removing songs from my playlists without deleting them from library
Why is the option to remove song from playlist greyed out under the song menu options?
Windows, Windows 6
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It is because you're looking at a Smart Playlist, not a Regular Playlist. Songs are added to, or kept out of, Smart Playlists according to the rules of that Playlist, which you chose. There are two ways to spot a Smart Playlist:
- in the Playlists column, the "cog" wheel (Settings icon) next to the Playlist name
- when you're looking in the playlist, the text Edit Rules under the title of the playlist
- in the example screenshot below, we're looking in the playlist titled Year missing:
- notice in the playlists column that the icon for this Playlist is a gear wheel (setting icon) which means that it is a Smart Playlist and compare it with a Regular Playlist, which is a musical-note-on-a-list
- notice also, under the name of the Playlist above the songs, the text Edit Rules
- this means that my Year missing Playlist is a Smart Playlist
Smart Playlist:
Songs are added to, or kept out of, a Smart Playlist according to the rules you set. If you do not want a song in a specific Smart Playlist, you have to either:
- change the rules of the Smart Playlist, to cause that song to be removed or kept out. Note that this can affect other songs too, which you may not want to happen
- change the tag for that song that is causing it to be added to that Playlist (see below*). For example, if a rule in your Smart Playlist is to add songs with a genre of Pop, then you need to change the genre of that song to something else
Regular Playlist:
You manually add every song to this type of Playlist. With this type of Playlist, you will see the Remove from Playlist option is available.
Screenshot, showing the rules for my Smart Playlist:
This playlist is designed to include all songs without the year listed (don't worry too much about the additional rules). The crucial part is Year / is / 0 (zero, or absent). To exclude a song from this Playlist, I simply have to add in the year to the "year" (of its release) tag for that song.
* To change a song's tag, thereby causing it to be removed from the Smart Playlist:
Look at the song I highlighted in the original screenshot (Down):
- If I add in the year 2012 to the "year" tag that you can see near the bottom of the screenshot, that song is then removed from the Playlist: