The more and more I keep using iTunes along with my iPod Nano and the iPhone, the more and more I love the Smart Playlist features.
Back in the old days, when I had my Creative Zen Micro and used the Windows Media Player. These things didn’t exist. I didn’t have smart playlists like I do now. For the most part, that was fine with me (I didn’t know what I was missing yet). The Zen Micro did what I needed it to do. It played my podcasts and all of the music that I had to play and it functioned perfectly.
But then like a year ago, my Zen Micro died. It was a sad day. I wasn’t expecting it, however, It meant that I had to get something else. After looking at the Zune’s and the new Zen Micro’s I decided that I was going to buy my first iPod.
So I bought an iPod Nano. Of course, what that meant was that not only did I have a new mp3 player, but I also had a new media player. The iPods require the use of iTunes (which is one of the reasons I was wary of switching to it), so I imported what little music I had over to iTunes and started using it. Everything was perfectly serviceable, however, there was nothing about the iPod and iTunes that would cause me to ever proclaim that I “love” it… yet!
Now here’s what I noticed a little bit after I first switched. Some of the little things that the iPod does is what makes everything work so well. The iPod is essentially a mobile version of iTunes. It keeps track of what you play, how many times you play it, what you rate it, etc… And when you sync it back to your computer. It puts all that information back into iTunes.
Some of you people that were iPod veterans might be like so!?! But I can tell you one thing… My Zen Micro never did that. So I never had statistics like what I played, and how much I played it or when it was last played unless it was played at my computer. And most of you guys reading this know me, I never sit at the computer listening to music.
But these statistics are also a key feature. They make all of this stuff work. They make what I’m about to tell you about possible, the one thing that makes iTunes awesome (maybe they’ve added it to Windows Media Player too, but I haven’t used that since V9.0). It’s the Smart Playlists. I’ve been playing with these, and tweaking with them for the last six months. And in that time, with all the statistics from the last year of using an iPod, I’m beginning to see that this is what makes the iPod so awesome.
Now, Lifehacker just did a story on some of these things. There are a couple of cool playlists that they have there. One of them is actually kind of obsolete as of the last update of iTunes though. (The Music Only one, since when you select playlist, you can now filter on the “Music” playlist automatically created).
But I thought it might be fun to go over some of my favorite ones now that I’ve either picked up, or invented myself. Of course, you can copy these and tweak them so that they match your listening habits and work best with your library to get the most out of your music collection.
25 Most Played Lately
This one shows me my most played songs, that have been played in the last three weeks. So something with a bunch of plays that’s been on my ipod longer doesn’t drown out some of the newer stuff that’s getting alot of plays.
* Match All of the following
– Playlist is “Music”
– Last Played is in the Last 3 Weeks
– Genre is not Comedy
* Limit to 25 items selected by Most Often Played
* Live Updating
50 Not Played Lately
This one shows me the stuff I like and haven’t heard in a long time, or stuff I have in iTunes and haven’t heard yet at all and don’t know if I like it, and gives me a playlist which I can listen to if I’m in the mood for something different that I haven’t heard in a while.
* Match all of the following rules
– Playlist is “Music”
– Genre is not Comedy
– Last Played is not in the last 2 months
– Rating is not 2 stars
– Rating is not 1 star
* Limit to 50 items selected by random
* Live updating
Bad Rips
Anything that I drop a 1 star on is basically something I’m tagging for future knowledge. Usually it’s because the MP3 is flawed and probably needs to be reripped from my CD’s.
* Match all of the following rules
– Rating is 1 star
* Live Updating
Rate These
Of course, for alot of these playlists to work, you have to make sure that you rate your music. This shows me all the songs I’ve listened too a few times, but I haven’t given a rating to yet.
* Match all of the following rules
– Play Count is greater than 2
– Skip Count is less than 3
– Rating is less than 1 star
– Playlist is Music
* Live Updating
Revisit Rating
Obviously, this one shows me songs I’ve given a decent rating to, but for some reason or another I tend to skip it a lot on my player. This calls attention to those songs and lets me take a look at it to decide if I want to drop the rating or not. If I don’t, I typically reset the skip count so it gets removed from the list for a while.
* Match all of the following rules
– Skip Count is in the range of 3 to 999
– Rating is greater than 2 stars
* Live Updating
And of course, everyone has the standard Recently Added and Recently Played. Of course, I’ve tweaked mine here or there to some degree. But they all work essentially the same.
I also have a couple of other standard smart playlists here or there (Such as the one that just lists all my five star songs). I also have some creative ones, like the one that grabs 25 random Beatles songs from one of the many I have in my library. And my absolute favorite one right now… The one that grabs all the songs that have a comment of “GH2″, “GH3″, or “Rock Band”. Yep. A smart playlist that finds all the songs that I have that are in either of the three Rhythm games on the Xbox 360. That one is freaking awesome.
I can honestly see that there is no reason that you would ever want to build a manual playlist. There is just no point. Just let iTunes build them for you with your rules. That way, if you add a new song that fits your criteria, or rerate some of your music as your tastes change. They automatically get updated for you.
The main thing is that with most of my playlists, every time that my iPod or iPhone sync up… I’m getting new and different songs onto it because that is how I can best rotate my library onto my two small 8gB devices. I guess it might be different if I had one of those big ones that hold everything. But I don’t so I’ve had to be creative. And it’s gotten me to the point now that I would prefer it this way even if I did have one of those big HDD versions of the iPod.
Now everything’s not all peas and carrots, as much as I like how some of these things work, there are a few things that I haven’t figured out yet, or that I wish worked a little better, or a little differently.
Just so I don’t look like a total Fanboy I’ll go over a couple of these soon too. Maybe one of you kids out there can help me with it so I don’t have to waste the time to search out the solutions.
written by Chris
\\ tags: apple, Guitar Hero, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, playlists, Rock Band, smart playlists, Zen Micro