How do you go about creating a listing of all tunes NOT assigned to a playlist?
You cannot create a smartlist which refers to another playlist.
OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)
CroMagnum wrote:
You cannot create a smartlist which refers to another playlist.
Works fine here...
Check out Doug's Applescripts for iTunes, I have been using them for years to manage all aspects of iTunes to my liking. There used to be a free script that puts all tracks in a playlist that are not in a playlist, but it no longer works with iTunes 11. But, Doug has a few very inexpensive apps, most of them available in the App Store, and one of them called Tracksift will do this and some other cool things. Definitely worth checking out.
Chris:
I'm sure getting it refusing if I refer to "Purchased," in my test!
"Recently Added" doesn't accomplish the task of "not in any playlist" I don't think.
This only works if you organize your purchased or imported music as you add it.
If people were that organized, perhaps we wouldn't need a lot of automation!
Timbuktu:
Thanks. I also used Doug's Applescripts on another machine in the past & note the same dysfuntion in iTunes 11. Seems to me this would have been a smart thing for Apple to incorporate in the base set of smartlists. I may have to check out his other scripts as its too much trouble getting back up to speed on Applescripts myself.
Last time I sent in a suggestion re: iTunes, it was updated 15 minutes later by happenstance - with the new printing views, etc & maybe I should try that bit of voodoo again! I was in process of trying to generate an automator action to do something which was sufficiently addressed in the update.
A number of things have fallen by the wayside as iTunes is changed & occasionally improved: Seeing an entire music list - beyond JUST those purchased via iTunes is not as convenient as it once used to be either.
Message was edited by: CroMagnum for completeness.
Move all your playlists into an outer playlist folder called, for example, My Playlists. Create a smart playlist outside this folder matching all the rules Playlist is Music and Playlist is not My Playlists.
tt2
CroMagnum wrote:
Chris:
I'm sure getting it refusing if I refer to "Purchased," in my test!
Purchased is (or is not ) true.
"Recently Added" doesn't accomplish the task of "not in any playlist" I don't think
Correct. I was simply showing you can add a playist to a smart playlist.
turingtest2's suggestion above will do what you want.
Note that all IiTunes purchases will always be in the Purchased playlist.
Thanks.
My point in "Purchased" was a simple illustration that yields a result which says:
"smart playlists cannot reference other smart playlists."
Referring to other smart playlists does not yield my initial desire,
but seemed an impediment to certainly further drilling down & categorizing by purchased vs imported music.
That is a place I would like to go eventually as well --> since iTunes seems to treat imported music as second class citizens these days. Sometimes imported music, as well as iTunes purchased music does not always go into a playlist until I have one in which a tune fits very well.
In light of all the foreboding posts about music going missing, I burn most of my playlists to CDs as a backup.
CroMagnum wrote:
Thanks.
My point in "Purchased" was a simple illustration that yields a result which says:
"smart playlists cannot reference other smart playlists."
Generally they can, unless that would create some kind of self-referential loop, such that A depends on B which in turn depends on A. I suspect something of that nature was involved in generating the error message.
FWIW the Purchased and Purchased on <Device> playlists are regular playlists with a "special" property that gives them a different icon. It seems that iTunes won't let you manually add tracks to the "on <Device>" lists.
tt2
Thanks.
Yes, a circular loop seems to be what's happening, as far as I can tell.
I have no reason to expect a self-referential loop however, until it happens.
If I were that well versed in the code I probably wouldn't have a question!
I used the "purchased," error message because it was easily at hand.
It seems indicative of what my issue is - in that I cannot (so far) create a proper list the way Doug's scripts used to do before being broken with respect to the newest iTunes versions. (One might wonder how & why Doug's scripts came to be broken).
It really seens like an obvious feature missing in iTunes:
Generate a list of all tunes NOT currently in any playlist.
I don't know what the issue is with Doug's script but cloud listings in recent versions cause problems for some of mine. The advantage of using the playlist folder and smart playlist method is that you can choose which playlists are going to count by putting them inside or outside the folder, and the results are live.
tt2
Creating a smartlist of NOT in any playlist
