iTunes: Using Smart Playlists

iTunes: Using Smart Playlists

As some of my friends know I’m a bit OCD about my iTunes and how I organize it, so I thought I would share some cool tips on how you can keep your music playlists always fresh. This is especially useful if you’ve got an iPhone or and iPod that doesn’t have enough space for your entire collection.

More in Tutorials | May 1st, 2009

Rate Your Music
The first thing you must commit to is rating your entire library. If you’re like me and have well over 7500 tracks it can take you years to accomplish if you stick to your own rules. Which brings me to my next point.

Establish Rating Rules
Music comes in all shapes and forms. There’s long tracks, short tracks, intros, interviews, good songs, bad songs, whatever songs. When rating your music it’s good practice to set some rules as to how you’ll do so. This is what I did:
1 Star: Marked for deletion/language learning audio
2 Stars: Intros, interviews, and other audio I don’t want to get rid of.
3 Stars: My whatever songs. Songs I don’t want to delete and enjoy listening every once in a while, but aren’t my favorites.
4 Stars: These are my favorite songs.
5 Stars: My life would be over if I didn’t have these songs.

Rating music, like I mentioned before, will always be a work in progress. Doing so, however, will give you countless more options on how to listen to your music.

Creating Smart Playlists
In case you’re not sure what a smart playlist is, it’s basically a playlist that allows you to set certain rules. Then all songs that fit those rules will be automatically added to the playlist instead of you having to go through your whole library to find all the songs you want. I have a total of 13 smart playlists and it’s the primary way of how I listen to music. Here are my smart playlists and their rules:

Best: This smart playlist is simple. Only one rule.
Rating / is greater than / 3 stars

Best Least: Since I have an iPhone and all of my music doesn’t fit I have to cut down on my favorite songs in some way, so I’ve devised this playlist. This is my most important one. It includes my favorite songs that I haven’t heard in 12 weeks or more. When I listen to the songs on my iPhone and then sync, the playlist is refreshed.
Rating / is greater than/ 3 stars
Last Played / is not in the last / 12 weeks
Size / is less than / 20 MB (this ensures that extremely long songs aren’t included)
Last Skipped / is not in the last / 2 weeks

Recent Favorites: When adding new songs to my library I like finding my new favorite songs quickly.
Rating / is greater than / 3 stars
Date Added / is in the last / 3 months

Not Rated: This playlist contains all songs in my library which I still have to rate. When I’ve got some time, I’ll play songs from here and rate them as I go.
Rating / is less than / 1 star
Podcast / is false (this excludes Podcasts)
Time / is greater than / 0:01 (this excludes Digital Booklets)
Size / is less than / 30 MB (this excluded TV shows)

So you can see how there’s almost limitless combinations you can make. If you’ve got a creative smart playlist I would love to hear what it is.

Tags: iTunes, Music, OS X