itunesplaylistsmart-playlist
I have one active playlist which contains about 50 songs. But I remove and add songs very commonly at this playlist. I want to have another playlist that includes all song that currently are and have been in the active playlist. Can someone help me to create that smart playlist?
Here is a screenshot of my first attempt but this creates a live updating clone, which is not very helpful.
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:
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:
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.
You can't do this with a smart playlist as Apple doesn't expose the lyric field there.
You can create an Applescript that creates a playlist. You'd then have to rerun the script to update the playlist. A track has a playlist field so you'd just check that.
Here's one example of such a script
tell application "iTunes"
if exists playlist "No Lyrics" then
delete playlist "No Lyrics"
end if
make new playlist with properties {name:"No Lyrics"}
duplicate (every track of playlist 1 whose lyrics is equal to "") to playlist "No Lyrics"
end tell
Best Answer
iTunes' Smart Playlist feature does not have any memory. You can only refer to songs where/how they are in this very moment.
You can, however, add songs to the new smart playlist that have been played in the last X hours/days.
If you can 'explain' to iTunes how to find the songs that you want to have included/excluded, you can create a smart playlist for it.
Does this answer your question?