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Certain Smart Playlists Won't Sync to Apple Music

I've recently subscribed to Apple Music, and I've noticed that certain smart playlists won't sync over to other devices. From what I can tell, this is due to complexity, or perhaps some certain rule. For instance:

This playlist (we can call it Playlist A) syncs perfectly fine.


This playlist (Playlist B) will not.


Neither will this one (Playlist C), which is a simplified version of Playlist B.


It's worth noting that these playlists synced perfectly fine to my iPod before Apple Music, but when I have "sync library" turned on on my iPod, suddenly they disappear. I can see these playlists on my Macbook's music app (where I created them), but not on other devices synced to Apple Music. I tried duplicating them or changing their rules to work the same yet be written different, but nothing's solved this.


Is there some rule that doesn't sync well with Apple Music? Does the "Not in DJ Mixes" playlist rule break it (which is a playlist of specific songs which does sync fine)? Or is there some other issue? Most of my smart playlists sync, but not B and C above.

Posted on Nov 19, 2023 12:13 PM

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Posted on Nov 19, 2023 1:00 PM

SuddenlyWolf wrote:

Actually, doing a bit of editing, a playlist I made that duplicates one of the above without the "Playlist is not dj mixes" rule worked fine. Does that rule just break apple music?


Yes, Apple Music won't take playlists that depend on other playlists, or include content that is excluded from your iCloud Music Library, e.g. tracks that are duplicates, error, ineligible, etc.


tt2

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Nov 19, 2023 1:00 PM in response to SuddenlyWolf

SuddenlyWolf wrote:

Actually, doing a bit of editing, a playlist I made that duplicates one of the above without the "Playlist is not dj mixes" rule worked fine. Does that rule just break apple music?


Yes, Apple Music won't take playlists that depend on other playlists, or include content that is excluded from your iCloud Music Library, e.g. tracks that are duplicates, error, ineligible, etc.


tt2

Nov 19, 2023 1:03 PM in response to SuddenlyWolf

Apple will not allow any playlists that reference another playlist. They broke the playlist model when they introduced Apple music. The ability to reference another playlist which was introduced 15 years ago, has been unceremoniously removed. It's useless to talk to support, they don't understand this, but the developers have gotten the message and their "work around" is a message that you can't do this. They documented the bug and made it a "feature". We now have dumb playlists.

Apr 6, 2024 10:43 AM in response to EdFladung3

EdFladung3 wrote:

Playlist referencing another playlist are still not working. Is this being worked on or is it just a feature that has been removed?


No idea if they are working in general right now, but playlists that depend on other lists have always be excluded from the Apple Music and iTunes Match subscription services.


Not only can't I reference another playlist from a smart playlist, but I can't drag and drop tunes from a dumb playlist to a smart playlist. Why?


You cannot add items manually to a smart playlist, if you want to change a smart playlist's contents edit the rules. FWIW I have many lists that work with keywords that I store in the Grouping tag. E.g. one value might read Alice/Bob/Charlie and a rule such as Grouping Contains Alice would match with that track.


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Certain Smart Playlists Won't Sync to Apple Music

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