I've discovered a very strange issue with Smart Playlists on the iPhone (may or may not be related to iTunes Match as well). Here is the scenario: I have many Smart Playlists based on Rating (among other attribs). Those all work fine. However, I have a big (> 4000 songs) Smart Playlist of unrated songs, which I listen to periodically and rate songs (ie, give it 3 stars, 4 starts, etc.) as I listen. Therein, I believe, lies the issue. This Not Rated Smart Playlist constantly repeats the same song, loops within songs, and/or crashes the Music app. I've tried to explain this to Apple Support with no success so far. So recently I created a new Smart Playlist of unrated songs but limited it to 100 songs to see if it was the size. Same issue. However, and here is where I think we are on to something, the playlist only has an issue if I rate a song. AND, the total song count of my 100 limit list starts incrementing before my eyes! Very strange. So, I start listening to the playlist, song 1 of 100 starts to play, and all seems fine. If I give that song a rating, doesn't matter how many songs, the playlist starts changeing from 1 of 100 to 1 of 101, 102, 103... and it keeps going! Just did this now and its counting up to 168 and going. What seems to happen is it puts duplicates of the original song in the playlist. If I hit forward to next, I get the same song again for as many dupes as have been created. So if it is 1 of 120, I have to hit next song 20 times before I get to the actual next song (which should be 2 of 100).
Help, this is maddening!!
Help, this is maddening!!