Finding songs not in any playlist

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Finding songs not in any playlist

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Q: I arrange my music by artist-specific smart playlists. There are, however, songs that fall through the gaps as I only have playlists for artists with many songs. Is there a way I can construct a playlist of all those songs that do not have a playlist? I have tried with a smart list using “Playlist is not ....” but I can’t seem to add enough options to include all of my playlists. Any ideas?

- Alex

A: You’re right - manually excluding each playlist you have isn’t the best solution to your problem, even if you could set it up; you’d have to keep tweaking it each time you add another playlist. Luckily, there’s at least two better ways:

The first, if you’re on a Mac, is to use the “Not in Any Playlist to Playlist” script available from Doug’s Applescripts for iTunes. As its title suggests, this script compiles all songs not in any current playlist into a new playlist. We haven’t seen any similar VBScripts or Javascripts for iTunes on the PC yet - if you have, let us know in the comments!

A second method is a slight twist on the idea you started with. We’re going to use the fact that playlist folders inherit all songs contained in the playlists beneath them. First, create a Playlist Folder in iTunes by selecting “New Folder” from the “File” menu. Call it “All Playlists,” and then proceed to place all of your existing playlists inside it.

Then, create a new smart playlist with a single rule “Playlist” “is not” “All Playlists.”

This works well, doesn’t require scripts, and is easier to create and maintain than calling out each playlist in the smart playlist logic. Enjoy!

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