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Smart playlists and ios7 synch

I use a smart playlist to select 300 tracks at random, rated 4 or above, where played is NOT in the last 8 weeks.

that way, as i play the tracks on my iphone in the car, and then synch, then everyting i have played gets removed and fresh tracks get added automatically.


since ios7 / IT11 ive noticed the folowing


the playlist in i tunes still works ok ; 300 tracks show where last played is "never" or >8 weeks.

However, when i synch to iphone 4s / ios7 ONLY the tracks with a last played date synch; the playlist is on my iphone but only has those tracks that have a last played date, NOT a NULL date



Any suggestions? workaround?


Thanks

Rich

iPhone 4S, iOS 7.0.3, itunes 11

Posted on Oct 31, 2013 3:31 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Oct 31, 2013 3:46 PM

Haven't seen this myself, but then again I don't have any rated songs with no Last Played date. A couple of suggestions:


1- Try a Reset or Restore of the iPhone.


2- In your smart playlist criteria, add "Media Kind is Music". Strange, but sometimes this nudges a smart playlist into behaving.


3- Modify your criteria as follows:


Match All:

- Media Kind Is Music

- Rating > 3


(indent) ----> Match Any:

.....................- Last Played Not in the Last 8 weeks

.....................- Playcount is 0


That will "OR" the zero playcounts with songs that have not been played in the last 8 weeks, and "AND" all those with the required criteria of 4 or 5 stars as well as Media Kind being Music. If you don't know how to "indent" the criteria, click on the elipses (...) to the right of the last criteria you entered, and be sure to change the overall criteria to Match Any for the indented portion.

17 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Oct 31, 2013 3:46 PM in response to judgedreadfull

Haven't seen this myself, but then again I don't have any rated songs with no Last Played date. A couple of suggestions:


1- Try a Reset or Restore of the iPhone.


2- In your smart playlist criteria, add "Media Kind is Music". Strange, but sometimes this nudges a smart playlist into behaving.


3- Modify your criteria as follows:


Match All:

- Media Kind Is Music

- Rating > 3


(indent) ----> Match Any:

.....................- Last Played Not in the Last 8 weeks

.....................- Playcount is 0


That will "OR" the zero playcounts with songs that have not been played in the last 8 weeks, and "AND" all those with the required criteria of 4 or 5 stars as well as Media Kind being Music. If you don't know how to "indent" the criteria, click on the elipses (...) to the right of the last criteria you entered, and be sure to change the overall criteria to Match Any for the indented portion.

Nov 12, 2013 5:58 AM in response to judgedreadfull

Its apparent that Apple has broken this functionality on IOS7. Proof of that is easily explained because I've had the same smart playlists for years, and have used them to sync to multiple Apple devices.


Currently any device NOT running IOS7 continue to sync smart playlists correctly.


Currently any device running IOS7 does not sync smart playlists correctly.


I have:

Apple Ipod Classic 160GB - Smart Playlists update and work fine.

Apple Iphone 4 (old phone used for an ipod), running IOS6 - works fine.

Apple Iphone 5 (IOS7) - doesn't sync smart playlists

Apple Ipad mini (IOS7) - doesn't sync smart playlists.

Nov 12, 2013 7:24 AM in response to HighNDrye

All my devices are syncing smart playlists just fine, very complex as well as simple ones. I don't know why your iOS 7 devices are having this problem, but my iPhone 5 and iPad 2 auto-sync to dozens of smart playlists on iOS 7.0.3. So a blanket statement that smart playlists don't sync on iOS 7 is not true.


What version of iTunes are you using?

Do you auto-sync or manually manage music on your devices?

Are you using iTunes Match?

What is the problem? Certain songs in a playlist that don't sync? no songs? wrong order?

What are some example critera in an SPL that does not work?

Have you Reset or Restored your iOS 7 devices?

Nov 12, 2013 1:18 PM in response to rockmyplimsoul

Itunes is patched to current.


I select playlists to be synced because I have a large library that won't fit everything onto a device.


I do not use iTunes Match.


The playlists do no populate with what they have in itunes. for example I have a smart playlist that is for 1month, 2 month, 2 weeks etc, where it would only contain items added to the library "in the last" etc etc. These playlists will show up by name, but the contents on my devices are completely missing or containing items that dont meet the criteria to be on it. I


I just added 4 albums this week, and in Itunes the albums show up in the playlists, but when I sync to my devices none of those 4 albums show up, but are copied to the device, and the playlist contains items that were not added during that time.


Pretty much those "added in the last..." SPL don't work at all on those devices, but continue to function and sync on my older devices just fine.


I have both reset, and reloaded my IOS7 devices from scratch.

Jan 1, 2014 10:26 PM in response to judgedreadfull

Apple Macbook pro Retina version 10.8.5 and ipad 4th gen runing ios7 latest itunes (11.1.3), smart playlists don't sync. I remove a standard playlist on computer it does not remove on ipad (Ipad retina ios7). Cant make a playlist on the ipad ios7 by choosing ratings of songs! Can't add a currently playing song to a playlist while it is playing. I have to go to playlists and search for the song in the library (how dumb!) and then add it to a playlist. At this moment Itunes on ios7 is pretty much not usuable to me. So annoying.


The only way I can play a smart playlist is by choosing shared on ipad itunes and it will bring up the playlists from the computer, but if I disconnect the computer I can no longer access the smart playlist. If I delete a song on the ipad it does not delete on the computer. It seems I now running two seperate databases of music and I have to work on each independantly. Feeling sad.


Message was edited by: OriginalGuideman

Jan 2, 2014 5:06 AM in response to HighNDrye

So through my testing:


A complete wipe and reload of my device let me sync the smart playlists, and the content was correct. So I thought I was out of the woods...


Nope.


The very next sync (after I added some new music to my library) the smart playlists didn't update with the new tracks that are within the smart playlists.


FYI - this still happens on Iphone4, iPhone5, and an iPad Mini.


More or less, Smart Playlists are broken still.

Jan 2, 2014 10:15 AM in response to HighNDrye

When you say you did a "complete wipe and reload" did you load your backup after restoring? Sometimes backups are corrupted, so restoring and then loading a (corrupted) backup allows the problem to persist. The only way to break the cycle is to restore again and start from scratch (i.e. don't load your backup).


All my SPLs on iPhone 5 and iPad 2 are syncing just fine in iOS 7, and they match-up to the same contents as in my iTunes library (I auto-sync to specific playlists). This functionality is not broken, but something else is on your devices. Now, I did have other (unrelated) problems with iOS 7 upon installation which required me to restore, and then restore again as new (i.e. no backup) so perhaps that's why I don't see the problems you're seeing.

Jan 2, 2014 11:32 AM in response to rockmyplimsoul

Nope, a complete wipe and setup from scratch.


When you say you're syncing with specific playlists, are these smart playlists that would change their content dependant on the search string? or static playlists that you've created? Nothing on my devices are broken. My ipod classic still functions fine as well.


Perhaps I have to video tape it to prove to people, but smart playlists are in fact broken.


I have a smart playlist with


Date Added is within x days

Date Added is within 2 months


These playlists change with time, and anytime I add new music to my library. After performing a "setup as new phone" from scratch I was able to get the playlists on there and it apeared to fix it, but after adding new music to the library, and re-syncing the devices, they no longer picked up the changes, so it's definitley broken.

Jan 2, 2014 11:40 AM in response to HighNDrye

For additional information:


I have a playlist of music added in the last month. On the initial sync all of the music on this list shows up.


I add an album or two, and re-sync. The two new albums I've added were in fact copied to the device, but don't show up on the device's smart playlist for the last month. They show up in iTunes, just not on the playlist on the device.


I listen to a lot of music, and have playlists for 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 4 months. THis way I can cycle through more of my recent music. None of these properly update since IOS7, so I'm guessing something has changed with how the device syncs smart playlists against itunes.

Jan 2, 2014 12:02 PM in response to HighNDrye

HighNDrye wrote:


When you say you're syncing with specific playlists, are these smart playlists that would change their content dependant on the search string? or static playlists that you've created?

Actually both, a mix of smart and static playlists, as well as a "master playlist" that sums them all up for syncing. Changes that would effect the smart playlists are reflected in the smart playlists on my devices, but of course I have to re-sync to iTunes to get those changes to show up (which is a very old smart playlist bug dating back to iOS 3.x where Live Updating does not work for many smart criteria).


Although I do have a "Recently Added" smart playlist, it is not synced to my devices since I manually copy new additions into a specific (static) playlist for syncing new music. I'll give it a go with syncing it to see if I see the same thing as you, but I may have to buy some new music afterwards 😉.


In the meantime, is there any effect once you play and/or rate a new album that belongs in your playlist? In other words, if you have a new album that should be in your playlist, but isn't, does it show up in the playlist once you play the album or rate its songs, and then re-sync? If so, perhaps unplayed and/or unrated music requires workaround criteria to capture them in your smart playlist, e.g. "Playcount is 0" to capture unplayed songs, or "Rating Less Than 1 star" to capture unrated songs.

Jan 3, 2014 12:04 PM in response to rockmyplimsoul

Yeah, I've typically stayed away from the "played" or "rating" my music because of the sheer size of my library. 26k tracks.


I've had to move or rebuild my library on occasion as well, which would wipe out both of those, as well as date added I guess. I don't want to have to manually rate all my music necessarily since the function I'm looking for is the date added.


Not sure how I can get this to work, as it was working just fine prior to IOS7, and/or an Itunes 11 patch. I'm still not convinced which portion is the culprit to be honest. I'm leaning towards IOS since my ipod classic syncs new updated tracks just fine.

Mar 20, 2014 4:09 AM in response to judgedreadfull

I have the exact same problem. I add new music to my library every few days and my iPod syncs the smart playlists just fine. My iPhones and iPads will not live update on the device.


I also use date added <30 days. When I create a new SPL the first sync works fine and maybe once a month it will live update and sync the changes to the device but normally I just delete &amp; recreate the playlist after a dozen failed attempts and that works, it's just a pain because I'll have to reselect that playlist on every iPhone and iPad.


What's odd is, after more than a year of having this problem, I can confirm the following:

1) the new music is copied to the device even though it doesn't show up on the playlist on my devices

2) it works fine on my classic iPod, shuffle and Nano

3) while still connected to iTunes if I select the smart playlist shows correctly but but looking at the playlist on the device does not show the new music recently added.

4) smart playlist default sorting doesn't work on devices either, but works on my iPods. Example, I have this playlist to sort my date added descending, but on the iPhones the playlist (even on the initial sync which works fine) the list is still sorted from oldest to newest.


With every update I'm hopeful that Apple will address this because I know I'm not the only who has this issue, but apparently we're stuck with my favorite development response which is "well it works on my machine", to which I tell my developers that it's fine if we're going to let the customers use their machine lol.


I'd be willing to prove that this doesn't work with a YouTube video is needed.

Smart playlists and ios7 synch

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