

Soo, maybe it isnt possible bug, but the way Apple have changed iTunes when going to v11. Stooopid
Anyway, found this link about downgrading to an earlier version. I've just completed it and found one or two "errors" in the method, which I'll detail below
http://www.emacconsulting.com/apple/itunes/downgrade-itunes-11-to-itunes-10-7/
In the latter part of the instructions
11) Open your iTunes Music Folder.
If you never moved your iTunes folder it’s located here:
Your HD/Your User/Music/iTunes
Or go to the Finder type: Command + Shift + G
Paste this into the the dialog: ~/Music/iTunes
If you moved it to another hard drive, you will know where to locate your iTunes folder.
12) Open the “Previous iTunes Libraries” folder.
13) Find the most recent copy of the “iTunes Library 2012-xx-xx.itl” file.
Normally it will the last file at the bottom of the list.
14) Drag a copy of the file into the iTunes folder.
15) Delete the “iTunes Library” file.
16) Change the name of the “iTunes Library 2012-xx-xx.itl” to ”iTunes Library” with no .itl extension.
In #11, I simply went to "My HD"/Users/"My User"/Music/iTunes
Copied the latest .itl and moved it up a directory level
The old file in #15 is called "iTunes Library.itl" - which I renamed, and renamed the copied version back to "iTunes Library.itl" = though I do have extensions showing, some people may not and hence wont see the .itl
Anyway all is fixed in my world, and when I launched v10.7, it asked me if I wanted to upgrade to v11 - I said No and not to prompt me again. Playcount issue is resulved, as is changing SmartList criteria with playback continuing
Apple - please correct these bugs before releasing any new versions of iTunes... you've made a very large number of people unhappy

Is this a bug in Smart Playlist creation?

I am a huge fan of smart playlists. I have some pretty complex/clever playlists that I use to determine syncing.
While editing my playlists I stumbled upon a situation that leaves you unable to move your rules around.
I made a new playlist to demonstrate:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13042716/iTunesBug.tiff
If you only have "All/Any of the following are true" with some sub-rules, it is impossible to make a new rule outside of this group. Go make a playlist just like in the picture, and try to make a rule be on the same level with the "Any/All of the following are true" instead of under it. Maybe I just can't figure out how to do it, but I consider myself pretty knowledgeable when it comes to managing iTunes Smart Playlists.
I had a playlist with tons of rules that I was editing, and I had to recreate the whole thing because I deleted all of the rules on the same leve with "Any/All of the following are true" and wanted to make another rule on the same level. Of course I could have hacked together a solution using more rules, but I wanted it to be right.
FYI to make this specific rule you have to press Option on your keyboard, then the "+" button changes to "..." and this button adds the rule with a blank sub-rule.

Why was this moved to "Using iPhone" ??
It is a question about Safari for iOS - not iPhone/iPod usage.

MUSIC SMART PLAYLISTS PROBLEM/ERROR/BUG

It seems that Apple continues to ignore the problem with the music smart playlists... IT'S A SHAME!!! What's the point in getting an iPod/iPhone that doesen't work as it should???
WAKE UP APPLE!!!
Regards.

For the n thousandth time (not to you obviously) , Apple do not read posts like yours, and almost never read anything unless they are pointed to it by a high level member. Then only for deletion ....
They have jobs to do trying to get problems solved which are reported in the proper way, and random venting by people who have caps lock stuck on just gets ignored.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/

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Hi MNM1974,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
It sounds like you want to know how to manually manage the music and playlists on your iPod nano. The article below provides more information about automatic and manual syncing of content to your device, and it will walk you through the process.
Managing content manually on iPhone, iPad, and iPod
I hope this helps.
-Jason

6.0.2 BUG: setting rating in smart playlists

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Bug has been confirmed by more users.
See this topics:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=309553&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=309584&tstart=0
M

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...
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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 bug?

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