How to play songs across Apple Music playlists

apple-musicitunes

I work while playing Apple Music in iTunes (12.8.0.150) on my Mac (macOS 10.13.6). I would like to add all the songs in various playlists to a single playlist so I can shuffle across them. These are generally Apple's "Essentials" playlists for an artist.

I tried going to each "Essentials" playlist, clicking the ellipsis button in the top right, and selecting "Add to Library." Here's a couple of the "Essentials" playlists I added.

Faith No More Essentials
Foo Fighter Essentials
Green Day Essentials

None of the tracks for these playlists is greyed out.

I then created a smart playlist.

Apple Music Essentials Playlist

So, 15 songs in Faith No More's playlist, 25 in Foo Fighters, and 25 in Green Day's. Total of 65 songs, but…

Track Count

Only 27 songs, less than half, made it to my smart playlist.

Perhaps I'm going about this in the wrong way. If this method can work great, but if not, is there some way to say to iTunes, "Shuffle all of the songs in these playlists?"

Best Answer

You can create a new Smart Playlist, and add in the rules to pick from each of the playlists you've already defined.

From your music library: File --> New --> Smart Playlist

Then set it up using rules similar to these: enter image description here

You want to match music for any, and then click the + to add as many rule entries as you want, one for each playlist.