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

I use auto-playlists in conjunction with the ratings system to create "favorites" playlists by artist and by genre.  For example, I've got all of Nirvana's albums and I've gone in and flagged my favorite Nirvana songs.  I have an auto-playlist for Nirvana songs rated 5 stars.  I do the same thing by genre.  I've also got an overall Favorites playlist that contains all of my 5 star rated songs across all artists and genres.

My playlists were all auto/smart lists and ranged from simple "if it's 4 stars or above" to using genre and even sub genre to create specific playlists that wouldn't be duplicated by other lists. For instance I had songs with a sub genre of "Romantic" and I created a playlist that only included songs with the subgenre of Romantic. I used smart lists so that as I raised or lowered ratings on songs they would get added to or removed from my "High rated Music" list. I really hope much like many other that you can reinstate auto/smart lists very soon. I have some other complaints but I'll look for a more appropriate thread.

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- Daniel - Zune HD (9/15/09)
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You Could Make A Playlist and still sync all the other songs right.

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--[MS-RED] David

• did a "recently added" list that had the past weeks imported songs
• had a top rated randomized genre playlist that was limited to 20 tracks
• had randomized tracks from specific artists
• had randomized tracks from a album series. i.e. Tiesto's insearch of sunrise series
  

All of my playlists were auto playlists.  I used them for 4+ star music, each genre, and my favorite... other people's 4+ rated songs.  This last one was great to listen to music from my library that other people like so I can update my own ratings as I listened.  That is now in the trash compactor as you switched to the juvenile heart/broken heart rating system.

i use auto playlists to listen to music with a zero or low play count.  some people said ratings, but I liked the automatic rating where the playcounts gave me pretty accurate ratings of what i liked and listened to the most

I accessed my library almost entirely via autoplaylists.  Big portions of my library are children's music, children's stories, ambient sleep music & relaxation cd's, fiction & nonfiction books on cd for me, and podcasts - definitely not stuff I want shuffled together.

Here are couple examples of the 22 autoplaylists I used in v1.

Bedtime stories for the kids:
I wanted a random lullaby, followed by 20 minutes of really great random stories, followed by 40 minutes of pretty good randomized stories, followed by a random lullaby, followed by several hours of ambient sleep music

- mood=lullaby, limit number of items=1, randomize playback order
- genre=books for children, my rating=5, limit duration=20 min, randomize playback order
- genre=books for children, my rating>=4, limit duration=40 min, randomize playback order
- mood=lullaby, limit number of items=1, randomize playback order
- album title=ultimate sleep system, randomize playback order

Good children's music:
I wanted to listen to a sampling of the new music I'd acquired from marketplace or wherever, followed by some pretty good music we hadn't heard in a while, and also some of our absolute favorites.  Usually I listened to this playlist on shuffle so we got a pretty good mix of new, old, and favorites.

- genre=children's, autorating>=4, playcount=0, limit duration=1 hr, randomize playback order
- genre=children's, autorating>=4, date last played=is before last 7 days, limit duration=2 hrs, randomize playback order
- genre=children's, autorating=5, limit duration=1 hr, randomize playback order

NPR:
I wanted to listen to my npr podcasts (I had separate playlists for podcasts from other sources), and i wanted the most recent ones at the top of the list, and i don't want to see the ones I'd already listened to.

-contributing artist=npr,  sort=date added descending, playcount=0

Thousand Names
I wanted to hear random chapters from this book, starting with the ones I haven't listened to yet, followed by the ones I hadn't heard in a while.

-album title includes=thousand names, playcount=0, randomize playback order
-album title includes=thousand names, date last played=before 30 days, randomize playback order

I had lots more examples, but these are pretty representative of what I was doing.

The last few days I've been checking out how iTunes handles autoplaylists.  It looks ideal - flexible, powerful, & intuitive...

But at this point I'd be happy enough with zune v1/WMP.  It had sync bugs and weird little quirks (i.e., you should be able to select Genre=Rock OR Genre=Rock/Metal; and you should have a lot more flexibility for parameters like Date Last Played; and there are some weird limitations on Sort By categories) but it was mostly able to do what I wanted.

 

Wow! Lots of great responses. Go figure spend a couple hours with the family and bam 65 posts.

I'm happy to see that most everyone felt like this was a good way to feedback positively to the product...and it is. You have the teams ear here, while some may use that oppurtinity to scream in it...each of you just told us exactly what you want in a way that will allow us to do it.

Just a quick note, I'm reviewing each of your responses...there is a bunch of 'em and I'll poor over the details next, then respond individually and to the group...but the quick review shows that the vast majority fit cleaning in our early team assumptions of autoplaylist use. There were a few key additions/exception that I'll make sure to note.

Thanks guys!

_Zach

 

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Zach Johnson Zune Client Development Lead .: This posting is provided as-is with no warranties, no rights :.

 louisik1 wrote:

Bedtime stories for the kids:
I wanted a random lullaby, followed by 20 minutes of really great random stories, followed by 40 minutes of pretty good randomized stories, followed by a random lullaby, followed by several hours of ambient sleep music

- mood=lullaby, limit number of items=1, randomize playback order
- genre=books for children, my rating=5, limit duration=20 min, randomize playback order
- genre=books for children, my rating>=4, limit duration=40 min, randomize playback order
- mood=lullaby, limit number of items=1, randomize playback order
- album title=ultimate sleep system, randomize playback order

Cool, Zune babysitter!  I can just go watch football instead of reading to the kids.  ;-)

Only kidding -- some great ideas there.

Heheh, I PROMISE I read to them for at least 15 minutes first.  :

my number one request, which the ipod never did, is a recently added list on the device that displays ***albums*** not songs!

can you ctrl+z the move to the heart/no heart system?

Somehow at the very least I need to be able to create playlists that exclude certain genres or keywords or whatever.  (I don't generally want to play explicit lyrics at a family event, but at the same time I don't want to just be locked into playing jazz or classical or ...)

Also, to exclude audiobooks, Christmas and other tracks like that from my shuffled music is incredibly important.  But aside from those certain genres, I'd like all my other music to be in the mix.

I don't want to have to drag and create different playlists that contain 1000+ different songs.