I have more than 1000 files in my ~/Music folder. Amarok 2.8 running on KDE 4.13.3 on Fedora 20 has identified all of them.

I try some of the 'Example' APGs and they work as expected.

But I want to play music that belongs to genre 'Pop' and files that Amarok has not played before. I know, there are at least 700 such tracks.

So, I do Amarok. -> Playlists -> Automated Playlist Generator -> '+' (to add new playlist) -> Give preset a new name.

On the left hand side, Constraint Tree currently ONLY shows "Match All" Group

Then I do 'Add new' -> 'Match tags' -> Field genre -> equals -> 'Pop'

Then I do 'Add new' -> 'Match tags' -> Field play count -> equal to -> 0 and Match slider closer to 'Fuzzy'

Click 'OK' to save the APG hoping that when I select this APG and click on the right arrow, a playlist meeting my criteria will be generated. But no such luck. 'Generating playlist' appears briefly at the bottom. And the playlist remains empty.

I have played around with constraints and different positions of fuzzy exact slider with no effect.

Frustrating, to say the least.

What do I need to do to get this working?

Did I ask the question on the wrong forum??

Could you please paste the playlistgenerator.xml file? It is located in $HOME/.kde4/share/apps/amarok/

Here it is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<playlistgenerator>
<generatorpreset title="Example 1: new tracks added this week">
<constrainttree>
<group matchtype="all">
<constraint field="create date" comparison="3" invert="false" type="TagMatch" value="7 days" strictness="0.8"/>
<constraint field="play count" comparison="1" invert="false" type="TagMatch" value="0" strictness="1"/>
</group>
</constrainttree>
</generatorpreset>
<generatorpreset title="Example 2: rock or pop music">
<constrainttree>
<group matchtype="any">
<constraint field="genre" comparison="3" invert="false" type="TagMatch" value="Rock" strictness="1"/>
<constraint field="genre" comparison="3" invert="false" type="TagMatch" value="Pop" strictness="1"/>
</group>
</constrainttree>
</generatorpreset>
<generatorpreset title="Example 3: about one hour of tracks from different artists">
<constrainttree>
<group matchtype="all">
<constraint duration="3600000" comparison="1" type="PlaylistDuration" strictness="0.3"/>
<constraint field="2" type="PreventDuplicates"/>
</group>
</constrainttree>
</generatorpreset>
<generatorpreset title="Example 4: like my favorite radio station">
<constrainttree>
<group matchtype="all">
<constraint field="0" type="PreventDuplicates"/>
<constraint field="last played" comparison="3" invert="true" type="TagMatch" value="7 days" strictness="0.4"/>
<constraint field="rating" comparison="2" invert="false" type="TagMatch" value="6" strictness="1"/>
<constraint duration="10800000" comparison="1" type="PlaylistDuration" strictness="0.3"/>
</group>
</constrainttree>
</generatorpreset>
<generatorpreset title="Example 5: an 80-minute CD of rock, metal, and industrial">
<constrainttree>
<group matchtype="all">
<group matchtype="any">
<constraint field="genre" comparison="3" invert="false" type="TagMatch" value="Rock" strictness="1"/>
<constraint field="genre" comparison="3" invert="false" type="TagMatch" value="Metal" strictness="1"/>
<constraint field="genre" comparison="3" invert="false" type="TagMatch" value="Industrial" strictness="1"/>
</group>
<group matchtype="all">
<constraint duration="4500000" comparison="2" type="PlaylistDuration" strictness="0.4"/>
<constraint duration="4800000" comparison="0" type="PlaylistDuration" strictness="1"/>
</group>
</group>
</constrainttree>
</generatorpreset>
<generatorpreset title="test">
<constrainttree>
<group matchtype="all">
<constraint field="play count" comparison="1" invert="false" type="TagMatch" value="0" strictness="0"/>
</group>
</constrainttree>
</generatorpreset>
</playlistgenerator>

Well, apparently there is only one additional APG in this list, called "test",, and it probably will not yield much, as it is just an undefined list for tracks with a play count of 0, no length, no strictness. I haven't had time to test this yet.

Why not use the dynamic playlist for such a result? I don't think the APG is the right tool for that.

Mamarok wrote:Well, apparently there is only one additional APG in this list, called "test",, and it probably will not yield much, as it is just an undefined list for tracks with a play count of 0, no length, no strictness. I haven't had time to test this yet.

Yes. As I mentioned in the original post, all I wanted was a playlist of tracks I had never played. I will also try adding length (for the overall selection as well as length of individual track) and tell you the results.

Here's an update. Tried adding total length (time), total no of files, etc. and it worked. It beats me why only playcount=0 does not work!

Update 2: Dynamic playlist with playcount=0 works as expected!

Mamarok wrote:Why not use the dynamic playlist for such a result? I don't think the APG is the right tool for that.

Sure. Will give that a try, too. But could you please elaborate? Dynamic playlists are to be used for, say, "playlist of never-played tracks" or "playlist of pop music" etc. Then what is the ideal use case for APG?

The APG is used to make playlists limited in size or by time, mainly in the idea to use them to burn CDs or export to a Media Device with limited capacity, or to have something with a predefined length. At least, that is how I would use it and since it only works with limitations of size and/or time this makes sense to me.

If you want to automate playing within Amarok you better use the Dynamic Playlist.