Add logic to smart playlists in iTunes 4.5

Apr 30, '04 11:06:00AM

Contributed by: ngaubert

I've been thinking hard about how to bypass what I think is a limitation in iTunes' smart playlist capabilities, that is to create a list with a combination of logical operands. You can create lists with only AND or only OR operators linking the different conditions. But if you want to have, for example, a smart playlist named 'Pop/Rock from the 80's,' you want to create something like:

Until iTunes 4.5, though, you where out of luck. But with this new version, Apple has added a "playlist" criteria in the smart playlist dialog. This new criteria can help you construct a whole new set of playlists. To build your 'Pop/Rock from the 80's' playlist, you'll have to do the following:
  1. Create a pop/rock playlist: that is, a smart playlist with the two conditions genre is pop, genre is rock with the "matching any of the conditions" button checked.
  2. Create your 'Pop/Rock from the 80's' list itself, with the "matching all of the conditions" option selected, and the two following criteria:
With this new criteria, you can build a final playlist with any set of AND and OR operators ... just use your imagination!

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