ITunes smart playlists stored on disk

Before creating a playlist, you have to separate the items into very small pieces, otherwise, you risk contradicting yourself.

Playlist A contains songs that are "singles" (meaning I don't have the full album) and are not in playlist B

Why are you using “not in playlist B”? I assume you want to have a list of ’singles’ that are 1-4 stars rated. Why not add that to the conditions?

Now your “A" list should be the same as before, but doesn’t mention B at all.

Now you happen to have a list “B” that has 5 rated songs (the good ones!).

And now you want your less than 5 rated singles (A) of “XX Genre”, and your 5 star ones…

As easy as it sounds, in practice it’s more difficult… because what sounds like “this and that” is not really like that.

Let me try to replicate.

My “A” playlist is (I’ve used Track = 1 but I’m sure your condition to determine singles is different and I’m taking 0,1,2 and 3 stars)

My B playlist is easier:

Now I have a C one… that contains tracks from A that have a “Rock” genre:

We’re getting close!

Now we need to group B and C into a single D playlist to enjoy the Joy of single Rocks and 5 start songs!

Here’s our D list:

And that’s it. Now two things are important:

1. This song must always be in any playlist or you’re doing it wrong.
2. If you also want to include the “genre” in the B playlist (is not clear), then modify B playlist to also have a “rock” genre.

Ahhh the joy of playlists. :)

EDIT: You specified two pseudo-contradictory things, but here’s the idea:

Playlist B contains songs in my Library that are rated 5-stars

cannot be intersected with:

all songs for a specific genre in playlist A and B.

In order to achieve that, you’ll have to modify (or create a B2) list that is:

• Match All of the following rules:
• “Rating is *****”
• Genre is “Rock”

You can’t modify a previous list from a new. This is not a relational database. Smart lists only work as far as simple pascal logic goes. True/False/Intersection/Union…

If you don’t want to change your B playlist (because you use it for something else), go ahead and create B2 and make it include “all from B” and “Genre is rock” and use that B2 in your final “D” creation, much like we created the “C” list, which is pretty much “A” with Rock Genre.

I have been having this problem and while I don't use the rating quite the way you do, I get annoyed when new episodes are automatically assigned a rating.

I found this solution tonight for iTunes 12.5.1. I selected the podcast which was getting auto assigned (2 stars in my case). It's a very frequently updated podcast as episodes are short. I set View->View As->List. In the upper right corner there is a circle with three dots across the middle. Click on that and the rating option appears. I set the default back to no rating and all the hollow star auto ratings went away, even for episodes I was finished listening to.