What EXACTLY does 'Kind' mean in Smart Playlists?

Question

What EXACTLY does 'Kind' mean in Smart Playlists?

Can anyone tell me what terms does 'Kind' require to actually work in a Smart Playlist? I have tried "Song"; "Audio"; "Movie"; and "Show" which all fail (resulting in empty Smart Playlists). I am experiencing the common "iFrustration" that increasingly appears to be designed into the Apple user experience.

A support page containing all the valid variables / terms for use in iTunes Smart Playlists would, I guess, perhaps be deemed by Apple as verging on a manual—and so 'a bad thing'.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Nov 24, 2015 2:48 PM

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Answer 1

hhgttg27

Level 5

5,597 points

Nov 25, 2015 1:11 PM in response to DesignThinking

The Kind field indicates the encoding of media files, with typical values (for audio files) being:

"MPEG audio file" for MP3 files
"AAC audio file" for AAC files created by importing from CD, conversion from other formats, etc.
"Purchased AAC audio file" for AAC files acquired from the iTunes Store (AFAIR older purchases that have DRM will show "Protected AAC audio file")
"Apple Lossless audio file" for ALAC files
"Audible file" for audiobooks purchased from Amazon/Audible
etc.

To see which values are valid for your library select Songs view (or equivalent for other media types) and enable the Kind column - sorting on this column with then allow you to scroll through to see which values are present.

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Answer 2

Oct 27, 2016 1:40 PM in response to hhgttg27

Thanks, hhgttg27.

It would be useful for Apple to bother to share this sort of information.

We can but dream...

DT

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