IPhone – Shuffling Songs from Multiple Playlists on iPhone

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I'd like to play songs from multiple playlists on my iPhone and iCloud. I use iTunes Match which clearly introduces some limitations.

The closest I've come is to create a Smart Playlist, with the rules stating to include songs from specified other playlists.

However, since iCloud does not sync smart playlists that reference other playlists, it does not make it to my iPhone. I can only listen to it from iTunes on my Mac.

Is there any other route to achieving this, without manually sweeping the songs whenever I make a change to one of the referenced playlists?

Best Answer

Since I got the Tumbleweed badge for this, I'll respond with what I did.

  1. Cleared all the star ratings from my entire music library.
  2. In each of my "genre" playlists, assigned every song a rating of 5-stars
  3. Created a smart playlist that includes every song with 5 stars. This playlist will sync over iCloud to my iDevices for listening.
  4. Created a second smart playlist that lists every song in my "genre" playlists that doesn't have 5 stars. This playlist is for maintenance and is only available on my Mac.

This works as long as I do the following:

  1. Continue adding songs that I like to my "genre" playlists.
  2. Every once in a while, check the second smart playlist, and give a 5-star rating to any songs in it. It will then be empty, and the songs will automatically be added to my listening playlist.
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