Smart Playlist not working correctly

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Level 1

8 points

Smart Playlist not working correctly

I'm an aspiring DJ. I used a program called Mixed In Key(MIK) to assign key and energy level to all my songs. It assigns energy level by a number, 1-10, in the Grouping field.

In this song's info, it clearly has a Grouping value of 7

Yet my "Not Categorized" Smart Playlist is catching it:

I have three other smart playlists labeled "Low Energy" (This looks for group 1-5), "Medium Energy" (6-7), and "High Energy" (8-10). For some reason, all four of these playlists are having issues. The "Not Categorized" Smart Playlist is obviously catching many songs that do in fact have a number in the grouping field, and my other three are obviously missing songs that have numbers within the ranges they look for. Any ideas?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Oct 3, 2015 1:28 PM

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Answer 1

n3tw0rx Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 3, 2015 1:32 PM in response to n3tw0rx

Wow.. ok so something else I just noticed.... if I play a song.. and keep hitting the forward button to cycle through a bunch of songs, THEN go manually update my playlists, the numbers get a little better.

It seems like iTunes Smart Playlist feature doesn't actively know about the grouping field until you've actually played the song... that's wack. I download a lot of music and to have to go through and play the songs on my mac before syncing them with my iPad that I use with my DJ controller will be a pain... is there a better way?

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Answer 2

n3tw0rx Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 3, 2015 1:50 PM in response to n3tw0rx

Confirmed. I modified the grouping code manually, and updating the smart playlist would NOT work until playing the song first.

So at least I have a workaround. I set my three energy playlists to update live and my non-cat playlist to manual, then just played all the songs in the non-cat. After I was done, I manually updated the non-cat. Not ideal, but it'll work for now.

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Answer 3

ed2345

Level 9

62,450 points

Oct 4, 2015 10:38 AM in response to n3tw0rx

Networx,

When you update song tags using the iTunes "Get Info" capability, the iTunes database gets updated as soon as you click "OK."

I would surmise from your description that MIK is updating the tags in the song file, but not the iTunes database.

When you play a song, even for a few seconds, iTunes will notice any tag changes and update its database.

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