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bobdavcav Author

Level 1

15 points

another question about smart playlists

Hi,

I have been experimenting a lot with smart playlists lately and have 3 now that I have set up with help from this forum so far. However, I have a question I don't see an obvious answer to. That is, I have every song in at least one playlist, and some songs are in multiple playlists. I can add a playlist to a rule, but how can I tell ITunes to create a playlist containing songs that are in more than one playlist? For example, I want ITunes to create a playlist from songs that are in more than one of the following playlists, top 25 most played, purchased, and tagged. How can I set up ITunes to do this?

Hp, Windows 7

Posted on Oct 24, 2012 3:33 PM

Best reply

dancindazed

Level 1

10 points

Posted on Oct 25, 2012 3:23 PM

The checkmark on the right side when you're editing smart playlists adds more rules. Make as many rules as there are playlist that you're looking into and make each rule say "playlist _is_ (fill in the playlist from the dropdown." If you want songs that appear in ALL the selected playlists you select match ALL of the rules at the top. If you want songs that appear in any of the playlists you've selected you have to select match ANY rule at the top. If you have three playlists and you're looking for any songs that appear on any two of the playlists, but they don't necessarily have to appear on all three, then unfortunately there's no way to do that with one smart playlist. You'd have to make a smart playlist with one saying playlist top 25 most played+purchased (match ALL) another saying with playlist top 25 most played+tagged (match ALL), another saying playlists purchased+tagged(match ALL). Then you could make a 4th smart playlists saying to add the other three playlists and you'd end up with one playlist that has only songs that appear in ANY of the other three.
Note: there's an option that appears to make subrules as if you could do the above all in one playlist but unfortunately these don't actually work the way they appear they should in my experience.

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12 replies

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dancindazed

Level 1

10 points

Oct 25, 2012 3:23 PM in response to bobdavcav

bobdavcav Author

Level 1

15 points

Oct 26, 2012 5:03 PM in response to bobdavcav

Thanks. The sub-rules work to some extent, I had to set one up for one of my other playlists. About that playlist, do you know if I can tell ITunes to not add any country songs that fit the other rules in that playlist unless they are by a certain artist? I also have some music in that playlist that I know the year and genre on but it is not listed on the file. I imagine I would have to use an audio editor to put this in? Sorry for straying from the original topic.

Oct 26, 2012 6:13 PM in response to bobdavcav

Well, you should be able to just say "Genre" _ "Does not contain" and then you can fill in a word like "country."

If you have more terms that your country genres might be listed as you could add more "does not contains." Note: You want to do subrules for more than one word. You can't put them all on the one line such as "does not contain_ Country Cajan Bluegrass" because it will only exclude genres which have ALL of those terms, not ANY, which will probably be none. So make sub rules for more words.

Oct 26, 2012 6:34 PM in response to dancindazed

Edit: I forgot to talk about the "except this artist part." for that use subrules to the playlist following my example below, it should work.

So you say the playlist is:__ then two subrules, one saying artist contains/is then another saying genre does not contain (and you can add more). Make sure the Subrules are marked as "any" of the following and make sure the main rule is marked as All (if you have more main rules other than which playlist to grab from especially.) With this format above I ended up with all songs from my favorite playlist that aren't rock, unless they are by Paul McCartney.

bobdavcav Author

Level 1

15 points

Oct 26, 2012 9:02 PM in response to dancindazed

I am not telling it to grab from any playlist. I have deleted my Today's Hit Music playlist and am starting over. Here's what I did, Main rule set to match all of the following. Not in a sub-rule, year is greater than 2009. So far I have two groupings, both set to match any of the following rules, Name is Give Me Everything and Name is Tonight Tonight. I had this grouping set up in the last version of the playlist as well and didn't have any problem with it. The grouping I am trying to add is genre is not country except when the artist is Taylor Swift. However, when I save the playlist to look at it before excluding a few more artists and songs on a limited basis, I discover that I either only have 2 songs in the playlist or it is completely empty. How do I fix this?

Oct 26, 2012 11:31 PM in response to bobdavcav

You need to combine two playlists to make that work. that's why I say the sub-rules don't work the way I'd like them to. This should work if you say Year is greatere than 2009 + sub rule: genre is not country + New main rule artist is taylor swift + main rule: song is (whatever extra songs you want). But it doesn't see the subrule as if it's a subset of the already filtered songs after 2009. If you say match ANY at the top, it will take all non country from your entire library and add them to the playlist even though it's a subrule. if you say match ALL rules at the top, it will only take the taylor swift songs from after 2009 that aren't called country. So what you need to do instead is make one smart playlist that matches your first needs and make a second playlist that matches the rest. first playlist would be: match ALL: year is after 2009 and genre is not country. Let's say you call that "Today's hits" like you said. Then you make a second smart playlist saying match ANY of the following rules: playlist is "today's hits" + second rule: Artist is Taylor swift + name is (rule for each song you want that is before 2009 in this playlist.)

bobdavcav Author

Level 1

15 points

Oct 27, 2012 10:47 AM in response to dancindazed

Thanks, I think we can mark this one as solved. I did a little more messing around last night and got most of it to work, with the exception of the two songs that I downloaded from a site I had access to last summer that are from the last couple of years but don't have any year info. I think the problem is that ITunes does not like the fact I am trying to set up two sub-rules. I'll see if I can't edit the information in there.

tom227

Level 1

9 points

Nov 2, 2012 7:18 AM in response to dancindazed

Thanks for this post. It precisely solved the dificulty of not having an "except" rule that I've had with iTunes for years.

Aug 23, 2013 5:06 AM in response to dancindazed

HI! My problem is that I want my playlist to have a year range (1930-1996); but i want to except an artist which is within the year range and add an artist outside the range; How will I deal with it? I tried to use subrules but won't work, neither does making a new rule.