Smart playlists
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What’s smart about them?
I can’t see any difference in functionality. As far as I can see, all that’s happened is the word “smart” has been added and now we have a twinkly little logo to imply AI.
Oh, and instead of getting to pick an icon for my playlist, now it’s represented by a mashup of the images from the shows in the playlist. Which takes up more space than the icon did. Shrug.
Meanwhile as far as I can tell the contents of a playlist are still entirely decided by the settings that I choose – which is fine by me. I have absolutely no need for AI to organise my listening. But pretending to have AI in an attempt to seem “advanced” is nearly as bad as actually having it. -
even worse, the “smart” downloads list doesn’t list episodes of podcasts if I’m not subscribed, even if I’ve downloaded the individual ep. Used to do that!
And there’s a stupid image to scroll past now too. Why is that necessary? Trying to look like Spotify?
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I already chimed in on a related post, but absolutely agree here as well. My subscribed podcasts are finely selected by me. I don’t want anything smart messing with that. All the extra visuals are just clutter to navigate around in my quest to get at what I want.
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I hope this is just a first iteration and that new functionality is added later. eg., one feature I miss from BeyondPod is the ability to say “max 2 episodes from the same podcast in a row”, which is useful when catching up on a back catalogue without it crowding out everything else.
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The new smart playlist header with icon, buttons, and search field takes up more than half of my screen (Apple iPhone 17 Pro) without adding functionality. I now have to scroll this part every single time I use the app; this is not user-friendly at all. This leaves just enough space to show 2.5 podcasts in the list. The main reason for using Pocketcast was the more compressed list in comparison to Apple Podcasts – which shows 5 podcasts. Thinking about dropping Pocketcast if there is no change.
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Thank you for sharing your feedback on the recent app update! We’ve heard from other users who have similar thoughts about the header area within Playlists and Smart Playlists.
I’ve shared your feedback with the team, and added your votes to the related feature request. While we can’t guarantee the changes will be implement, the team is certainly taking this into consideration as they plan new app updates.
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I think these kinds of updates need to be more thought out and tested before they are shipped. This impacts a lot of users (even though only a few write back)
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I didn’t make a feature request. I didn’t ask you to do something, I asked what you HAD done.
The lack of an answer suggests that I’m right. Despite the splashy announcement that Playlists had become “Smart Playlists!”, I am yet to identify any actual change to the functionality of how playlists are constructed. As far as I can tell it’s still a mechanical implementation of the parameters that I set.My expectation was that if I’d missed some change in how playlists function, you’d tell me what I’d missed. Nobody has turned up (from staff or otherwise) to tell me I’ve missed something.
I don’t know which of your users or investors is sufficiently in love with the notion of AI to not care whether you actually implement any AI, so long as you talk as if you’re implementing it. -
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Some parts of the UI don’t need tinkering. This was one part of the UI that was tried and tested and no one really was asking for change. Change for the sake of it isn’t really needed. Smart Playlists is just a fresh coat of paint on the same old thing.
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@trevormobbsdae46d6a08 Regarding this bit:
The lack of an answer suggests that I’m right. Despite the splashy announcement that Playlists had become “Smart Playlists!”, I am yet to identify any actual change to the functionality of how playlists are constructed. As far as I can tell it’s still a mechanical implementation of the parameters that I set.
The Smart Playlists feature is a rebranding of the Filters feature that the app had previously. It does feature some design changes to bring it in line with other areas of the app — such as the podcast details page. The reason for the renaming of the feature was to bring it inline with the branding used for the new Playlists feature. So now the app offers Playlists, which are lists of episodes that you add to manually, and Smart Playlists, which is a list of episodes that match configurable rules.
Having both features named “Playlist” rather than “Filters” and “Playlists” allows for more common language used on elements throughout the app — for example, now that the Filters tab houses both Playlists and Smart Playlists, we’ve changed the tab’s label to “Playlists” to refer to both types of episode lists.
@xhrzt8nh9f @strummerj912 thank you for your feedback on the design changes. We’ve been tracking feedback on these changes and our development team is currently weighing our options on changes that we can make to help improve the experience for users that prefer the old design. I can’t offer an estimated timeframe, but hopefully we’ll have something soon.
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Right. So because you were adding an entirely manual functionality (which I gather some people wanted), you decided that the appropriate way to rebrand the existing rules-based playlists was to AI-wash them.
The rules-based playlists are not AI. The rules are not “smart”. The output is entirely based on my decisions as to what podcasts to include, whether to add any other options for filtering, and how to sort the episodes. There is no algorithm that decides which episodes it thinks I might want to listen to. Episodes are in the playlist in exactly the way that I instructed.
And thank God for that. I don’t want an algorithm making those decisions for me. When I use music streaming services I almost always choose directly what I hear rather than letting an algorithm serve me up songs, and that’s the way I like it. That’s they I like it here as well.
But whether you’re dealing with a customer who doesn’t like AI or a customer who DOES like AI, giving the impression that you have AI by using references to “smart” and a little twinkly logo is misleading and wrong and will lead to you disappointing both kinds of customer.
Quite frankly, seeing the phrase “smart playlist” every time I navigate to my playlists is an irritation, because I don’t want them to be “smart”, and someone who DID want a smart playlist would face the same irritation. -
agree, the new smart playlists are not really great or smart. They use way to much screen real estate, especially when opening them (about 50% of my iphone pro max). Also the dynamic icons are driving me crazy, the previous static ones were way more recognizable.
Please bring back the old style, or at least give an option in the settings menu to revert to the old style of playlists/icons.
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@trevormobbsdae46d6a08 regarding this bit:
So because you were adding an entirely manual functionality (which I gather some people wanted), you decided that the appropriate way to rebrand the existing rules-based playlists was to AI-wash them.
Maybe there was a misunderstanding of the feature and its branding, our intention wasn’t to associate smart playlists with AI at all. Was there some specific part of our documentation or any messaging within the app that would lead you to that conclusion or was it just the use of the word “smart”?
Personally, when I hear “Smart Playlist” it harkens back to the days of iTunes, which featured a smart playlist feature that worked similarly to how Pocket Casts Smart Playlists work. In the case of iTuens, smart playlists allowed you to create a list songs based on a set of rules to filter your library. But if you have different associations with that term, I’d be happy to forward that feedback along to our team.
@83249as thank you for your feedback on this! I’ve added your comment to our internal feedback tool so our team can take it into consideration as we refine the design going forward.
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Not only the word smart. As already mentioned (and apparently ignored) there is the twinkly little AI logo. As used widely, including here, to represent AI.
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To be clear, it’s the logo next to the “Smart Rules” terminology. The same logo used on the generated transcripts.
The same twinkling star that is widely recognised these days as representing AI.
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