I can't figure out a way to get iTunes to create a playlist where every song in the list is a different unique artist, and no artists or songs are repeated. Is this possible?
(using iTunes 10, 64-bit, Windows 7)
Is it possible to make a smart playlist in iTunes that’s comprised of tracks from unique artists (no one artist appears twice on the list)
itunesplaylistssmart-playlist
Related Solutions
I don't know what you did or what happened to cause them to duplicate, but if you have duplicates in the finder it would stand to reason that they would duplicate in the playlists.
Click on the Music category (top left of iTunes) then choose the File Menu and select Show Duplicates. From there you can select all and delete (Command Delete) all of the duplicates, and move the files to the trash when prompted. This will clean the duplicates out of the iTunes folder in the Finder as well as remove them from the iTunes Library file. You can also hold down Option before selecting the File Menu and View Duplicates will change to View Exact Duplicates. Exact Duplicates may do a better job of differentiating between a studio and live version of the same song for example.
There is a Show All button at the bottom of the duplicate search to get you back to a regular view of your iTunes library.
I would recommend making a backup of entire ~/Music/iTunes folder before messing with this further.
There are certainly other ways to handle this if that doesn't look like it will give good results. I'd need a bit more info though. Are the duplicates in the same directories as their original songs or not. You can tell this by right clicking and choosing show in finder for a pair of them. Does that open two folders, or are they in the same folder, and one of the files has a space and the number 1 at the end of the file name?
In each Smart Playlist, you can change "Match ALL of the following rules" to "Match ANY"" to tell iTunes to do a OR instead of AND between elements you specify:
Match ANY of the following:
Genre > contains > Hip-Hop
OR
Genre > contains > Rap
Unfortunately you can't mix OR and ANDs in the same playlist, it's all or nothing. For example you cannot do the following since any song rated 4 or more -no matter the genre!- will be included:
Match ANY of the following:
Rating > greater than or equal > 4 stars
OR
Genre > contains > Hip-Hop
OR
Genre > contains > Rap
Multiple Smart Playlists
To solve this problem, you can create and combine multiple smart playlists that focus on one thing. For example:
Smart Playlist 1: 4+ stars ratings
Match ALL or ANY of the following:
Rating > greater than or equal > 4 stars
Smart Playlist 2: Hip-hop & Rap
Match ANY of the following:
Genre > contains > Hip-Hop
OR
Genre > contains > Rap
Smart Playlist 3: 4+ rated Hip-hop & Rap (if you want to sync to your device, just sync this one)
Match ALL of the following:
Playlist > is > Hip-hop & Rap
AND
Playlist > is > 4+ stars ratings
Best Answer
Through iTunes, what you are asking is not possible. However, I thought that it should be possible, and fairly easy to do through a plugin or interface to itunes,
So I did what I promised!
It's not a true iTunes plugin, as I couldn't find any real sdk or information on writing them, but its a small WPF that interfaces with iTunes through COM. I'm working on refining it and I hope to have it up on SourceForge soon.
This is done through a COM library provided by iTunes which works in .NET. Information about the library can be found here.