momusradar

I recently changed my smart playlists to make use of the nested conditionals function added to iTunes 9. One smart playlist lists all music files from my Library and all episodes from the KEXP Song of the Day podcast. Another smart playlist lists the most recent podcasts that are not from KEXP.

I noticed these same smart playlists viewed on my iPod did not list any of the podcast episodes. Fortunately iLounge Forums user Code Monkey notes the reason for this seemingly odd behavior under the topic iTunes 9: Podcasts in playlist don’t show up on iPod?:

I believe I’ve figured it out: on the podcasts tab, there is now a playlist selection check box tree thingee like what has been under the music tab for a while. I noticed in my case that all of my podcast playlists happened to be automatically and correctly sussed out by the update process and put here as if they were special “podcast playlists”.

So I did some tests. I made a list with some podcasts and some music, checked it off only under the music tab and there was the missing podcast items like people are describing in this thread. I checked it off under both the music tab and the podcast tab and both the music and podcasts showed up. Then I checked it off on only the podcast tab, and now the music items are missing.

From what I can see, regardless of what you put on the list, if you check it off only under the music tab, that’s all that shows up on your iPod, if you check it off only under the podcast tab, that’s all that shows up on your iPod, if you check it off under both tabs, everything shows up.

Following his prescription did get the “missing” podcasts to reappear in my iPod’s smart playlists. This new arrangement for the iPod settings strikes me as being more complicated than it needs to. But I can see this as providing incredible flexibility for the iPod power user.