Sunday, September 26, 2010

Smart Playlists in iTunes

Smart Playlists are one of the main reasons I like iTunes so much. Below is just such a favoured Smart Playlist.

This controls the music I listen to day to day. It defines the following rules:
  1. Give me music from my general music collection.
  2. Add items from a separate Smart Playlist that contains un-played podcasts that I consider to be music e.g. ABC Radio National's In the Night Air, KEXP's Music That Matters, Mixtape Show Hip-Hop, The 20min Mixtape Show, IndieFeed: Hip Hop and Alpa Pup's sadly defunct Alternative Hip-Hop Lounge.
  3. Don't include items I have rated 1 or 2 stars. 
    1. I delete items rated 1 star. I never want to listen to them again!
    2. Generally I want to keep items rated 2 stars, but don't want to listen to them again on my device. Usually they are part of some collection I want to keep as a whole.
  4. Don't include items that I have listened to two or more times.
  5. Don't include items that I have listened to in the last eight weeks.
  6. Don't include items that I have skipped over previously (usually means I didn't want to listen to them and was not prepared to actually take the device out of my pocket and rate the item).
  7. And lastly, out of the 30GB or so that match these conditions, choose a random 5GB to put on my device.
Some useful links for Smart Playlists: