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An extremely smart "radio-station-like" playlist

I managed to put together an auto-rating "smart radio station" - songs' ratings are automagically up- and downgraded depending on how often you play a song and how often you skip it.

To pull this off, I needed 15 smart playlists, 1 regular old playlist and 2 AppleScripts (one permanently running in the background), the other one called by a shell script which in turn is executed weekly by Anacron.

If you're curious, I wrote up a detailed description here:

http://www.jensbaumeister.de/node/69

Enjoy!

by Baumi on Jul 29 | 8:00 am

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Wow! This looks great! If I only had a Mac...

by talking_animal on Jul 29 | 5:02 pm

This is an absolutely fantastic playlist so far. I don't know if the anachron thing is working, nor do I know if it will ever...Wish I had a way to check it. In any case, my music selection is getting perfect!

-E!

by Cult(-E!) on Aug 24 | 5:48 pm

When I check syntax using your script (with my personal info inserted each time):
#!/bin/sh
I get: An unknown token can't go after this some object

When I check syntax deleting the offending character:
!/bin/sh
I get: An unknown token can't go after this some object

Again deleting the offending character:
/bin/sh
I get: A “<division symbol>” can't go after this some object

When I check syntax after deleting the offending character, thusly:
bin/sh
sudo -u <USERNAME> osascript /<PATH>/<TO>/Purge.app

I get: Expected end of line, etc. but found identifier

I need some help...Anyone?

by Crimson on Aug 27 | 11:54 am

It sounds like you're trying to edit the shell script in the AppleScript editor. That one script needs to be saved as plain text (e.g. with BBEdit or TextEdit's "Save as Plain Text"-option. Then you need to make it executable by typing the following command in Terminal:

chmod 755 /<PATH>/<TO>/purge.sh

After that, proceed as described.

by Baumi on Aug 27 | 5:29 pm

Ahhhh!

I'll let you know how it goes...

by Crimson on Aug 27 | 5:41 pm

So far so good. I seemed to have done everything OK. I have already noticed an excellent change in ratings in relation to what I like.

However, I am also noticing a slowdown in responsiveness, both in iTunes and in other apps.

by Crimson on Aug 27 | 6:20 pm

Any slowdown could only be because of the constantly running AppleScript - which, however, normally doesn't generate much load - it sleeps most of the time and the update check kicks in only for less than a a second. There should not be a "special" delay in iTunes, since the script isn't controlling it - it's merely watchng it and acting after you've changed the songs. Depending on your system power, however, updating the dynamic playlists might also take resources. (Not sure, it's a problem for me.)

What processor and OS and how much RAM do you have? I'm using it on an old PowerBook G4 550 with 768 MB RAM, and I don't notice any slowdown.

by Baumi on Aug 28 | 7:22 am

iMac; 700 MHz PowerPC G3 ; 10.2.8; 512MB RAM; iTunes 4.9.

Does anyone _know_ if _lots_ of playlists can slow iTunes down? Seems like they could since it has to update all the dynamic lists; but I've never read or heard anything about it specifically...

by Crimson on Aug 28 | 4:39 pm

You could try that out by stopping the AppleScript and manually rating a song or two. Also, you could use CPU Meter (or whatever it was called in 10.2 - I'm on Tiger. :-) )to check what's eating your resources.

by Baumi on Aug 28 | 4:58 pm

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