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

How I use auto/smart playlists:

- To have "one version of the truth" across multiple devices: a Media Center Extender, and Windows Media Player at the desktop. Since not even playlists, let alone auto-playlists, are synced between MCE + Zune, it doesn't work well for my family. We aren't going to build these playlists twice and I'm not even making "dumb playlists" until that's fixed. :-)

And now real commentary on auto/smart playlists:

- The scenario is that "I only have a 4GB device. I definitely feel like my 'jazz genre' auto-playlist (3GB) this week, and then just in case I get bored of it, I want to fill the rest of the device from my 'favorites' auto-playlist (6GB). I prefer favorites I haven't heard in a long time to take priority over those I just heard a while ago. I sync wirelessly daily. I want favorites to be freshened up each sync... otherwise at only 1GB, I'll just keep running into the same favorites every day."

As I see this being solved by auto-playlists, 1) I am are able to sync a set of auto-playlists as the primary sync mode, and 2) if the auto playlists I select to sync will not fit as-is, I'm able to set sync allocation for each playlist to  "all songs", "some songs (%)", or "fill remaining space." In the later cases, a "sync priority" setting on each auto-playlist, which is actually another clause in the auto-playlist, determines what songs go on the device and which don't 3) the device updates fields the auto-playlists are based on so that next time I sync I get different songs from 'favorites' on the device than I had before.

To implement this w/ my ideal Zune software, I create 'jazz genre' (all songs of genre jazz) and 'favorites' (all songs 4-stars and 5-stars) and then sync 'jazz genre' as "all songs" and 'favorites' as "fill remaining space", with sync priority set to "date last played" in "oldest first" order.

- Rating-based playlists as describe above (sync priority by last-listened to)

- Recently listened (# of days, sync priority by last-listened-to)

- Recently added to library (days since add, sync priority by date)

- Recently added to library, and not listened to (days since add, sync priority by last-listened-to)

wadedor-at-microsoft.com

Hellooooooooo! Zune team????

---

Zune 30gb? - Waste! iPod Classic, 160gb - Dusty. iPhone wife has it. iPhone 3g, posting from it. :) Suck it Zune!

 Dalton108 wrote:

OK. We've told you, so now what?? You folks need to get a better handle on this communication thing. Get an intern or some other flunky to come here and say:

"Boy we sure did get an earful! Thanks for all of your input! We are working on making Zune even better!" [Don't let the fact that the software is god-awful stop you from throwing in some nice spin like this. How hard would that be???]

Really, HOW HARD is that??? Communicate, illuminate! ACT!

It just feels like amateur-hour folks. Please do better.

And ONCE AGAIN, this SHOULD BE STICKY!

---

Zune 30gb? - Waste! iPod Classic, 160gb - Dusty. iPhone wife has it. iPhone 3g, posting from it. :) Suck it Zune!

OK. We've told you, so now what?? You folks need to get a better handle on this communication thing. Get an intern or some other flunky to come here and say:

"Boy we sure did get an earful! Thanks for all of your input! We are working on making Zune even better!" [Don't let the fact that the software is god-awful stop you from throwing in some nice spin like this. How hard would that be???]

Really, HOW HARD is that??? Communicate, illuminate! ACT!

It just feels like amateur-hour folks. Please do better.

---

Zune 30gb? - Waste! iPod Classic, 160gb - Dusty. iPhone wife has it. iPhone 3g, posting from it. :) Suck it Zune!

There are some auto playlist features I wish Zune offered. Like others have mentioned; recently added, never played, and have not played in awhile. Another smart/auto playlist I would like is a playlist that would act as a top played tracks playlist, keeping track of all the songs played on the device and or PC and giving you the option of playing the top 10, top 20, top 40, top 50, top 100 and so on. I don't use any rating systems myself, but I would definatly have a 5 point rating system over the one there is now.

---

"The Haves Have Hot A Clue" E. Vedder 2001

How is randomize different from shuffle?

 

I just want the ability to RANDOMIZE the playlist, without resorting to the shuffle that just skips aound the playlist.  Why can't I RANDOMIZE the order of songs in the playlist?!

 glitch177k wrote:

Without reading through every single post here, there is one feature I would like to see in an auto playlist that I think would be very very popular, but nobody knows they want it.

I would like to see an ALBUM playlist. What I mean is a list that just shows the album and not the songs similar to the "album" view when browsing your library, but smarter. Something that lets me set a threshold. Right now, to look through my "albums" I have thousands when really I only have a few hundred. it's really annoying to scroll through thousands of albums when I'm looking for something to listen to. there should be some intelligence there to say only show an "album" if there are 6 or more songs associated with that album name. And I should be able to set the threshold in the settings to whatever I want.

This would fix one major problem of the mp3 player that makes me miss my cd case and occasionally go back to it. When I flip through an old cd case and see an album that I haven't heard in a really long time I call it "a casualty of my ipod (now to be zune)" as it is an album where a song from the album never came up randomly to remind me I had the album and it was lost in my sea of thousands of songs. Now that I'm on a zune, I'd like the functionality so I can browse through my albums just like I did a cd case. I used to have a case for each genre (ska, punk, alternative, misc), so why not have an "album" smart playlist of each genre that I can create to my likings? This would let me emulate my old system which more easily lets me browse my albums and not so easily lose them in the bulk of songs.

And the 5 star ratings, as you are well aware, are absolutely critical to my happiness. But I don't need to beat that dead horse, you guys have seen the cries by now... ;)  

 

Excellent idea!  Every song on the Zune is associated with an album.  But most Zune albums don't actually include every song that is on the real album, many only have one or two songs from that album.  If I'm scrolling thru Albums, looking for an entire album to listen to, it would be great if there was some way we could exclude all of the 'non-album' albums from the list.  Thanks.

I also didn't read everything above...

Hmm.   I guess was an "advanced" user of iTunes and jRiver (MediaCenter, neat product, steal some ideas from it!) auto playlists.   I loved the operators and soforth, and not necessarily just for making playlists for synch/play use.  They're handy for performing quick searches within the s/w :)

In terms of use cases, I would like to:
- Build lists by rating (need a few extra ratings btw, heart+ and brokenHeart-, to make 5 :P )
- List by "recentness of add to library"
- List by Year
- List by number of Plays
- List by Most Recently Played

Very iTunesy (and jRiver MediaCenter and/or MediaMonkey before them) stuff, but it's generically desirable functionality.

I also very much second glitch177ks thoughts above with respect to how "Albums" are considered.  But even above and beyond that I'd like to see a way to navigate through "twists". It'd be nice to jump from genre to artist, for instance, without having to back up and drill back down. But I digress.

I love my Zune30 so far (just got it this month and have only ever used the V2 stuff), and the only thing I really miss --music-wise-- is the ability to smartlist by recent play and recent add, and smartlist by rating.   Otherwise it's been pretty sweet.   I do miss my notes, contacts, calendar, and clock, but that's even MORE of a digression.

Without reading through every single post here, there is one feature I would like to see in an auto playlist that I think would be very very popular, but nobody knows they want it.

I would like to see an ALBUM playlist. What I mean is a list that just shows the album and not the songs similar to the "album" view when browsing your library, but smarter. Something that lets me set a threshold. Right now, to look through my "albums" I have thousands when really I only have a few hundred. it's really annoying to scroll through thousands of albums when I'm looking for something to listen to. there should be some intelligence there to say only show an "album" if there are 6 or more songs associated with that album name. And I should be able to set the threshold in the settings to whatever I want.

This would fix one major problem of the mp3 player that makes me miss my cd case and occasionally go back to it. When I flip through an old cd case and see an album that I haven't heard in a really long time I call it "a casualty of my ipod (now to be zune)" as it is an album where a song from the album never came up randomly to remind me I had the album and it was lost in my sea of thousands of songs. Now that I'm on a zune, I'd like the functionality so I can browse through my albums just like I did a cd case. I used to have a case for each genre (ska, punk, alternative, misc), so why not have an "album" smart playlist of each genre that I can create to my likings? This would let me emulate my old system which more easily lets me browse my albums and not so easily lose them in the bulk of songs.

And the 5 star ratings, as you are well aware, are absolutely critical to my happiness. But I don't need to beat that dead horse, you guys have seen the cries by now... ;)  

Just like others have mentioned, I would like most of the itunes smart playlist features and values. From the logic operators and the numerical ranges.  Please bring back the 5 star rating system. I would love that. Also for the smart playlist, please allow us to have an option for "recently played" sort