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[NewMexiCat]

I humbly request the assistance of the Smartlist gurus out there.

I've used MC for a few years now, but my Smartlisting skills have remained fairly elementary.  My "low IQ" smartlists have held my interest for a long time, but now I get a bit bored with my mixes, but my head swims when I start to think of the calculus I need for the smartlist I'm envisioning.

What I want to achieve is a mix to mimic radio station programming, for my own personal radio station.  Here's what I'm thinking the parameters need to be:

1.  Recently imported tracks need to be in "heavy rotation", weighted by ratings.  So, in this case, I actually want recently imported tracks to repeat, if possible, just like you hear new music repeated more often on the radio.

2.  Within the recently imported tracks, more weight would be given to "newer" music, i.e. music released during this decade would be in heavier rotation than music from the 90's, 80's even less weight, 70's even less, and so on.

3.  This will be an "eclectic" mix, so genre filtering isn't critcal, unless one wanted 2 or 3 "genre specific" radio stations.  Actually, I guess genre weighting might be a good idea too now that I think about it, i.e., an eclectic mix, with a leaning toward alternative rock with an occasional classic rock or "oldie" thrown into the mix.

4.  I would want to avoid certain genres, however, i.e., podcasts, audio books, classical, songs over 10 minutes in length, that sort of thing.

5.  While the "heavy rotation" vibe is desired, I would want to avoid repeating the same artist in a certain amount of songs, i.e. on a radio mix you wouldn't hear a song by an artist and then two or three songs later hear a different song by the same artist.  So I would try to get at least 10 songs between artists, something like that.

6.  Finally, after a track gets so many plays in "heavy rotation", it would fall back into a lesser rotation, again just like a radio playlist would do.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.  Im not asking for creation of this smartlist out of wholecloth.  I'm just betting (or maybe hoping) that someone has already come up with something that approximates what I am trying to do.

Thanks!!!!

[Deivit]

Marko is definitley your man for this stuff.

Anyway, this is not exactly what you're after, but perhaps you may want to start playing with something like this:

~mix=150,50,{Rating=>3 ~sort=[number plays],[Last Played]-d,[date imported]-d ~%=50 ~sort=[random]},25,{Rating=>3 ~sort=[number plays]-d,[Last Played],[date imported] ~%=50 ~sort=[random]},50,{Rating=3 ~sort=[number plays],[Last Played]-d,[date imported]-d ~%=50 ~sort=[random]},25,{Rating=3 ~sort=[number plays]-d,[Last Played],[date imported] ~%=50 ~sort=[random]}

This is my main mix, and basically picks 150 tracks:

50 rating 4 or 5 from the 50% of the less listened to; 25 idem from the 50% of the most listened to.
50 rating 3 from the 50% of the least listened to; 25 idem from the 50% of the most listened to.

(shake well before playing)

Now, as I said, this could be a starting point. You may want to take a look at the syntax and start playing around with it. This one shows you how to combine different criteria and how to give more "weighting" (is that correct in english?) to some of the criteria over the others.

Hope it helps to start. Let us know what you come up with.

[marko]

I'm not the only one you know
Seviien posted something really neat a while ago:  http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=29940.msg206134#msg206134

Have a look at that and see if you can bend it to your will. I think it could be close to what you want.

[RobOK]

You may find this interesting:

http://www.codepoetry.net/archives/2005/01/15/doityourself_smart_radio_station.php


It was written about iTunes, but I have done something similar with our Smartlists.

[NewMexiCat]

Thanks everybody.  This gives me some really good starting points.  Here (http://smartplaylists.com/comments.php?id=585_0_1_0_C) is another idea I found that is iTunes-based but should be easily adaptable to MC.  Seems fairly similar to what RobOK referenced.  And marko's reference is very cool.  Looks like I've got a lot to play with as "program director" of my new radio station. 

[marko]

smartplaylists.com!! nice idea. not so nice implementation. shame really. we should setup a smartlists.com and show them how it should be done. I would if I could, but I can't.

[RobOK]

Reading that playlist site reminds you how much sophisticated MC's smartlist system is!!! (compared to iTunes)

[NewMexiCat]

Well, my smartlist is still a work in progress, but after borrowing heavily from the genius smartlist originated by Seviien, this is what I'm running:

[media type]=[audio] ~mix=20,50%,{[rating]=[],3,4,5 [date (year)]=2004-2006 ~sort=[number plays],[Last Played]-d,[date imported]-d ~%=50 ~sort=random},20%,{[rating]=[],3,4,5 [date (year)]=2000-2003 ~sort=[number plays],[Last Played]-d,[date imported]-d ~%=50 ~sort=random},15%,{[rating]=[],4,5 [date (year)]=1990-1999 ~sort=[number plays],[Last Played]-d,[date imported]-d ~%=50 ~sort=random},10%,{[rating]=[],4,5 [date (year)]=1980-1989 ~sort=[number plays],[Last Played]-d,[date imported]-d ~%=50 ~sort=random},5%,{[rating]=[],5 [date (year)]=<1980 ~sort=[number plays],[Last Played]-d,[date imported]-d ~%=50 ~sort=random} ~nodup=[Artist]

Sheesh, I get tired just looking at that string . . . but I'm enjoying the heck out of the mix it's creating.  I get 20 songs with no artists repeats, leaning more heavily on newly released and newly imported music, while throwing in a few old favorites.  You'll notice that I have "no rating" as an option right now--that's cuz I still have a lot of rating to do, so I do it while the Smartlist does its thing.  Eventually, I'll weed out the songs I don't care for.  Down the road, I'll probably exclude some Genres that I don't want in the mix, but right now I'm just marvelling at the wonder that is MC Smartlisting.  It makes iTunes appear rather dumb. 

[glynor]

smartplaylists.com!! nice idea. not so nice implementation. shame really. we should setup a smartlists.com and show them how it should be done. I would if I could, but I can't.

Again... It's really too bad that MC can't save View Schemes (without children, just the settings in Edit View Scheme) and Smartlists out to a file.  It would be (obviously) a proprietary file, but that's okay.  It would make it so much easier to share them around amongst each other and between different libraries that you set up.

It would be cool!  And then someone could set up a ViewSchemeCentral.com (or whatever) and we could have a big library of user-created view schemes and smartlists that could be installed with a single double-click.

[RobOK]

That would be awesome!!  Would it save the View Settings as well? (columns, captions, etc)

[NewMexiCat]

Something like that would be great.  I've actually used MC for a long time, but I'm just now starting to delve into the more complex features.  While the flexibility and power of MC is obvious right out of the box, it can be pretty frustrating to a new user, simply because there really aren't a lot of "tutorial" type resources out there (actually, a lot are here in the forums, but it would be great if they were better organized).

P.S.  I'm still loving the smartlist, but there is one feature I wish MC had to make it perfect--a feature iTunes calls "live updating", where the smartlist continually regenerates.  As a track is completed and falls off the list, another one is added which conforms to the algorithm.  I chose a mix of 20 songs for my Smartlist because that was about how many I wanted without repeating artists.  After 20 songs, I have no problem hearing an artist again.  So, rather than having to regenerate the Smartlist manually, it would be great if it would just keep playing indefinitely as long as I wanted to listen.  Maybe there is a workaround on this.  Is there a command where I can specify "no duplicates" over a span of 20 tracks?