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

Similar Messages

Play count for podcasts do not update when using Smart Playlist

On my iPhone, when I play podcasts using a Smart Playlist I have noticed that neither the "play count" nor the "watched" get updated for any of the podcasts I listened to (and yes, I listen through to the end of each).
After listening to several podcasts in the Smart Playlist (letting it play from end of one into beginning of next and so on), then syncing to my PC, all of the podcasts still shows as being "unwatched" and the play count field is blank.
Problem only seems to occur when listening via Smart Playlist - which is very disappointing since the Smart Playlist is set to only include podcasts I have not yet listened to (play count is zero). If this is a bug, it makes this feature useless.
NOTE: Not sure if this would matter, but I frequently listen to podcasts at 2x speed (double).
Message was edited by: dromedary32

You have the shuffle feature turned on. Since Podcasts are labelled (by iTunes) as *Skip when shuffling* (to prevent them playing while you're trying to listen to music) when one Podcasts finishes, there is nothing else left to play. If you look at the play tally, it will say 1 of 1.
Turn the Shuffle off. If you look at the play tally, it will now say 1 of x.
Phil

"My Ratings" is blacked out when using smart playlist!

Hi all,
For several years I used a smart playlist to load my shuffle based on certain rating criteria. Recently (since iTunes update?)when I attempt to set the parameters for a smart playlist, the boxes are filled in with black where I used to put in the "stars". ANy thoughts?

Brian,
Have a look at vanmila's post and let us know if it solves your problem.

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

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.

Podcasts & Music not mixing in Smart Playlists. Only music is played.

First- this is not the Podcast order problem. I mix my music in with a couple of podcasts- KCRW song of the day and The Onion, a 1 minute funny spoof newscast. I like to listen to a mix of music and these short podcasts.
Since the early days, I have been doing this. It works just fine on my old iPod Photo. However, it does not work on my Nano (3rd gen) and iPod Touch (2nd gen, 3.1.3 update).
I have set Podcasts to sync in iTunes in the profile of the Touch, and if I click the down arrow in iTunes on the iPod, and display my playlist, it shows the Podcasts all visible on my iPod (818 items, of which 675 are songs and 143 are Podcasts). And, if I go to my Touch, and select the playlist and scroll down through it, I can see all the Podcasts. But- the frustrating part- when I hit "Shuffle" to mix up the songs and play that playlist, they are missing, and the song count says "1 of 675", so it is clearly not counting the Podcasts as part of the playlist, even though the listing shows them present. Ditto on the Nano.
Does anyone have any clues what to do here? I have tried "Genre contains Podcast", etcs... If I put in "Playist is Music" which I have seen elsewhere, all podcasts disappear from the list, as they are not actually music, so I don't really understand that particular tip.

Very cool- that worked, thank you! I didn't know that was even an option, and it must have popped up sometime after I bought my iPod Photo in 2005. And I would guess that the iPod Photo ignores that setting, since it worked just fine on that device, but nothing since then.
One question- I was able to bulk-edit my three Podcast groups by clicking on the group header and applying to all. But will each subsequent Podcast (I get at least 2 new ones each day) default back to Skip, and periodically I'll have to go back and re-edit the groups? Or since I edited at Group level, does iTunes make that setting sticky for that category?
Thanks,
Jeff

Smart playlist order different in iTunes and iPod nano

I recently switched to the fifth gen (5G) nano from the first gen (1G) nano, and noticed a strange thing.
I have a smart playlist called "20 most recently played podcasts" where all podcasts with play count >= 1, and the list is limited to 20 most recently played.
I sort it most recently-played last (=from old to recent) so that I could replay them in the same order I previously listened to.
I never had any problem with this setup with my old 1G nano, but the new 5G nano lists most recently played first, reversal of how I set it up in iTunes.
I have another smart playlist called "New podcasts" in which all podcasts with play cound = 0 are collected, sorted by release date, and it works fine (i.e. no play order mangling).
Has anybody seen this kind of problem? How do I correct it?
My setup:
WinXP Pro SP2
iTunes ver 9.0.1.8
iPod nano 5G ver 1.0.1
Thanks in advance,

iTunes' system requirement says SP2 or later, so I think I'm OK. Besides I use this PC for work, too, and my company policy doesn't allow me to upgrade to SP3 (most post-SP2 individual security patches are applied).
Anyway, thanks for the pointer. I think I'll try disabling live update for the playlist.

Can't create smart playlists because iTunes can't see all my playlists

I noticed that my smart playlists aren't updating properly. When I tried to edit them, I got an error message saying "This smart playlist depends on one or more playlists that cannot be found." I am using as one of my rules "Playlist is" but the dropdown list next to that rule does not show all of my playlists. It shows some of my smart playlists, none of the "regular" playlists. That means I cannot fix the smart playlist.
For example, I have a playlist called "exercise" that is a regular playlist. It contains 965 songs that I have added manually. I can see the "Exercise" playlist just fine in iTunes, and I can add/remove songs from it. But my smart playlist, "Top Exercise Rare Recent," does not work, because it depends on the rule "Playlist Is Exercise." When I try to edit the rule "Playlist is," I cannot choose "Exercise" from the dropdown list--that playlist simply does not show up. But it is there. I can see it in iTunes. I just can't see it in the dropdown list.
I don't even know what to try to fix this.
In case it matters, a few versions ago, an iTunes update "lost" my library. I had saved backup of my library files, fortunately, so I did not lose all of my ratings and playlists (at least, I didn't think I did). After I restored my library files, iTunes did not recognize my iPod classic so I had to re-sync it (removing everything that was on it and replacing it with whatever was in iTunes, i.e., exactly the same files). Then the next update broke my ability to burn playlists to cds AND it broke my system clock. I had to revert to a restore point that preceded the iTunes update, then reinstall iTunes, then "repair" the installation to get my cd burning ability back.
I am now using iTunes 11.3.1.2 on a Windows 8.1 PC (64-bit). Wishing I had never update

Thanks for the clarification. Sorry, it's working for me so I'm not sure what to suggest. Perhaps someone else will have ideas.
Regards.

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!

My smart playlist "Recently Added", will not update via Match on my iOS devices

My smart playlist "Recently Added", will not update via Match on my iOS devices

At first I also thought this to be a bug with Match an smart playlists. When I first activated Match on my iPhone the 'recently added' playlist (which holds about 200 songs on my MacBook Pro) was vompletely empty on the phone. But - After buying some music and downloading some additional songs from the cloud - it was slowly beginning to fill up with this newly added music.
So I guess Apple has quietly made smart playlists device-sensitive. 'recently added' actually means 'recently added in the specific device you are using to view this playlist'. In fact this would just be a logic step. But it would be great if Apple had documented this change of behaviour and would give us the option to make playlists device-relative or cloud-relative.

Smart playlists and last played time

If I have a smart playlist, I noticed the last played time of an item does not update if I have launched and played the item from the main area it appears in (like podcasts).
Any solution for this?
Thanks.

Normally the Last Played time updates when the song reaches the end. That should be true no matter where it is launched from. Are you seeing something different?

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,
Martyn

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

Smart playlists not updating live after 3.1.1 upgrade

Same discussion started back in February about the 3.0 update (http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9937797)
I thought for sure live updating would work properly with such an update from 3.0 -> 3.1.1, but no luck! I guess it takes more than 7 months to fix this.
As a refresher -- if you have a smart playlist that includes a "not played in the last xx days" condition, the old OS (2.2.1) would automatically remove a played song from the smart playlist on the iPod so your playlist is always valid. However, in 3.0 and 3.1.1, the iPod does not automatically recalculate the smart playlist and you have to sync with iTunes to get the song to be removed.

I have discovered a workaround for this issue. As with most workarounds, it's not too pretty, but it gets you there.
Knowing that live updating smart playlists that refer to other playlists won't properly update on the iPod, and taking advantage of the fact that iTunes 9 now allows for nested logic in smart playlists, we can make a complex nested logic smart playlist that live updates on the iPod as long as it doesn't refer to another playlist. In place of referring to another playlist, refer to some metadata instead. The cleanest metadata tag in my opinion is "Category." It is metadata that does not by default display in playlist view (you can enable it under the View menu), and is not visible when selecting Get Info on a track. You can use the excellent "Enter Category Text for Selected v1.1" script to enter Category tags, available at http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=entercategorytext . Just enter the name of the playlist the track is contained in for the Category tag.
I'll give an example of how this works. Let's say you have a long playlist named "day" containing certain tracks you like to listen to when the sun is out. You want to create an intelligent and self-updating megamix playlist of tracks only from the "day" playlist that will play songs you haven't heard, as well as songs you've heard and have rated. As an added smartness, you want to hear the tracks you've rated higher more often than the tracks with a lower rating. You want this new "day mix" playlist to live update properly on your iPod touch.
First you'll need to tag all your "day" playlist songs. Download and install the "Enter Category Text for Selected v1.1" script mentioned above. Select all the songs in the "day" playlist, run the script, and enter "day" for the Category.
Now you can make the smart playlist. In iTunes 9, create a new Smart Playlist. Using the new nested logic in iTunes 9 smart playlists, select the following conditions:
) Match any of the following rules:
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Playcount is 0
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is *
) Last Played is not in the last 6 months
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is **
) Last Played is not in the last 5 months
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is *
) Last Played is not in the last 4 months
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is **
) Last Played is not in the last 3 months
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is ***
) Last Played is not in the last 2 months
) Live updating
You should find that the new "day mix" smart playlist properly live updates on your iPod touch.
As with any workaround, there are troubling aspects. One is that you'll need to constantly update your metadata tag of choice (Category, in my example) each time you add new tracks to a source regular playlist on your iPod. I'm also unsure about overloading the metadata with a number of tags in the case where tracks co-exist on multiple playlists. Also be aware that smart playlists like this tend to hang the iPod for several minutes with the "Updating Library" screen, so be prepared to be patient.
I hope this is of use to someone. Please post any streamlining suggestions for this workaround.

Smart Playlist Not Syncing Correctly

I downloaded Version 8 yesterday. Today I synced my iPod to iTunes. I had a smart playlist called "Newer Stuff" which consisted of my 60 most recently added songs, with automatic updating.
When I hooked up and synced the iPod, I noticed that about 40 of my old songs were being synced. I assumed it was because I had changed the album artwork or something recently or because last month I'd had the iTunes "crash" and had to recreate my library from a backup.
After syncing, my smart playlist had the correct 60 most recent songs on iTunes (my computer). However, my iPod had the aforesaid 40 'old' songs in the playlist in lieu of some of my new music.
I tried re-syncing several times, and even deleting the smart playlist and creating a new one with the same rules. And each time the smart playlist on the computer/iTunes is correct, but the one on the iPod is still listing the 40 old songs as part of the playlist.
Any suggestions? To be honest, iTunes has been bugging the heck out of me all summer, what with the crash and now this.

I tried to make more sense of this. I took note of the songs on the playlist on my Touch. Then I waited until after midnight and looked at the playlist on my iMac. Songs that were added after midnight (see pic in my first post) were songs that were on the Touch that shouldn't have been there.
I'd thought that the playlist on my iMac picked the songs and once I plugged in my Touch, it just transferred them over. However, it seems to me the Touch is picking songs as well, which may have something to do with me changing the "last played" criteria often. It seems the two playlists (the one on the iMac and the one on the Touch) aren't always in sync.
I know that you can make playlists on the Touch, but I've never tried, so I don't know how detailed you can make them. Am I on the right track here? What's the solution?

Album ratings and smart playlists

Hello all,
I was wondering if anyone can help me with the new iTunes functionality. I am trying to create a smart playlist with album ratings between 0 stars and 5 stars (basically all albums) and limit the playlist to 4 gb. I am trying to just create a random list of albums to sync to my iphone. Everytime I create a random list it always truncates the final album to exactly match 4gb so there is always an album that is incomplete.
Can anyone think of a different way to accomplish this so you can get ALL complete albums? There must be a way. Sorry if I sound picky about this but I am an album guy, not a random song guy.

Hi there. Try the following:
iTunes -> Preferences... -> Playback -> Shuffle: Albums
Now take your smart playlist you created, and set the 4GB limiter selected by "random" instead of "album". Because we forced shuffling to be by album only, this "random" will select entire albums, randomly. I just figured this out a few minutes ago and it seems to work great.
If you want all albums, you can probably omit the album rating rule (you might need to set Kind to "MPEG audio file" or something to skip podcasts, etc.)
To refresh your list, select and delete all tracks in the playlist, or use the Reshuffle Smart Playlists script available at dougscripts.com/itunes. Or you could add a criterion saying that Last Played must be greater than a month, or so.

Using Smart-Playlists to create a Recently Played Chart

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for