Smart Playlist for "X Most Recent Albums"?

Hi guys!
I'd love a way to craft a Smart Playlist that would give me X number (say, 5) of the most recently-added albums. I find I'm constantly adding a new album, making an individual playlist for that album, and then syncing it to my iPhone.
I've poked around in the Smart Playlist creator, but I just didn't see a way to do this. Am I too sleep-deprived to spot something obvious?
Thanks!
Huxley

But I think the original post is looking for a smart playlist that'll do this - that'll automatically include the most recently added albums, so when one album is added, the sixth most recent album stops being synced. Yes, he can manually add albums, but that's not what he's after, I think.
That being said - I can't help. I'm browsing right now in this area because I'm once again looking for a good way to "smart sync" Classical music (which is mainly organized by album, or at least by "groups"), and haven't yet found one.
Of course, you can make a smart playlist that is something like "Media Kind is Music", and limit it to 60 items selected by most recently added - that will give you roughly five albums, but it's not quite what you want.

Similar Messages

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

I accidentally erased my smart playlist for "Recently added music" how do I create another?

I accidentally erased my smart playlist for "Recently added music" how do I create another?

Create a new Smart Playlist:
Match selected
Date added : in last : 2 : weeks
MediaKind : is not : Podcast
Limit to 25 : items : selected by : random
Live updating selected

How can I create a smart playlist of least played complete albums?

Hi,
How can I create a smart playlist of least played complete albums? (of a specific genre, say jazz)
What I would like to do is to have a playlist that will always automatically pull the least played albums of a specific genre (ideally, but not necessarily, with a random album play within that playlist) Hope you are getting the concept!
Thank you for any idea!
Daniel
p.s. there have been solutions for earlier versions of iTunes, none working with iTunes 10 apparently

As you say, you can't access the Gapless property in a smart playlist rule.
The obvious way that comes to mind would be to create another playlist with stuff to exclude from your final list and put the gapless tracks and anything else that won't filter out easily into it.
Yes you say but I have oodles of gapless tracks and I don't want to gather them up by hand.
OK, so you'll need a script. Here is one I've just created for the purpose: GaplessToPlaylist
tt2

Can one create a smart playlist for multiple podcasts and to...

Can one create a smart playlist for multiple podcasts and to play one after the other on your iPod? I want to combine podcasts of the same topic in a smart playlist. When I tried to do this I chose smart playlist, album starts with, and then did it again for each podcast I wanted. That didn't work. If it can be done how do you do it?
I have a fifth generation iPod which is always updated to the latest as well as the itunes.

Say for example I want to put different car related podcasts in one smart playlist. Car related podcasts such as Wall Street Journal Car Cast and NPR Car Talk. Can it be done and if so how?

HT3702 Why can't I download my already purchased music and other files from iCloud, even though I owe money to iTunes for my most recent purchases. Doesn't seem right that they keep me from accessing those files which I've already paid for!

Why can't I download my already purchased music and other files from iCloud, even though I owe money to iTunes for my most recent purchases. Doesn't seem right that they keep me from accessing those files which I've already paid for!

- Are you saying that they are not listed in your Purchased section?
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store
- Are they listed in your Puchases history when you log into your account on your computer?
- Are they still available now for purchase? If not then you are out of luck
If they are still available and listed in your Puchase History then contact iTunes
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/

Ripping my hair out...my music has completely disappeared, except for my most recent purchase. Help!

From about a year ago up until I attempted to access it today, my Itunes music has been stored in the cloud and all of it was accessible in my Itunes on my W7 PC.
Today, my music has ALL disappeared except for my most recent purchase of about a month ago.
I've tried everything I can find, and NOTHING will make it reappear.
Help??

maybe it does have to do with other apps. i wish i would have paid attention to when this started occuring so i could narrow down which application might be the culprit.
the only thing that seems to be working right now is if i take my loop folders out of library/audio. i dragged some to my desktop (don't ask me why i did this) and imported them from there. for some reason they are staying in my loop browser. also when asked where i wanted to put the files, i selected them to go where the rest of the loops are at....in the proper directory. i'm thinking of trying this with all the loops and see what happens. something is corrupted and i'd like to know what and why. i admit, which i am embarrassed about, my computer is a mess. i really need to organise it and all that. actually, i am hoping hoping hoping to get a macbook just for my music. it would make life easier for me seeing i am quickly running out of room on all my hard drives.
the only loops i am having trouble locating are all the ones i made recently. which i am upset about. but i am sure they are here somewhere. i just need ot wade through the mess to find them.
thank you for your help.

Using Smart-Playlists to create a Recently Played Chart

Here's a challenge for you:
Can you tell me how to make a Smart Playlist that will make a chart, let's say a top 20, of the songs I've played the most in the last week or month?
I can do songs I've played in the last week, organised by number of times played, but this is, of course, the number of times I've played them since I've had them.
I want to know what are the song 20 songs I've listened to the most in the last week or month.
It must be possible for some of you geniuses to answer! Obviously running most recent copy of iTunes!
Thanks!
G5 iMac Mac OS X (10.4.5)
G5 iMac Mac OS X (10.4.5)

OK...would this work?
Rule is: Last Played IS in the Range (plug in the week or monthly period you want.)
Limit to 20 items selected by Most Often Played
Diane Wordsmith
iBook G4 (& an iMac running OS 9) Mac OS X (10.3.9) iPod Video

Smart Playlist for Music Videos

I've fought and fought with iTunes and I cannot figure out how to make a Smart Playlist that JUST HAS MUSIC videos.
I'd like to have a list that just has my music videos in it, but I want it to be a smart playlist so I do not have to keep updating it.
Anyone know how to do this?
Thanks,
mike

I'm think you may be misunderstanding what I'm suggesting. I'm don't mean the "video kind" in the Options panel of the Get Info window. I mean the "Kind" located in the Summary panel.
Each file in iTunes has a "Kind" designation. For example music you buy from the iTMS is Kind: Protected AAC Audio File; the video's I got when I purchased Neil Young's latest album are Kind: QuickTime Move File. The pilot episode of Conviction I download is Kind: Protected MPEG-4 Video File. I suspect this last one is what kind of files the music video's are. To find out:
1. Click a video.
2. Pull down File > Get Info (Apple+I on the keyboard).
3. Click the Summary tab if it is not already selected (Apple+1 on the keyboard).
4. See what "Kind" of file it is by looking at the top of the left-hand column.
5. Click the OK button.
Now that you know that is it time to create the Smart Playlist.
1. Pull down File > New Smart Playlist (AppleOptionN on the keyboard).
2. Make the appropriate menu selections so the criteria are "Kind IS Protected MPEG-4 video file." If your videos are more than one "Kind" repeat this step as necessary.
3. Click OK.
4 Give the playlist whatever name you want to give it. All your music videos will now be in this one playlist.
However, since you want just music video's in the playlist you may still have to "do something" to make sure the TV shows don't show up in the playlist. For example you could put "tv show" in the comments of those files and have the playlist exclude that criteria.
In general Smart Playlists can only work on the data that is in the Summary panel, and the Info panel.

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

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.

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

Tip for creating auto-updating Smart Playlists for iPod

Short Answer:
Don't use Smart Playlists that use rules with nested playlists which aren't completely on iPod.
Long Answer:
If you're like me and use nested Smart Playlists, make sure that any Smart Playlist you want to have auto-update on the iPod doesn't use a rule which uses as a criteria a playlist that isn't fully present on iPod (exclamation point next to the Smart Playlist in iTunes when connecting iPod to your Mac).
For example, I have Smart Playlists to exclude certain tracks in other Smart Playlists (Streams, Spoken Word,tracks under 1 minute, etc.). These are tracks that I usually want to exclude in other Smart Playlists but don't want to add those rules each and every time.
The problem is that iPod looks to see if that 'excludes' playlist is present, which obviously it isn't because by it's nature it's designed to exclude tracks. If a nested playlist isn't present it seems the auto-update will not work.
My solution was to create a new Smart Playlist specifically for the iPod, which contained all the rules of my "master exclude" Smart Playlist and any other I wanted specifically for the iPod.
My beef with Apple here is that I can't duplicate a Smart Playlist, which is possible in iPhoto. Being able to do that would make things much easier.
I have since gone about creating 'excludes' playlists so that the playlist itself excludes tracks; previously I was creating a Smart PLaylist that contained (included) all the tracks I wanted to exclude, then using that as a rule (Playlist is not 'Excludes') in other playlists. The second method worked fine on iTunes, since all the tracks are present, but it creates problems on iPod.

I've posted a better version of this thread in the "Using the iPod with color display" forum.
APPLE DISCUSSION ADMINS: Please delete this thread. Thanks!

Smart playlists for file location?

I have half my music on my powerbook hd, and half on an external drive. I want to create a smart playlist of all the music on the internal drive, and one of all the music on the external.
Is this possible? Perhaps I need something else though... I want to avoid the situation of click on a song, and getting the 'not found' prompt, and only see music that is available to me at the time.
Thanks!

Chris CA wrote:
Both correctly include 2 1/2 star songs when one of their criteria is "greater than 2 stars".
Are you sure the songs are not getting includes as part of other criteria in the list?
Very. Each playlist has just two criteria (both of which must match): "Rating is greater than 2" and "Playlist is ___". In fact, I've used those two lists (which between them include essentially all of my rated music) to create a "Rated 2.5" list (which correctly contains all of my 2.5 rated songs and nothing else).
the Smart Playlist option "Rating 'is greater than'" is not mathematically correct, since it does not treat 3 1/2 as greater than 3
It is mathematically correct. You mean it does not work in adding 3 1/2 rating to the playlist.
Yes, that's what I meant, so perhaps I should rephrase: the actual behavior seen after choosing "is greater than" is not the behavior described by the mathematical inequality "A is greater than B" (since some songs with ratings that are greater than B are not included).
On a technical note, the behavior seems to be in "iTunes Library", not in "iTunes Music Library.xml"...
iTunes does not use the iTunes library.xml file. It is created by iTunes only for other applications to access the library.
Ah, thank you! That's good to know. Interestingly, when I look inside the XML file to compare one of my two "especially smart" playlists to what ought to be a perfect duplicate of it (but isn't) there /is/ one small difference in the "Smart Criteria" section (in the next-to-last line of data there, the better-behaving list has a "Bk" in a place where the worse-behaving one has an "A7"). Is there any way for an ordinary user to edit the internals of the actual iTunes Library database?
Have you looked over at dougscripts.com for something on this?
Yup. There are two or three scripts there for setting half-star ratings, but skimming through all search results for 'half-star' or '"smart playlist"' didn't turn up anything relevant.

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 "X Most Recent Albums"?

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