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Karl asked: “I’ve been using smart playlists on my iTunes for years.Helps me keep track of play counts and how recently I’ve listened to the music. I was wondering what percentage of iTunes users bother using smart playlists. Second question – If I were to be foolish enough to rent my music from Apple Music or Spotify, would there be any controls like smart playlists?”
Karl, we don’t know what percentage of iTunes users use Smart Playlists, but we suspect it couldn’t be too many of them, since Apple never ported them to iOS. That’s a big deal when you consider that iTunes isn’t a necessary evil to use an iPhone, and far fewer people are using it these days.
Having said that, they are a good way to have fresh playlists without constantly having to update them manually.
If you were to rent your music from Spotify, there wouldn’t be Smart Playlist the way you use them on iTunes, if you were to rent your music from Apple Music, you could use Smart Playlists, but you’d only be able to create them on computers, not phones.
We have read reports of issues when creating Smart Playlists that draw from other playlists that contain Apple Music songs, but you can create a Smart Playlist that pulls from your Apple Music library without issues.