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69 Comments
- joshduck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Honestly, who cares how many songs you have. Anyone could download every song they come across, but then they would have a bunch of crap songs.
- phlll, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13There's more than 8 songs here....
- RhinoSS, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Dugg for those new to iTunes. Smart playlists are a great feature that haven't gotten as much attention as they deserve.
One of my personal favorite smart playlists is "forgotten favorites" It's set to randomly play songs with at least 4 stars that I haven't listened to in the past 2 months.
That playlist never fails if I'm otherwise finding a good mix of music to listen to. I always love the songs... and I can guarantee it's not a song that I'm tired of.
The only downside to smart playlists is that they usually require you to rank your library. For a library of any decent size, this could take a significant amount of time. - droolingmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I agree, nothin really new, but handy and a good explanation of how to deal with increasingly large playlists! Thanks for this, I think I'll actually mangle up something similar, finally, after much putting off.
- chesterton, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I just took the time to do this and see what comes of it. I'm one of those people who has a vast array of badly done smart playlists that I never listen to.
- cjackson27, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4He addresses this in his post, saying that while he doesn't have time to give each song a rating, he has time to rate his favorite songs. When listening to music, if I find a song that I particularly like, I assign it a rating of either 4 or 5. It can even be done right from your iPod. It doesn't exactly take that much time.
- klang, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3How many different songs have you listened to the last 180 days?
divide that number by the number of songs you have and you'll get the efficiency of your library.
(or the amount of stuff you actually like) - batmant, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4i would value something like this much more on the iPod itself. And am I the only one that has constantly wondered why there isn't an easy to be listening to a song (on the iPod) and be able to quickly access songs by the same artist? It would be as simple as putting it into one of various options you get by pressing the center button during playback. Something like "View other songs". PLLEAASEE
- tracydanger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree, a lot of people don't listen to an album as a whole anymore. The Beatles Abby Road or Pink Floyd's The Wall are so much better all the way through. My favorite albums are like a journey - not just a collection of songs (I highly recommend Erasure's self titled album for this).
- VulnoX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Or you could just read the article before making comments without knowing what you are talking about.
Just a thought.
The point is to make a smart playlist that will make better use of the music you have, and it is more useful for larger playlists. I only have some 1700 songs on my iPod, but when I did a smart playlist check on songs not played in the last two weeks, I got over 300 hits, because Shuffle is just random, and has no guarantee to hit all the songs on your playlist over a given time. A lot of those 300 songs I really like too.
I did a test run after doing what he suggests, and within an hour had heard 7 of the songs, plus since I rated all my songs I heard more songs I wanted to hear and skipped fewer songs.
If shuffle works for you, good, but I thought it worked for me for awhile to until I tried this. Sorry to be so harsh, but so many comments on this site are just negative without the poster actually reading the story, it gets old after awhile. - toekneebullard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2what? Are you saying iTunes should incorporate smart playlists? Cause, ...it does, as this is a whole article about it...
- anagami, on 07/02/2008, -0/+2You're speaking about the iTunes Music Store's Fair Play DRM (which use is demanded by the labels)
The article is speaking about iTunes the software NOT the store. - nofxjunkee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2over time your music just gets rated if you rate a song here and there... if you have an ipod then you can rate music on it so that helps.
- xakaxunknownx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Great stuff, but i added an extra piece into the main playlist "x mix" so that the songs updated on thier own. Just add "not played in the last 0 days."
this way as soon as a song finishes playing it leaves the playlist and a new song is added. just like the default "party shuffle" in itunes. - xakaxunknownx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oops sorry. what u have to do is just make sure that "not played in the last 0 days" is in all of your base playlists, otherwise it won't work.
- pedstrom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1ranking the library isn't too hard. I just created a playlist of "unrated songs" and listened and ranked at work when I could work it in with the other things going on at work. It wasn't too bad. Ended up ranking 20-50 songs a day, and eventually, did get to the end of it all.
- Nik420, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I had most of my songs rated. I got a new external drive and moved my library there. All of my ratings disappeared, sigh. Guess I got to start over now.
- schwab002, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1there are plenty of new albums out or relatively new ones that don't have pauses between tracks and are meant to be played as a whole. they're generally not pop music albums, and there are more of them then most people would guess.
- neostar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2For me it worked out fine, I'm already listening to many songs I haven't heard for a long time, together with the hotkey triggers from Quicksilver to rate the songs these tips are a vast improvement.
- drewfer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Finally! Ive been waiting for something like this to come out. I love the idea of smartplaylists and wanted to check out some new ideas. Great story, a must for people with +1000 songs.
- mpancha, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Good read. I only have a little over 2500 in iTunes, but I have the same predicament.... having to listen to the same songs when I use Party Shuffle.
But I digress.... good read. Got my digg. - eclipxe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2www.smartplaylists.com have plenty of great suggestions - I'm really into the weighted ratings and personal radio station ones.
- techgirl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm always looking for ways to keep my music organized in iTunes...since I'm a 'singles' person when it comes to my ipod, unlike my boyfriend who puts entire albums on his, it's even more important that I keep my music organized. If you're like me, you know that if you have mostly singles on your ipod, if it's not organized, some of them will 'slip through the cracks'...this leaves me saying "Hmm...haven't heard {fill in the blank} in a while...wonder what happened to it?" I find that it's still on my ipod/in my iTunes, but mislabeled, disorganized, etc. Nice article!
- tracydanger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Playlists I find useful:
-Not Played (0 play count)/Not Xmas (to know I actually listen through my whole collection. He kind of has this with low play count and you have to change the number once there are no songs left in the playlist)
-Company (not a smart playlist, songs I'd like friends to hear) - Kakkun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1sorry, forgot to read the comment by xakaxunknownx above
- *Ica*, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Also worth doing is setting in the playlists is "length is not greater than 6 minutes" for example and also "length is greater than 2 minutes" This should filter out any podcasts, audiobooks, itrip frequencys and hip hop skits that have got their way through.
- absmith1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is sharp. I really appreciate the smart playlist feature and this tutorial on how to get the most out of them is great.
I used to like the randomness that the Party Shuffle feature offered, but it would do dumb stuff because it didn't know not to play podcasts.
What I'd love to find is an even mildly configurable Party Shuffle -- though I'd probably learn (if I looked hard enough) that its really just a smarter playlist. - tracydanger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1As far as "these days", artists still make good 'whole' albums. What about Radiohead?
- Kakkun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1okay, I tried it and it still doesnt work. You need to make it "last played is not in the last 0 days" right?
- bilangew, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nice tutorial-- ill try that if I manage to get it working on Linux someday.
- tmdorsey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1People complaining about having to have all your songs rated, you can just do what I'm doing right now which is just add unrated songs to your "forgotten music" playlist and then rate the unrated songs as they are played. Being able to rate songs on the iPod itself helps a great deal.
- ultimate_ed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Listening to the album in order? Come on! That might have made sense in the days of Pink Floyd, but today, it seems most pop albums are an almost random collection, not any kind of thematically consistent work of art.
- Kakkun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I also have some audiobooks that I dont want in themix. yet it is. The audiobook is not in any of the other base playlists but it ends up in the mix. I tried doing "artist is not..." but that doesnt work either. It seems that the live updating is not working. Help!
- Nik420, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How do you filter out videos?
- tracydanger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, I have a bunch of songs in itunes - not one of which came from the iTunes music store (not that I'm against the store). The program is good regardless of your feelings on the store and DRM.
- Kakkun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It feels like its not kinda working. When I play a song from the mix that was from the "not often playlist", the song should disappear from the mix. But, its not working that way. Somebody help!
- lewsmind, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3This is a pretty old post on his blog, but a great idea nonetheless. Thanks for sharing.
- aaronm67, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I definitely agree. That is one of the reasons I enjoy bittorrent so much, because it makes it possible to download entire albums at once, so you can listen to it as the artist intended.
- drewfer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yes totally. I get what your saying and im totally with you. That would help a lot.
- anagami, on 07/02/2008, -1/+1I
- Kakkun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1sounds nice but I dont feel like rating 3000 songs...
- misterx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Instead of manually rating tracks, I use iRate which rates rates songs by how frequently they are played. The site for the app is defunct, but there is still an older Applescript version:
http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=irate - xavierh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I found this while searching on google and it works great with my 30gb ipod. I have a large music collection and the recommendations have help me to keep the music that I put on my ipod fresh...
- ibettinger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0smartplaylists.com also had a lot of great tips for creating playlists. The Ultimate Playlist (http://smartplaylists.com/comments.php?id=902_0_1_0_C) is really helpful. If you have a larger iPod you can increase the time or track limits.
- mp42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Very nice. No more listening to the same 50 songs every day..
- ibettinger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0smartplaylists.com also had a lot of great tips for creating playlists. The Ultimate Playlist (http://smartplaylists.com/comments.php?id=902_0_1_0_C) is really helpful. If you have a larger iPod you can increase the time or track limits.
- shiftless, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I'm a big fan of the My Top Rated playlist. Only the best songs (4-5 stars) get on that.
- punkguitarist, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1itunes should try to incoporate some of these options into their program. Anyway, not ground breaking news, but an interesting read.
- MyChupacabraRox, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I am a database kind of guy. I can't wait until we start seeing more apps with these types of querying capabilities.
- john570, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0The problem with the shuffle feature is that it greatly shortens the battery life. Thought I would mention this because when I first got my ipod(And this is a beginners article) I used the shuffle a lot and couldnt figure out why the battery was not holding a charge for long. You can actually feel the hard drive arm move between music tracks while this is on.
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