Smart playlist depending on other smart playlists doesn't update

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Level 1

4 points

Smart playlist depending on other smart playlists doesn't update

I worked around the fact that we can only use AND or OR rules in a smart playlist (not a mix) by building several AND playlists (e.g. "Rated 5 stars AND last played not in the last 10 days") and then a master playlist with "Playlist is 5 stars OR Playlist is 4 stars OR..."

But since the update to Big Sur and the shift from iTunes to Music, the master playlist no longer updates. The answers I've seen here suggest that if a rule causes a song to be removed from or added to the playlist, it will update, but what's actually happening is that the AND playlists are updating and the master OR playlist is not, because none of its rules apply to any specific song.

I've tried adding additional rules to the OR playlist, but that leads to an error message ("This smart playlist depends on other smart playlists that cannot be updated.")

Any ideas for how I can make changes to the AND playlists trigger an update to the OR playlist that depends on them?

iMac 21.5″, macOS 11.2

Posted on Apr 23, 2021 10:22 AM

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Answer 1

pjmorse Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 26, 2021 7:07 AM in response to ed2345

OK, this is helpful. I hacked together something like my old playlist this way. I realized there's a quality of my old setup that's lost here, though: I used to limit the size of the sub-lists using the checkbox. So, something like 200 3-star songs, 500 4-star songs, unlimited 5-stars? But this setup with nested rules generates a playlist which tips much more heavily to the 3-star and 4-star songs, because I can't limit the number of songs included from each nested group.

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Answer 2

ed2345

Level 9

62,858 points

Apr 26, 2021 11:10 AM in response to pjmorse

PJ,

Correct, that limit of song count can only be applied to the whole list, not to rules within a list.

I don't think there is a way to literally implement the logic you describe in a single playlist. Something like this would be close, since it would kick away the lower-rated songs as they are played, which (once you get going) has the effect of playing them less often:

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Answer 3

ed2345

Level 9

62,858 points

Apr 23, 2021 11:09 AM in response to pjmorse

Hi Pj Morse,

Yes you can combine AND and OR in the same playlist. Below is an example. Build it this way and see if it clears out the unresolvable reference that you now see.

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Smart playlist depending on other smart playlists doesn't update

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