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

Similar Messages

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

How do you make a "purchased" smart playlist that is sorted by "date purchased" and not "date added"

I'm getting quite frustrated with how iCloud works.
My "purchased" playlists that comes with the iphone when you purchase a song does not work half the time and never syncs accross devices. Also is it possible to make a smart playlist that orders the songs by "recently purchased" and not "recently added"? I don't get why iCloud messes everything up. It really has ruind the music app. Nothing is stable or easy to use. If anyone has this issue or has a solution I would be very grateful! Thanks.

DOn't get me wrong, this is a great way to rebuild things, but the "Purchased" playlist is a speacil playlist and will "Reappear" on the next purchase you make.
You can build one for now, and then when you buy another song, use the playlist your creating now to go by and add to the "green" purchased playlist

Smart Playlist: I want to make a smart playlist that plays songs by artists included in other playlists. How?

Here's an example: I have a smart playlist that only plays songs that have been played 2 or more times (Playlist A). I want to make another smart playlist (B) that plays songs by the artists included on playlist A but that are songs not included on playlist A because they have not been played two times yet.
I could do this by making a smart playlist that says to play:
Any songs
not included on Playlist A
by artists included on Playlist A
But for the life of me, I can not figure out how to do this simple thing. My options for Playlist are only "is" or "is not".
I hope that the reason for this is clear - I want to listen to other tracks by artists who have written songs I know I like.
Thanks for looking!

But I have to say, I don't know why that the "is/is not included in" field would not be an option. They oughtta add it!
The problem is that the Smart Playlist rules, although they look complicated, are really oriented to analyzing individual tracks. So "is this track in Playlist A" is easy to do, but "is this track by an Artist for which there is at least one track in playlist A," is currently undoable. However, you can make suggestions to Apple by using the iTunes Feedback page:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html
Thanks you solved my question.
Enjoy the music!

Smart playlists that reference other playlists are not supported by iCloud, and will not be updated? Unacceptable

Just as it says^
There are tons of types of rap. rap1 rap2 rap3 rap4 rap5. It is unacceptable to disallow me from making a superset playlist "Rap all" that includes rap1 rap2 rap3 rap4 rap5.
I have to say, apple's reputation (built on reliability and comprehensive understanding of products/options/uses) is beginning to dishearten it's users and muddy the brand that has been built with hard work and dedication.
This simple programming lapse needs to be fixed immediately.
Thanks.

I'm in the same boat. I typically sync one playlist to my iPhone, plus a smart playlist that contains 4 GB of random music that's not already in any pre-synced playlists.
Needless to say this doesn't work anymore. Why? Because of the aforementioned "Smart Playlists referencing other playlists" problem, PLUS the fact that Smart Playlists in iTunes Match don't observe any sort of size limitation at all when viewed on an iOS device.
That means that the same smart playlist on my PC has 500 songs @ 4GB, while on my iPhone or iPad the list contains 5,000 songs!
This is seriously a "what the **** have you guys been testing for the past 10 months?!" kind of rollout.

Is there a way to create a smart playlist that lists my top 25 plays from a specific time period (i.e. - top plays from the last 90 days)?

Is it possible to create an itunes smart playlist that lists my top 25 most played songs in a specific time period (i.e. - the last 90 days)? It seems that any "most played" list I create counts every spin a track has had in it's history of being in my library.

The challenge is is not to determine which of the tracks that have been played in the last X days has been played most since the beginning of time, but which have been played most in the last X days. iTunes can do the first one but it simply doesn't have the power to do the second.
tt2

I am using iPhone 5. I have a smart playlist that shows the 25 most play songs within the last 3 months. However, the list on my phone got completely messed up. Please help me.

I am using iPhone 5. I have a smart playlist that shows the 25 most play songs within the last 3 months. However, the list on my phone got completely messed up. Please help me.

First thought: Have you used the same Apple ID for all the purchases you're talking about? If not, that could cause an issue.
Assuming you've used the same Apple ID all the way through everything you're talking about, here's the second set of questions:
When you say you can't play the songs from the iPhone playlist, can you see the playlist on the iPhone? Is the song visible in the playlist? Is it visible under "Songs" in iTunes on your iPhone? Is it visible in "Albums" on your iPhone? Is the song in iCloud?

How can you make an smart playlist that uses another smart playlist when I can't see them all

My whole family uses itunes. I want to make a playlist that uses other playlist. However, when I start a smart playlist and click playlist is I get a dropdown menue that doesn't show all my playlists. My wife's name happens to start with a V so all of hers are at the bottom and don't show up.

Once the list of playlists is on your screen you can use the Page Down/Page Up and Arrow Down/Arrow Up keys to access values that aren't shown.
tt2

Smart Playlists that select all Podcasts

Is there a way to select all Podcasts in a Smart Playlist? I used the tips in http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/ but it seems like I cannot see Podcast in the top dropdown. Wonder if I am doing something wrong and appreciate any help.
Regards.

Try Media Kind is Podcast. (I think the options may have changed since that article was written.)

How to make a Smart playlist that plays holiday music if in a certain month

I'm trying to make a smart playlist with the ability to update with holiday songs playing when it's their season. Genre=holiday or Christmas if month=12 or December and genre=Halloween if month=10 or October. Can it be scripted?

jescis wrote:
I'm trying to make a smart playlist with the ability to update with holiday songs playing when it's their season. Genre=holiday or Christmas if month=12 or December and genre=Halloween if month=10 or October. Can it be scripted?
Sure but its just as easy to select the playlist then click Play when you want.
Here's something to play with;
set current_month to month of (current date)
get current_month
tell application "iTunes"
          if current_month = "December" then
                    set play_list to "Christmas" -- Change to your Christmas playlist name
          else if current_month = "October" then
                    set play_list to "Halloween" -- Change to your Halloween playlist name
          else if current_month = "January" then
                    set play_list to "New Year" -- Change to your New Year's playlist name
          else
                    set play_list to "Music" -- Play your Music playlist
          end if
          get play_list
play user playlist play_list
end tell

How do I create a smart playlist that automatically gets updated when I add songs to other specific playlists?

Basically I have a number of playlists containing specific types of songs, and also have an "All Songs" playlist that contains everything from these playlists. It would be really helpful if the songs I add to the smaller playlists could also be added to an "All Songs" smart playlist automatically. How would I do this? I tried to make a smart playlist by selecting "Playlist" "is" "[names of each playlist]." But nothing happened. Is there something more I'm supposed to do? I'm not really familiar with how smart playlists work, so I may be doing something wrong.
Thank you!

I tried to make a smart playlist by selecting "Playlist" "is" "[names of each playlist]." But nothing happened.
Check up at the top of your smart playlist rule for "All Songs". Is it currently saying "Match all of the following rules"?
If so, change the all to any, as per the following screenshot:

Need to Create a Live Update Smart Playlist That Shuts Off After a While

Hi All--
I'm trying to create a smart playlist with the following properties:
1) Every time I play it, it selects a different random set of songs.
2) The playlist plays for a fixed duration, then shuts off. (I like to go to sleep to music, but it wakes me up in the middle of the night if it plays for too long.)
The best I've been able to come up with is to set "not played in the last xx days", "Limit to yy minutes selected by random", and "live updating". However, there's a problem with this: as soon as one song has played, it's purged from the list, which causes live updating to replace it with a new song. As a result, this creates a list that plays forever, since new songs are continuously added to replace the ones that have been played.
I tried turning off live updating, but then I'm stuck with the same songs over and over. I also know about the trick of just using "select random" and deleting the contents of the list, so that live update will repopulate it, but that won't work on an iPod without doing it in iTunes and then re-syncing.
Any ideas?

OK, I think I finally found a way to do this, sorta. This will work on any iPod or iPhone that supports live update and allows the creation of ad-hoc playlists, either named or on-the-go:
1) Create the list as described above.
2) Sync to iPod or iPhone
3a) On a non-touch iPod, highlight the playlist and hold down the select button until you get the menu with "add to on-the-go" in it, and select that.
3b) On an iPod touch or iPhone, create a new playlist, then select the dynamic list and "add all songs" to it.
The playlist you created isn't dynamic, so you'll just play through it once and stop. Deleting the contents from the temporary list and doing step 3a/b over will get you a new set of songs. The dynamic list will purge the songs and update with new ones as you play them from the static list.
It's not perfect, but it's reasonably fast to get a time-bounded selection of music that refreshes each time you want to play the list.

How to restore smart playlist that has been deleted

I deleted the smart playlist by mistake. how can I get them back?

iTunes is pretty unforgiving about deleting playlists. There no "undelete". You can revert to using an earlier version of your iTunes library file from a backup.
It doesn't make a difference in this case but you did post in the iTunes for Mac forum and your computer information says you are running Windows.

How to make smart playlist that randomizes songs?

I want to have a playlist with 5 songs in it. The songs have to have a play count of zero, and I want them to be random every time I select the playlist. Is this possible? Basically I just want to listen to songs I've never listened to before and thought this would be an easy way.

Yes, just use a single rule "Playcount is 0," limit it to 5 items selected at random, and use live updating. Once a song is played it will fly off the list (since its playcount is no longer 0) and immediately be replaced.
If you ever want to "refresh" the list, i.e. get 5 new songs, then open the playlist, Edit > Select All (so they all get highlighted) and then Delete. Those 5 will be removed and new ones will appear momentarily.

I have smart playlists combined in a folder that I use to make playlists to fit on devices. Lately the folder isn't updating with the playlists inside it, so the folder shows songs that aren't in any of its playlists. Can anyone help?

I'm using the latest iTunes on Windows 8. Since upgrading to iTunes 12 my old system of smart playlists within folders have not worked properly. I used to have a folder containing three folders with smart playlists in them, but I had to abandon this and copy all the smart playlists into one folder, as the nested structure didn't seem to update anymore. This worked for a couple of months (even though it was less convenient and didn't exactly accomplish what I had been able to do on iTunes 11 and earlier).
More recently, however, I've found that the folder in the simplified structure also doesn't work properly. The smart playlists are set up to remove songs after they were played, but now the folder seems to retain some songs even after they've disappeared from the playlist that included them. It seems to be building up 'ghosts' of songs that were played and were then supposed to disappear as per the smart playlist setup. I tried copying all the playlists out of the folder, but ended up with the folder 'properties' showing that it contained a number of songs, even when it was empty.
I also noticed that I'm unable to reference the folder in the conditions of any new playlists I set up - I get the error message that the folder relies on smart playlists that cannot be updated. In response to this I reviewed all the playlists, but saw no errors.
Anybody else have this problem?

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.

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