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

I didn't use auto playlists, but I did use the "Flag" functionality - which seems to be gone now.

What I would do is play all songs and turn shuffle on. Then when the Zune played a song I liked, I'd flag it and go listen to it more on my computer.

Now that the flag functionality is gone, all I can do is rate it good or bad. It is a little less flexible - but maybe I'll get used to it..

I just need to find a way to sort all of my bad music from my good music now..

I use them to filter out genres. But, more importantly, what happened to format conversion??? I have 250Gig of windows lossless audio, and was counting on the zune software to convert those files so I can synch my entire collection. PLEASE add that feature back. I'm trying to convert from Ipod/Itunes, but the lack of a conversion feature is a show-stopper. I had done *some* research with zune 1 owners, and was assured that the feature was there, I certainly would not have expected that feature to be removed from the software. Is this on your radar???

Ctitanic UMPC Tips

Most of my auto-playlists are based on ratings:  5-star songs, 4 stars and up, 3 stars and up, unrated, 25 most played songs, recently added (for example, 30 most recently added, regardless of how long I've had them).  I also combine these (25 most recent songs with at least 4 stars, for example).  In addition to no auto playlists, I also really like the 5-star system (and I was so happy that Zune imported my ratings from iTunes when I switched over).  I can't deal with love/hate/unrated (and yes, there is a difference between "neutral" and "unrated").

Fortunately I didn't download the software update--I saw my friend's update first, and I plan on holding out with the old software as long as possible.  Thanks for listening to our feedback so quickly... I can't wait for an update that includes the features that I really love.

I'm with many others on this topic that I find it hard to believe you have taken such a step backwards.  Auto/Smart Playlists and a 5-star rating system are critical.  Those of us with large music collections that don't fit on the Zune, must use them to maintain the benefit of a large digital music library and a portable device.

Similar to many others on this topic, the way I wanted to use auto playists was as follows:

A) Reduce the size of the library that is sync'd, by specifically excluding music (Christmas, Childrens, Audiobook, etc.).
B) Provide an easy mechanism to sync my favorite music.
C) Provide a mechanism to shuffle it up a little at random.
D) Remove "one-time" items (such as podcasts), using a 1-star rating.

These are essentially different flavors of the same thing - to manage the content that is sync'd.  In addition, the use of playlists to actually create lists that are played on the device is an obvious one, but one that is difficult to handle well.  I'll give you a specific example - I want to make a playlist of music that includes some of the softer rock stuff I might listen to.  The way these songs are categorized is extremely inconsistent (U2 can be 'general rock', 'rock', 'rock and roll', 'soft rock', 'alternative rock', 'power pop', 'pop', etc...).  While fixing the tags would be nice, the other option is to allow auto playlists to select multiple genres with an 'OR' clause.  In the previous version, when I tried to create a playlist of 2 hours of 'alternative' and 'soft rock' in random order, it only gave me the first one on the list.  I had to create an hour of 'alternative' followed by an hour of 'soft rock', then use the 'shuffle' command on the device to get the effect I wanted.

In a nut-shell, you need to be able to create compound criteria using any of the tag information - complete with 'AND', 'OR', and 'NOT' logic.  Do this in a way that normal people can create lists (just use straight SQL -- everyone knows that, right?).  Kidding of course, but here's some examples that might make sense.

My sync auto playlist:

select top (28GB) from library
where genre NOT Christmas
AND genre NOT Childrens
AND genre NOT audiobook
ORDER BY random

My soft rock playlist:

select top 4 hours(*) from library
where (genre = soft rock 
OR genre = alternative rock 
OR genre = pop 
OR genre = rock/pop )
AND song-length < 6 minutes
AND song-length > 30 seconds
ORDER BY random

You get the idea...  Hope this helps.

First, thank you Zach for finally opening the doors of communication on this issue. I hope you guys can get this patch out quickly; I wouldn't bother bundling it in with some major release 6 months down the road.

Here's how I used the autoplaylists. First off, I wouldn't sync all the music in my library to the device, just the following three playlists:

I had one playlist that was favorites (4 or 5 stars); this is the "go-to" playlist; I'm at work and I want to jam to some

I had one playlist that was unrated (? stars). This would allow me to single out the tracks I had yet to rate, and rate them directly on the device. A nice way to spend some time in a coffee shop.

I had one playlist called "everything else" (2 or 3 stars); the purpose of this wasn't to listen to it; I was merely using it as a means to get the rest of the music in my library to the device--while excluding all of the one-star rated songs.

Okay, so here's the benefit of all this; On my desktop, I still have full albums. On my device, I only have tracks that are either unrated, neutral, or favorite. Songs that I hate don't end up on the device. I now have the option on the device of listening to entire albums (sans hated songs), a list of favorites, or getting to work on rating unrated songs.

In fact (for me) I wouldn't need autoplaylists at all if you did the following:

• Implement a 4-state rating system. There is a critical difference between unrated and rated indifferent.
• Have an option on the desktop software to not sync songs rated unliked
• Have two new, hard-wired auto-playlist on the device that will show you favorite songs and unrated songs, and have these playlists automagically update without needing to perform a sync.
• Allow randomization of playlists instead of "shuffle on/off"

Yep, that would about do it for me, and several other users who I've seen. However, this doesn't cover the genre auto-playlist or year-auto-playlist requests that I've seen from other people.

Thanks again for finally responding.

Cheers,

-Mark

I used the "subgenre" tag (which I don't see any longer either) to flag all my audiobooks, self-help, comedy etc as "talk".  That way I could keep the old genre tag (such as humor, self-help or whatever), and I used a smartlist to give me all the music except "talk" (and used some other genre's to remove like Christmas for example.)

Then I would use that to build on by saying I only want unrated music in that, or I only want music from these genre's, etc.

I would love to have the "last played over x number of days" or whatever.  And a way to interact from the zune device to the player is also really nice (I used flags if I found that something was in the wrong genre or whatever, so that I could come back and correct the metadata the next time it did a sync).  I would love to have the autolists transfer over to the zune device as well.

I used the playlists to sort by genre, decade of release, and rating. I also had a playlist for items not rated. What I liked was the possibilities were pretty much endless.

I hope you guys get this out soon! I lived by those playlists.