iPod Smart Playlist Help

[rockthecasbah]

I am in need of a little bit of assistance in creating a smart playlist in iTunes on Windows. Now that's important because i can't use Applescript. I want to create a Smart Playlist that will automatically shuffle the settings inside the playlist every time iTunes opens, so i don't have the same playlist each time i sync my iPod. Can someone tell me what i'm doing wrong (or if it's even possible to do what i want without Applescript )


Artist - Contains - Dylan

Limit to - 900 - Songs

Selected by - Random <<<<< That's the issue, although that is selected the playlist is sorted alphabetically.

Match only checked songs

Live Updating

I just want a playlist that will shuffle all my Bob Dylan songs for me, is that so hard? It's a pain to have a regular playlist and manually reshuffle it, since i have about 10 of those type of Artist-specific playlists

 

[balamw]

Just add another condition to the mix. e.g. "Last Played is not within the past week/day/month/year" whatever time makes sense.

Also make sure you sort on the leftmost field to avoid the alphabetization. You just have alphabetical sort order selected in the playlist view.

B

 

[rockthecasbah]

Just add another condition to the mix. e.g. "Last Played is not within the past week/day/month/year" whatever time makes sense.

Also make sure you sort on the leftmost field to avoid the alphabetization. You just have alphabetical sort order selected in the playlist view.

B

I did that all and it still doesn't work, it creates a playlist by album still, even with the leftmost field sorting.... And with the last played it is no different than before other than limiting some of my songs to not being played

 

[balamw]

I did that all and it still doesn't work, it creates a playlist by album still, even with the leftmost field sorting.... And with the last played it is no different than before other than limiting some of my songs to not being played

Select everything in the SPL and hit delete, and see if you still get the album/ alphabetical sort. I'll play with it some tonight on my Windows box.

B

 

[rockthecasbah]

Select everything in the SPL and hit delete, and see if you still get the album/ alphabetical sort. I'll play with it some tonight on my Windows box.

B

That didn't do anything... thanks for trying though, especially for even going so far as to go on a windows machine later for me

 

[balamw]

That didn't do anything... thanks for trying though, especially for even going so far as to go on a windows machine later for me

That's OK. My iTunes library is still on my Dell.

One of these years...

B

 

[redeye be]

why don't you just use party shuffle to randomize playback?
look like the simpler solution.

 

[balamw]

why don't you just use party shuffle to randomize playback?
look like the simpler solution.

Party shuffle is great, but it doesn't sync to the iPod automatically.

For 900 songs though, I agree with you that a simple plain palylist in shuffle mode might be easier.

B

 

[rockthecasbah]

Party shuffle is great, but it doesn't sync to the iPod automatically.

For 900 songs though, I agree with you that a simple plain palylist in shuffle mode might be easier.

B

well currently my Bob collection is 826 songs but im looking to acquire the entire catalog soon, bringing it to about 900... Anyway the entire reason for the playlist is just to shuffle all of one artist on my iPod, i don't really care about it on my computer so the party shuffle isn't really what i need anyway.

 

[redeye be]

I missed the iPod thing, and i'm a shuffle user myself so...
Good luck on finding your solution.

 

[SPinc33]

maybe i'm missing something, but can't this be much easier?

When I want to shuffle an entire catalog of an artist on my iPod, I just turn on shuffle songs in settings, select the artist, then press play on the album menu and it shuffles them all.

 

[redeye be]

That would indeed work.
Shuffling songs would however use more battery power, which might be another concern of the OP.

 

[balamw]

Shuffling songs would however use more battery power, which might be another concern of the OP.

It shouldn't. Not with the way that shuffle play works on the ipod. It really does shuffle rather than random. think about shuffling a deck and then picking the cards in sequence rather than putting all the cards back in the hat and picking one at random every time.

I too second the Settings -> Shuffle -> Songs approach and use this myself with the playlist I have made for my 5 year old. However it gets annoying when I forget to turn it off and want to hear things in order. In the OPs case just select Artist -> Bob Dylan -> All and go.

B

 

[redeye be]

It shouldn't.

If the iPod plays all the songs in the order it finds it on the hard drive it has to do less work than if it would have to go and search for every tune in it's specific location. It might not be a big hit, but it will definitely use more battery that way (hard drive spin - head movement wise).
I'd tink.

I could be wrong

It should however be a viable solution for the OP

 

[balamw]

If the iPod plays all the songs in the order it finds it on the hard drive it has to do less work than if it would have to go and search for every tune in it's specific location.

Yeah, but the file location on disk will (generally) have little to do with playlist order. It'll have more to do with when they were added to the iPod.

B

 

[rockthecasbah]

well i didn't know you could actually set the iPod to do that with the whole shuffle thing so that's fine for me... anyway it's a 60GB 5th gen so i get 20ish hrs of playback which should suffice for shuffling an artist

Thank you all.