So tell us...how do you use auto/smart playlists. Tell us what it didn't do that you want it to do. Tell us what it did that you didn't want. This way when we do it, we'll do it knowing exactly how you use it and can inform our designs with that.

As anyone can see in the forums...and we knew from our betas, autoplay list is a functionality that is loved and heavily used by our advanced users...and is unknown/confusing to other users. Do not get us wrong we(as advanced users) love them too...

What you can help you understand is that Zune 1.0 was a slightly modified version of Windows Media Player. We learned plenty about how flexible WMP would be in releasing 1.0(not very), and how slow our progress would be if we used it as the application for the next versions of Zune. With that experience, user feedback from 1.0, and the things we needed to do for our customers to have the excellent media and device experience to make us competative in this market we had to be working on a more flexible base.

We created a new application for Zune 2.X. It was educated by and done by people that had learned from the experiences in windows media player and was infused by people who had made the Xbox and Windows MediaCenter. This application sets the base that will allow us to continue to add strongly compelling user features in the up coming years in addition to the ones you see in Zune 2.0 today. That said every feature that existed in WMP and Zune 1.0 had to be created in Zune 2.0. That means a whole heck of a lot of work to just get back to parity with the previous version, and we did it for the most part. As all products do we wieghted what we could do vs what we needed to do...and what we had to do to differeniate ourselves by making compelling user scenarios(think wirelesss sync and the social website your using now). Autoplaylists is one of the hardest things to not acomplish in Zune 2.0...but what that does means it is top of the list for future versions. So tell us how you want it done.

For example:

I used it to put the content on the device that:

I loved, I had recently acquired, I hade never rated. I disliked how it didn't update the list immediately when I rated something. I disliked the clunky UI I had to use to create a auto playlist. I disliked that it had a limited set of possible values(eg certain file sizes) and I couldn't just put in a value.

_Zach

Zune Product Team
.:  This posting is provided "as-is" with no warranties, and confers no rights  :.

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

Automatically filter out low rated music so it didn't sync to my zune.  Automatically filtered in new additions so they did sync to the zune where i would then rate them.  Create more granular playlist based on combinations of genre and rating...

How about "recently added music"?

At the most basic level, I had an auto generated playlist that contained music added in the last 7 days.  That way if I ripped a CD, downloaded new stuff from Marketplace, etc. I always had an easy way to find it.  And it would automatically sync down to my Zune.  Better still, after 7 days, those items would no longer show up in that playlist, so if I hadn't added them to a more permanent list by then they'd age out and be gone.

I had similar playlists set up for photos and videos.  Very useful.

 

Speaking only for myself, I used auto playlists primarily to narrow down my library to tracks I hadn't listened to much yet (low play count) or really liked (4-5 stars). I know that many people had auto playlists that were tied to specific song rating/genre combinations, which is why the people upset about the loss of auto playlists are the same people who are upset about the new, oversimplified "love it/hate it" rating system.

But on a higher level, Microsoft and the Zune Team need to realize how seriously they've slipped behind their competitors with this new software--and, thus, how crucial it is that they get some updates out quickly. While I understand your point about needing to build new software from the ground up to get out of WMP's shadow, the team should have waited until the software had achieved something resembling parity with other music management programs (in terms of feature set) before releasing it. Now anyone who wants to use the Zune player has to accept the fact that they'll have to manage it with woefully inadequate software.

The old WMP-based Zune software wasn't perfect, but it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with iTunes (I personally liked it much better than iTunes). Now it has fallen far, far behind.

I agree with RacerX. One of the things Zune v1 sorely missed was a Recently Added playlist *on the actual player*. Having it in the software was nice (I didn't realize how much I used it until I upgraded today... whew) and having it back would be nicer.

Having only two ratings for songs seems to make things so black and white now, especially with smart playlists. Therefore, I will use this space to champion the cause of bringing back the 1-5 star rating system as well, as I feel this would help smart playlist usage.

Thanks, guys. :)   I'll be concise:

My favourite custom autoplaylist was something I used for the long commute to work mostly, but it also got high rotation when I knew I had new podcasts/etc waiting for me. It's the one I miss the most.

The autoplaylist was set to gather up any new music and podcast files that:

* Were added within the last 7 days

* Had not been listened to yet (playcount = 0)

The playlist would then switch to:

* Randomised addition of "everything I don't hate".  So, <3 and 'neutral' in the new terminology.

 

(There were variations on the "commuter" playlist I also used - different tolerances for ratings, or genres).

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Meow. And G'day from Australia. ;)

I have a ton of MP3s from my CD collection on file shares in specific folders ... I like to create autoplaylists to point to those shares. Also like to create autoplaylists for music by genre.

Just do it like iTunes.

Reach feature parity with iTunes and all will be well.

 twic3born wrote:

Having only two ratings for songs seems to make things so black and white now, especially with smart playlists.

I don't want to stray off-topic, but the rating system is actually "<3 / neutral / </3", not just "<3 / </3".  I think three is "just right".

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Meow. And G'day from Australia. ;)

Okay, here is how I used it:

14k+ songs in the library at 192bit
Used the (now missing) au