re: TELL US HOW YOU USE AUTO/SMART PLAYLISTS...so we do it the way you want in future releases!

I used auto play list to generate never played, never rated, recent additions, random top 40 of five stars, all music with > 3 stars.

The v1 auto play list generator/editor is good enough.

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Zuning from Singapore!

I used it with the ratings, mostly with how many plays songs had, and weekdays/weekend plays etc.  Then created playlists with those, dUH

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Really hope they fix their "product"... ~ V-A-C

How I used the smart playlist was mostly based on the five star rating system.  Other things I did with it was keep all my Christmas songs out of any playlist except my Christmas playlist.  I have over 100GIGs of music so the ability to limit my playlist to a certain size played heavily.  Lastly I like a bit of a random factor to my lists, so those that were limited to size and rating would benefit, to me at least, a random loading of the list if all I ask is "4 - 5 stars, 10GIGs, No Christmas Music."

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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

Microsoft has rushed out software with competitively inferior feature to be in time for the holidays.  This is an unfortunate compromise, and you will not get our sympathies being a company of such talent and resources. An easy guess is a lack of adequate product and engineering planning and perhaps a design-by-committe mentality in which designers aren't able to assert a voice, and to a much less degree, too much planning focus on the design frills, such as all the slide-in and mouse-over stuff and other design points which are useless and most importantly confusing (e.g. volume display: having its functionality expose only upon mouse-over effectively hides one of the most important UI controls from the very basic users you are prioritizing in this release.  e.g. inexcusably unclear playlist functionality; the 'active playlist', as weak of a concept as it is, should be checked or somehow persistently indicated directy near the playlist icon so that I always know which playlist I am about to add to.)

Moreover, characterizing auto playlists and the old rating system as confusing, and thus deprioritizing them as features as you're implying, appears to be an excuse for not prioritizing its redesign it in a simple manner. This kind of explanation seems like an excuse for bad design.  Apple uses smart playlists and it designs it in such a way that the user never sees or has to deal with its complexity: it just works.

I do like the clear top navigation of collection/device/marketplace, etc. and its sub menus.  Very consistent with the player and wm center.  Podcast functions are awesome, clear organization and detail for each episode.

I used it for two things
1.  I used it to bring recently added music into a playlist so I could listen to my most recently acquired music.  This is especially valuable for Zune Pass.
2.  I used it for playlist manageability.  It's a pain to constantly manage playlists, ensuring that it's up to date wtih the most recent content.  By using simple auto-playlists like "By Genre Rock or R&N or RAP" or "all albums by Kanye", I just never had to modify/manually edit lists.

Thanks,
Brandon

I have to say, extremely disappointed this and the 5 star rating system were not carried over into the new software client.  I was planning on purchasing another Zune 2.0 this holiday, but will probably skip with these features gone from the software.

How I used Auto-Playlists:

• New Songs Unrated - Any song downloaded in the last 30 days that I haven't set a rating to yet was in this folder.
• New Songs I enjoy - Any song downloaded in the last 30 days that I have rated with 3, 4, or 5 stars.
• My Greatest Songs: All 5 Star songs
• Songs I Really enjoy: All 4 and 5 star songs
• Songs to delete: All 1 star songs
• Most played songs:  Top 100 most played songs by play count.

I would love to see auto-playlists that could create upbeat music similar to a song I select.  Example: I want to create a workout playlist.  I select a song with a tempo I like (say Eminem - Without Me) and I can get other songs in my library (better yet on marketplace) that have a similar tempo.  Urge played around with this with their online playlists.

Please bring both of these things back as my enjoyment and hopeful social nature of Zune was dependent on these features.  Instead of getting rid of these I fugred you would be trying to build a community around these features that the advanced users love.  Sharing playlists and yes autoplaylists, viewing community ratings, community most played songs, new artists that others have downloaded who have ratings similar to yours, etc...

WOW you realy did go backwards.

Used the Auto Playlist to filter out music - for example exclude xmas music from the full sync

All music downloaded from ZMP

Sort - filter music by year.

While you are communicating with us, do you have any idea when we can expect an update to the MANY issues that the community is unhappy with?

Could you at least tell us if the old zune software is comptable with the new zune firmware, so we can run both versions if we find it neccissary until everything is finally fixed?

I would like to be able to add a song to a playlist while listening to it on my Zune.  For instance, if I'm listening to my Zune and think "this would be a great workout song", I'd like to be able to do that on the Zune as it strikes me.

Similarly, it would be great to be able to apply custom defined tags to songs.  I see that the rating system has gone from 5 stars to a range of 3 hearts.  Although I agree that 5 isn't always necessary, being able to distinguish as (1) remove, (2) indifferent, (3) like, and (4) REALLY love would be great.  This is an example where being able to have a custom tag to apply and categorize music while on the Zune would be great.  With the thousands of songs on my Zune, especially through Zune Pass, I use the Zune to review and categorize my music on the go (who has time to sit down and just listen to music for the sake of rating).  Given this, the Zune HAS to become a smart device that enables users on the go to record categorization, preferences, etc.

Thanks for moving the device forward.  It's exciting what's happening with this product!

I had two fundemental autoplaylists.  One was simply music I liked and music I liked by genre.  It would be nice to see that kind of functionality come back with the simplified rating system.  The other more egghead one was a autoplaylist for file type wmv and genre tv shows with a watched setting of 0.  I know the previous version did not do tv but I found a way to convert my DVR-ms HD files into a Zune friendly format that also had the commercials cut out.  That said being able to bookmark these kind of files or playlists would be icing on the cake.  DVR-MS Toolbox is the coolest by the way.

I used auto playlists together with the 5-star ratings to determine what would be synched, and what I would play - and that may depend who is listening.  The old way of configuraing which play lists to sync in what precedence was a boon, especially if you have 2 or more different capacity devices.  For instance, I might want to sync all music except "1 Star" with my Zune 30, but limit only 4- and 5-star songs of a particular genre to a Zune 4 or 8.  Auto lists work best with the ability to tag your music in some way on the fly.  In the old sofftware, I used the star ratings and genre.  The heart/broken-heart rating is useless for this.  You have managed to make it so hard to edit genre that this too won't suffice either.  I would be happy if you kept heart/broken-heart and supplemented it with 5-star or some other multi-state tagging method.  For me, 1-star didn't always mean I hated the song, just that I didn't want to sync it for whatever reason - it may be a duplicate between a best-of or live album that was already being synced from a studio album, as an example.  I notice there is now a "never sync" tag which coulkd be used for this purpose, but that only seems to work if the music has already been selected to sync.  If I apply it to a song not in the current sync list nothing changes.  A bug perhaps?

Starting from scratch, rather than using WMP as a base, may have seemed a good idea, but I can't help but think you have thrown the baby out with the bath water.

MagpieMDP

I'm  really disappointed to see  how my smart lists  disappeared  and to me it's unbelievable  that Microsoft has done something  like that.

How I use my smart lists?
1- Combining genres
2- Creating top hits lists, and here I'll add that I hate the new rating. 5  starts rating is more advanced. I usually have two top hits list,  one with only 5 stars and  another with more than 3 stars. On that way I had a list with a few hundred  of songs that I love more  and a list with around 1000  anger that I like. I also have top hit lists by Genres

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