I would really like to switch to MusicBee, but have a few roadblocks.

[hb1547]

I've tried MusicBee out for the last week or two and am generally extremely satisfied.

However I'm a control freak and over the last decade have established a religious workflow for my music, so I've encountered a few roadblocks which are preventing me from solely switching to iTunes. I'm hoping there are solutions to these that I overlooked!

1: Nested conditions in Auto Playlists
I have a detailed auto playlist organization system, and it relies on using lots of nested levels, ie:
http://imgur.com/VlKJEYF (note the small scrollbar...)
But it looks like MB only supports a single layer deep in nested playlists, rather than many?

2: Syncing play counts from Android
This is a big one. Even with the "Sync Playcounts" option checked under Device, plays on Android (KitKat) aren't reflected on MB. Is there any way to achieve this? I listen to a lot of music on the go.

[psychoadept]

I'll address 2 first because it's more straightforward: the way to sync play counts from Android to MusicBee is to use last.fm.  MB can import last.fm scrobbles, and many Android players support scrobbling, directly or with the help of a scrobbling app.

As for the playlists, there's a top level and a secondary level (the [.] button).  It's true there are no more levels.  However, at least in the case you've shown, a lot of what you're doing with deeper levels could be accomplished by directly removing unwanted tracks from the playlist.  This adds them to the list found under "remove files", and they will never appear in the playlist unless you edit THAT list.  Likewise, you can manually add tracks to an auto-playlist and they will go into the "add files" list.

Assuming that all the rules of that playlist are structured similarly to your rules for Metallica, you could accomplish it like this:

match all:
Rating greater than one star
Artist is any of <list of artists>
... and remove unwanted albums

[hb1547]

I'll address 2 first because it's more straightforward: the way to sync play counts from Android to MusicBee is to use last.fm.  MB can import last.fm scrobbles, and many Android players support scrobbling, directly or with the help of a scrobbling app.

From my experience, this feature hasn't worked. I'm wondering if it's an issue of scale -- I have a ~20k track library, so it's likely a lot to download (and maybe looks like a DDoS attack to Last.fm).

As for the playlists, there's a top level and a secondary level (the [.] button).  It's true there are no more levels.  However, at least in the case you've shown, a lot of what you're doing with deeper levels could be accomplished by directly removing unwanted tracks from the playlist.  This adds them to the list found under "remove files", and they will never appear in the playlist unless you edit THAT list.  Likewise, you can manually add tracks to an auto-playlist and they will go into the "add files" list.

Assuming that all the rules of that playlist are structured similarly to your rules for Metallica, you could accomplish it like this:

match all:
Rating greater than one star
Artist is any of <list of artists>
... and remove unwanted albums

This is a useful workaround and I could probably incorporate it. That said I do have other uses for nesting in playlists and this wouldn't solve all of them. I suppose I could use intermediate playlists, as much as I don't like the idea of that.

[psychoadept]

From my experience, this feature hasn't worked. I'm wondering if it's an issue of scale -- I have a ~20k track library, so it's likely a lot to download (and maybe looks like a DDoS attack to Last.fm).

Hmm.  I would think you'd only be sending a few scrobbles at a time, regardless.  Hopefully someone who uses this feature extensively (and I know there are some around) can give you more info on it.

[hb1547]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the feature. Does it load the current playcounts in Last.fm of all your tracks on startup, or grab the most recent plays and increment their counts?

I guess the latter seems way more obvious

[hb1547]

Though I'll note that even recent scrobbles don't have updated plays.

[Pingaware]

If you're switching from iTunes, I imagine you haven't been able to use custom tags or virtual tags before. I have no idea what the conditions needed for your auto-playlists are, but if they're more for sorting rather than excluding certain tracks, it may be possible to use virtual/custom tags to bypass the need for a multi-nested playlist.