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[elpaolo]

I've been trying to figure out how to take one of the many annual "best of" lists available on the web and quickly turn it into a smartlist that generates a listing of the albums I own so I can listen to them as a single set. For shorter lists of 10 albums, typing in the albums and/or my own memory is plenty quick, but longer lists of 50 to a 100 present a more arduous task.

Take the following sample of 20 albums from Rolling Stone's latest Top 50 of 2011 list:

20 Foo Fighters – Wasting Light
19 Eric Church – Chief
18 Feist – Metals
17 TV On The Radio – Nine Types Of Light
16 R.E.M. – Collapse Into Now
15 Cage The Elephant – Thank You Happy Birthday
14 Beastie Boys – Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2
13 tUnE-YarDs – w h o k i l l
12 The Black Keys – El Camino
11 My Morning Jacket – Circuital
10 Robbie Robertson – How To Become Clairvoyant
09 Wild Flag – Wild Flag
08 Wilco – The Whole Love
07 The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
06 Lady Gaga – Born This Way
05 Radiohead – The King Of Limbs
04 Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
03 Paul Simon – So Beautiful Or So What
02 Jay-Z & Kanye West – Watch The Throne
01 Adele – 21

Through some experimentation, MC seems to need just the artist and album using the [Artist - Album (Year)] field. And, after finally figuring out how to get the boolean expression OR working in the smartlist editor--as well as figuring out which characters the smartlist editor prefers to parse--I can now get MC to display all the albums I have from a list. It took some Excel (and Word) magic to get the right block of text to import, but it's pretty cool for what it is, IMHO, and definitely a testament to the flexibility of MC.

If you'd like to try it yourself, you can import the attached .txt file into a new smartlist. You'll probably need to *maximize* the editor to be able to see the OK button flickering at the bottom--the number of rules that are added exceed the screen size. (Maybe scrolling can be a feature request?) You also won't be able to edit anything beyond the bottom of the screen, unless your machine lets you do something mine won't.

The list removes duplicates you might have and sorts by album and track.

And a warning--depending on how quick your machine is and how large of a library you have, the smartlist will likely chug for 10-20 seconds while it computes all the logic. Of course, you can always select all the results and send them to a static, non-smartlist playlist for faster loading (which is what I did).

Might have to get the Excel spreadsheet into more of a form so I can do this more quickly next time around for other lists. Could be addicting!

Anyone else tried this sort of thing? I'd be curious to hear what your method was. Now that I know how to do it, I think it takes about 5-10 minutes starting from a basic list of album and artist. Adjusting varying formats for how MC likes to read this is what takes time.

P

[rick.ca]

See Create a MC playlist from external list?

[elpaolo]

Somehow that seems like more work, but it's interesting to hear about other approaches. So much of matching lists depends upon accuracy of tags.

[rick.ca]

So much of matching lists depends upon accuracy of tags.

Well, that's just the thing. Except it's not just the 'accuracy' of the tags, but whether the relevant values are identical to those used in the list. And matching tracks rather than albums is that much more unlikely. If I were confident the values would match, I'd just parse the list into filenames based on my file-naming scheme, and create a playlist directly. Using Excel, exact matches are found instantly, and then it provides an effective means for finding 'near misses' and confirming 'actual misses'. Importing a playlist also preserves the order of the original list, which may be significant.

Your approach will be better in situations where the list doesn't change (e.g., Top 100 of 2010), and the library is likely to include more of the list items in the future.

Maybe scrolling can be a feature request?

I very recently argued that should be fixed. I didn't think anyone but me had noticed.

[elpaolo]

Very true about the varying approaches. I might try the Excel way sooner or later.

And the fact I'm finding issues only a few other people have reported make me think I'm doing *something* right--that is, digging deep enough and pushing MC's boundaries. =)

[rick.ca]

And the fact I'm finding issues only a few other people have reported make me think I'm doing *something* right--that is, digging deep enough and pushing MC's boundaries.

The trick is in knowing whose boundaries are being pushed.