Randy Hunt's dashboard

Your ++++'s will work if you have any kind of normal character at the beginning of your comments. Songbird doesn't seem to like special characters at the beginning of comments, but it's fine with them in the middle or end of comments.
Here's the link to my post about it: http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/topics/do_smart_playlists_only_accept_certain_characters_problems_with_smart_playlist

Well, I just tried the latest nightly build [1.4.0b3, Build 1303 (20091007151242)], and special symbols still don't work at the front of the comments. I don't know that I want to wait, so I'm going to use tagger's regex to replace all my [!***!] tags with (000) instead. Zero's work just fine, just need to make sure I have them bracketed in something, since zero is a little more common than * or + or any of the other special characters I've tried (`~^|).

Well, I've tried rewriting the tags. I've tried re-tagging in Songbird, Winamp, musikCube, and iTunes. That hasn't worked. I tried removing them from the library and adding them again, but still doesn't work. I don't think that the Songbird database not matching my tags is the problem anyway, as they work when I put my ratings at the end of the comment, but not the beginning.

I created a new playlist that filters where Comment does not contain *, and found a bunch more songs that were not in that album. Not sure what the problem is.

The only other thing I can think of is that I used the Tagger add-on (which I love BTW, :] especially the regex replace) to re-tag a bunch of my songs. But I don't think I tagged all of the ones that are having problems.

Oh, I've run into another mystery. I found a song that I haven't touched yet in SongBird (no tagging or anything). It was showing up in my play list for songs with three *** ratings. This song did not have anything else in the comment but a rating. Then I added some text after it (the letter f ), and suddenly, it no longer showed up in the play list. Then I went back into my library and removed the f, and then it was back in the play list. Obviously there is something wrong with the way Songbird's search algorithm works.

I'd like to see if anyone else is having similar issues. BTW, using +++ does the same thing (just thought I'd try it, since +'s are a little easier to read).

The odd thing about all this is that I have another Smart Playlist using the [!*** filter, and it works fine on all songs but this particular album. It's like it's not looking at the right ID3 tag or something (which I've seen before in moving from MusicCube to iTunes to Winamp) – Randy Hunt, on October 29, 2009 01:43

Okay, I think I may have found the underlying problem. I have a feeling this might be a bug of some sort.

If I put the *** at the end of my comments, the filter works fine, but not at the beginning. If I have the *** at the beginning, but put one character in front of if, it will also filter fine.

I have set put a **** at the begginging of at least one track in this screenshot:

Note song number 3 (after I added the letter "r" to the front) in this screen shot:


The odd thing is, this only works with certain characters. If I have a comma, or my "[!" in front, it does not work.

Maybe I should submit a bug report?

Hmmm, no, didn't work. Tried getting rid of the [! and !] and looked for ***
The odd thing is that [!*** works for all my other files just fine. It's as if SongBird is ignoring my Comment field completely on the songs in that album. I can filter by other metadata just fine (like Album), and those songs will show up, but not by Comment. A little frustrating.

I have also tried using Safe Mode. Still doesn't work.

Here's some example screen shots:




P.S. I'm running XP Pro

You're probably going to need to be a little more specific/descriptive with your question. Are you trying to get a smart playlist to work with multiple "+" characters in your comments, or is songbird somehow placing these characters in your songs?