Q: I can’t find out why some of my smart playlists suddenly shrink on my iPod. I have a smart playlist with 75 five-star songs on it, where the songs rotate throught the playlist based on last-played date. Anyway, sometimes the playlist will suddenly jump from having 75 songs on it to having 54 songs, or 11 songs.
The songs are still on the iPod, but they’re no longer in the playlist. Do I have corrupted files? I’ve restored my iPod, and that didn’t help.
Any idea is this is a known bug and if there’s a fix?
– Brian
A: Brian, from our experience, our best guess is that your iPod is working exactly as it should, and that your smart playlist needs a bit of work.
It sounds like your smart playlist has a rule that selects songs from a specific period of dates – for example, “Last Played is not in the last 3 days.”
Since the size of this playlist ultimately depends upon how often you play your music, this isn’t what you want.
Rather, you should try using a simpler one-rule solution like the one below, where the playlist will always have 75 songs, and is set to select songs by “Least Recently Played,” which will work regardless of how often (or not) you use your iPod.
