In iTunes Match, why are Smart Playlists messed up?

Also, could someone confirm if all the metadata is updating properly now? Like Last Played, ect.

I've updated IOS, OSX, iTunes, AppleTV to the latest software , and I still have the same problem where the play order of smart playlists on iPhone, iPad and Apple TV are all hopelessly scrambled, making listening to classical music impossible. I tried the hint of checking the "limit to xx songs.." and that doesn't help. I've also turned iTunes match on and off on the IOS devices. Other Macs subscribing to iTunes Match are fine. Just the IOS devices are not ordered right.

COMPLETELY ABSURD!!! is right! I ONLY listen to nested SMART playlists! ever! worthless... I want my money back...

Latest IOS and iTunes updates gave me hope and my playsist had correct # of songs - until I synced on day two and the problem was back. Affects ALL of my playlists as well, not just smart playlists. Never had this problem with 3Gs. Problem started with 4s and IOS 5

finally -- here's a fix (to the smart-playlist sorting issue) that works in itunes match:

at the bottom of the playlist, select "Limit to [however many] items selected by [choose the order you prefer].

• by "limiting" to a high number of items or GB, you won't be limiting the playlist at all.

• to sort alphabetically, choose "selected by name." (or whatever other option you want).

after doing this, you shouldn't see any change to the items displayed in the smart playlist in itunes. however, the playlist will now sync properly to your idevices. :-)

(to my knowledge, with itunes match we can no longer sync playlists that point to other playlists.)

Wow. It works. Months and months of frustration resolved! AWESOMENESS!!!!

🙂🙂

Hurray!!! 🙂

so they did wait to resolve more important issues first. A clue they were working on it would have been comforting for sure but all good now.

Was there any update recently in iTunes Match? I've just upgraded to Mountain Lion, hoping one of the (unpublished) features would be better support for smart playlists in iCloud. However for me it still gives the error

Smart playlists that reference other playlists are not supported by iCloud, and will not be uploaded

I was hoping the recent updates in this thread pointed to a positive development but it seems that this part of smart playlist support in iCloud / iTunes Match is still missing.

If someone HAS referenced playlists working in iTunes Match I'd love to hear!

I just looked over my smarts and came up with alternative ways of doing the same thing. All good now.

*what* works? a number of issues relating to smart playlists have been discussed in this thread. your reply isn't quite helpful, as we have no idea to which issue you're referring. please be specific. :-)

thanks.

my classical smart playlists, like the 67 album, 630 track, 12 gig "Beethoven" playlist now presents on all my iOS devices in correct track order.

much as I enjoyed revisiting my collection to create correctly sorted conventional playlists "by hand," finally seeing it happen auto-magically is awesome...

Issue

Smart Playlists in itunes Match appear in wrong order on ipad/ iphone/ ipod.

Workaround

Tick box 'Limit to' in the playlist settings, choose unfeasibly high number, and change 'selected by' to album.

This fixes the ordering issue, and it seems to honour the numerical limit.

Fix?

Apple need to fix this though, it's been over a year now... Shoddy.

I discovered a solution to this in another thread. Change one letter in the name of each playlist, such as adding an "s" or deleting a letter. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it absolutely worked for me and for a number of other people. My playlists I had set up on my desktop instantly appeared on my iPhone from iCloud.