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

I had a bunch of music before categorized my auto playlists:

1. Best music (4-5 star rating)

2. New Music (music added in the last month)

3. Most played (song which had the highest playcount)

4. Pre 2000 Rock Music

5. Post 2000 Rock Music (had to make these two playlists for rock music because of a limitation in the previous firmware that would only allow 2000 songs in a playlist)

The autoplaylists worked great for me and I REALLY miss the feature. Most of my listening is done in my car and it is not safe for me to be looking at my player to look for my favorite songs. I used to be able to just select "Best Music" and I was on my way. About the only things I found wrong with the old system was the 2000 song limit for a playlist, and they wouldn't update on the player (had to sync before autoplaylists were updated). I'd be willing to beta test for you guys just to get the feature back!

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-Leo

Thanks for the chance to give some input. I understand the work that went into the new software. It is miles above and beyond the first version & iTunes in looks and overall user experience. However, you need to bring back auto playlists and a five star rating system. These are essential tools for power users with large music collections. Look at the funcionality and filtering available in iTunes playlist features and you cannot go wrong. I especially like the way iTunes compiles the individual track ratings to give the album they are from an overall average rating. This is a very useful feature to create a playlist of all 4 & 5 star rated albums as an example.

I set up playlists based on other criteria like:

• All 5 star tracks from the 80's
• Unrated tracks (So I can rate them while on the move with my Zune Player)
• All 4 & 5 star Alternative Tracks (or some other Genre)
• Recently added tracks

I think you see a trend from the other comments in this thread.

Bring it on as soon as you can and keep up the excellent work.

Thank you for at least discussing the absence of Auto/Smart playlists though the omission of such is causing many users frustration.

Was using smart playlists for the following

- Playlists based on the rating of songs, which would dynamiclly update every sync from the ratings give via the zune. I have 5 such playlists, 1+, 2+, ...
- Playlist for unrated songs that I need to evaluate, but did not want to sync to the zune until I had (not enough room on the zune30 or 80)
- Playlists based on specific artists, would not require maintenance as I bought new stuff.


Would like smart playlists to do the following

- Exclude files with specific attributes or labels/tags (i know you are not "tagging" yet, but eventually you will (i hope)), so that the following would be possible, "rating ">= 3 stars" and label "podcast" or "audiobook" but not label "NPR""  or "All genre "alternative" and rating ">= 2 stars" but not label "explicit""
- create playlists based on listening patterns, such as listened to alot


I had other thoughts in this regard but cannot remember then at the moment.

Thanks
Grimmerling

Maybe it's just because I'm getting older (I've now eclipsed 30) but my music collection honestly just doesn't change anywhere near as much as it used to.  I've got a good, core  ~10GB of favorites I listen to plus the occasional new album/tracks.  But other than that I could honestly get by without autolists on the musical front.

That being said, I'm a huge huge HUGE podcast junkie and given the inconsistent tagging/updates/filenaming from podcaster to podcaster (not to mention my own varying I used to use the autolists to help manage and organize the bulkiness of my dozens of podcasts more efficiently.  But now that the main podcast functionality I want is built right into the software (great job btw) my main reason for needing smartlists would at first seem to be gone.

However, I'm also increasingly using Media Center as the core of our household TV viewing/management.  And while I'm happy that my Zune can now see/play all the files in my vast video library, the interaction between the two platforms is very underwhelming.  It doesn't even allow for me to sort the files by show THEN episode name/number (all you get is episode name or date added to the Zune library; Media Center is chock full of far more useful meta data than that.)  In essence, I'd like much the same funcationality control for TV shows recorded via Media Center that I now have in the Podcasts section (i.e., always sync the last x number of episodes of Mythbusters v/s the last 2x number of episodes of The Office.)  While I'm hoping this functionality can be added more directly into the software, something like this could also be accomplished in a less direct way via auto/smartlists.

Thanks for listening.  Thanks for all the hard work.  And an extra big thanks for reaching out to previous customers by adding almost all the new software funcationality on the older hardware.

I like using the ratings to make my playlist, along with the play count.  Sometimes I'll also use date added so I can listen to my new songs.

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Wanted Updates- Moar apps and games, Edit playlists on device, Wireless 360 sync, Netflix    thyself.deviantart.com

I had several auto playlists that had different combinations of genre, play count, date added, file types, ratings, file location, artist, content protection, mood, parental rating, play count, playcount by time period, release year.

And for those of you that say that it's really like 3 ratings with the "heart" system" then the old system had 6 ratings.  Unrated, 1-5.  I used these ratings for very specific auto playlisting. 1- My wife's music 2-My son's music 3-Good Music 4-Great Music 5-Favorites.

I used my zune to play music for all sorts of events and it was nice to be able to create auto playlists for different types of events and I always knew that appropriate music would be available.  Now I gotta go get a WMP compatible device just to get back to work.  Thanks a lot Zune Dudes.

i actually posted something about how i used it in another post, but i'll retype it.

The autoplaylist is directly tied to the rating system for 80% of things, so the rating system does need to come back with more than a black/white options (like/don't like).  Now, I do like the concept of the heart/broken heart idea, and will make it very very easy for people to use, but we need a little more power.  For example, the 5 star system, as one person said before, 1 star is ones they like, but hear to often...  This concept is different for every person, 1 star for me is songs i hate.  Here's an idea on the rating.  Keep the broken heart....  but give more options.  give us a nutral rating (not unrated though), an 3 hearts.  This would be good for me.  if i hate the song, broken heart.  if i don't hate it, but won't listen to it, nutral.  if i like it, and if i heard it on the radio i wouldn't change the station, 1 heart.  next up would be 2 hearts for songs that i like, and create custom lists for this as "party" favorits.  3 hearts would be for songs that I will listen to everyday, and most of these would eventually become 2 hearts.

ok, onto how i would use auto playlists. 

1.  for unrated songs.  these are new songs that i listen to, and rate accordingly
2. create 4 star, 3 star or 5 star ::insert genre here:: playlist for parties and what not.
3. create a picture autoplaylist so that when i go on vacation, all the new pictures i have with me to show, without thinking about adding them

#4.  this option is last, but it's the most important issue with me, and to other media center owners.  it is nice that zune has the option to add tv shows, but seriously, the conversion time isn't really that good.  in my test it takes about the same amount of time to convert the show as the show is long, and i still haven't been able to get it to convert untill i sync it....  usually i don't have several hours to wait for the show to convert.  I wrote ZuneTvWatcher just for this issue, and the conversion time is about 20 to 30 mins for an hour show.  and it does this in the background.  This is also not to mention that Zune doesn't do this on XP nor does it do HD shows, as my program does.  So i set my program to convert new shows when they show up in the recorded tv folder, and I set a folder to be watched by Zune.  When a new show is recorded, it's converted, and put into the watched folder.  Now, what's even better is when i delete a show from media center, ZuneTvWatcher also deletes the converted file, so that the next time i sync the zune, an autoplaylist searches for all the "TV Shows", makes that list, removes the shows off the zune if they are not on the list (which means deleted from media center), and adds the new shows.  now my sync time is 30 mins if there is ALOT of tv shows to sync over, but if it's only 2 or 3, i'm looking at like 5 mins.

As I started using the "unrated" autoplaylist, i started finding songs i didn't even know i had.  there were several songs that I listed as 4 stars, because i wanted to hear them again, but i didn't remember the artist or song (with a library of around 20k songs, you can't).  Now under the Zune, they are lost...  thankfully they are still rememberd in WMP, but that kinda defeats the purpose.

On the note about playlists.  I made the move to using Zune as my music player (and kinda media player) because of using the Zune, I previously used Media Player because i also use Media Center with 3 extenders in the house.  The problem that I found i ran into doing this was that playlists (auto or manual) created in Media Center would not show up in Zune, and the reverse is also true.  I did realize that it was because of the .zpl for zune and .wpl for media player.  Please make this work nicely together.  i don't think that it is really an issue, as both .zpl and .wpl are the exact same thing inside the file, just the extention is different.  That way if i create a playlist on media center, i can then sync that playlist on the zune, and the reverse will also be true.

 

just read the post above about compliling the album rating by the track rating, very very very very good idea.

Just don't polute this forum please. If iTunes is what you like, buy an iPod and you're good to go.

I used auto playlists for pretty much everything -- never used regular playlists at al.


BUT WAIT... I don't even use ZUNE anymore because I CAN'T LOG IN!!!!! I CAN'T USE MY ZUNE PASS!!!!

What the heck is this beta crap!? I want my old zune back.  It was clunky, unreliable, and really slow, but at least it worked.

 Methos99 wrote:

create a picture autoplaylist so that when i go on vacation, all the new pictures i have with me to show, without thinking about adding them

I completely forgot about my picture autoplaylists  Same needs as his.  Is it really only "advanced" users that made autoplaylists?  I can't imagine that most DAP owners don't use that feature.

This IS a REALLY GOOD Idea. I use that list in iTunes alot, and its a MUST!

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Just Copy Past iTunes But 4 Zune! And Listen To U Customers!

          My entire library is organized by genre - I set up Genres like "Favorites" "Best" "New to Try".  I only want to sync certain genres to my device and I only want to listen to certain genres at a given time.  Please restore this feature ASAP.  I have no way to organize and sync my music without a MAJOR overall.  This new software has ruined the device for me.  Why couldn't you leave the previous system in place until you came up with a better one?