In iTunes Match, why are Smart Playlists messed up?

Cool. If everyone else in this discussion does likewise, with examples, apple might get a good picture of how prevalent the problem is. The spotty itunesmatch problems I figure just require telling them my apple ID and some specific examples. The incredibly irritating playlist mis-ordering may be harder to demonstrate in feedback because they only have access to the cloud info, not the original library on my Mac. A few judicious screenshots would help, but last time I looked, there was no way to upload an explanatory picture.

I didn't realize how bad it is, I thought smart playlists couldn't refer to other smart playlists but they can't refer to ANY playlist, which is way more limiting and makes the whole service pretty useless for me. And to make matters worse, I saw that iTunes has an error saying they are not supported so it may be intentionally designed that way as opposed to something that slipped through the cracks that they would fix.

I wonder if Apple will update that if they get enough complaints (and requests for refunds) or if it's going to be stuck with a downgrade from how it worked before Match came along?

Mike Connelly wrote:

I didn't realize how bad it is, I thought smart playlists couldn't refer to other smart playlists but they can't refer to ANY playlist, which is way more limiting and makes the whole service pretty useless for me. And to make matters worse, I saw that iTunes has an error saying they are not supported so it may be intentionally designed that way as opposed to something that slipped through the cracks that they would fix.

I wonder if Apple will update that if they get enough complaints (and requests for refunds) or if it's going to be stuck with a downgrade from how it worked before Match came along?

My way around it was to use the comments field on songs. Yeah, it's convoluted, but it works. You can make rules in the device based on text inside a comment and you can tag a song via the comments with multiple tags. Until Apple gets it right and resolves this it's the only way.

My workaround, not all that hard to implement:

1. Create a new playlist folder in you iTunes library. I suggest this so the Smart Playlist can sit next to the regular playlist I'm going to suggest in the next step.

2. Drag the Smart Playlist to the folder. Now create a regular playlist in the same folder. You can even use the same name as the Smart Playlist.

3. Select the Smart Playlist and sort the tracks using whatever column you prefer.

4. Use your preferred method to "Select All" in the now sorted Smart Playlist

5. Drag-n-drop all the tracks into the regular playlist.

All done!

Now, use the correctly sorted regular playlist on your iOS devices.

Granted, the obvious flaw is the manual effort required to repeat steps 3, 4 & 5 each time you add something to your library that fits the Smart Playlist criteria. But, it's not a bad work-around, especially for classical music.

I thought about using comments, would the same thing work with the "grouping" tag? It's available but it looks like it's not used for anything, which would preserve any existing comments.

Manually dragging a smart playlist to a regular playlist over and over is too cumbersome for playlists based on things like play counts and last played.

Actually (and unfortunately for me, since I use the "grouping" field for several smart playlists), the "grouping" field seems to be another area where iTunes Match drops the ball. None of my playlists that depend on "grouping" work via Match. They don't trigger any error messages, they are populated on my computer, but empty on my iPhone, even when I know the songs in them have been downloaded from iCloud to the phone.

(In case you are interested, I use the "grouping" field to add extra tags to songs. For instance, since I have Christmas music in several genres, I want to use the "genre" field to describe the actual style of the music, then put "xmas" in "grouping" to describe the content of the song. I have several other tags I use and these now all appear to be useless if I'm using iTunes Match.)😟

Regarding using comments: that is how I've organized the majority of my smart playlists and it works great, except on my iPhone after turning on iTunes Match. The playlists show up on the iPhone, but they are empty and I haven't figured out how to get it to work. I was beginning to think that Match just didn't support it. I haven't been able to find a solution and I've tried turning Match on and off on the iPhone.

Has anyone else had this issue?

Yes, I also use comments for my smart playlists and they show up empty on my iPhone. I hope Apple finds a way to make this work. I now create regular playlists from the smart playlist so it will show up on my iPhone. The downside is that I periodically have to recreate them. Also when a song plays on my iPhone the playcount on my iMac does not increase. I hoping these are issues that Apple will resolve. I also wish Apple would issue more of an explaination of how Match is designed to work.

This is a major disappointment for me. What good does it do me to have my music in the cloud if the ways I access that music (smart playlists) don't work? I have filed numerous feedback tickets, and really wish Apple would say something about this mess.

Ditto. BUT they did address it the first time it showed up: this same problem occurred when Smart Playlists were introduced. When synced with a device, the version on the device would not respect sort order as presented in the iTunes library.

Guys, I might have our "life savior" solution!!! (not 100% sure yet...)

I activated iTunes Match this morning.

Everything worked well apart from my smart playlists which cannot be found on my iphone/ipad anymore.

And yes, they relied on other lists...

BUT

A few smart playlists remained!!! (although they also rely on other lists)

So, after a bit of soul searching, here's my conclusion.

Those smart playlists that remained were actually dependant on "folders" which contain lists!

SO

I havn't tested yet (cause I'm at work), but if you put a list you wish to refer to in a folder, you should then be able to refer the smart list to the folder and not the actual list; and hopefully the smart list should then get synced!!!

Let me know if that works for you! 😉

Sorry, false alert! 😟

I tested my idea (2 posts above) and there's no good news.

I've discovered that the smart list appears on your device if you add the "list condition" within an "embeded" set of criteria. Like this:

BUT

Unfortunately, it just ignores all rules associated with lists.

In this case, the smart list, although correct on the computer itunes, displays all songs with ratings higher than 2 stars regardless of which list they are part of. 😟

Yep, I use the "grouping" field in exactly the same way... And it was when looking for my Christmas Smart Playlist that I noticed that they were all empty on my iPhone!

I guess it's a known bug, but I shall file a bug report anyway.