QotD: Smart Playlists
Posted December 3rd, 2003 @ 06:44pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Question: How many of your playlists are smart playlists?
My Answer: I use entirely smart playlists. Only when I'm making a CD will I make a "stupid" playlist. I've got smart playlists for each decade. I've got a smart playlist called "All Songs" (I can do things there that I don't want to do in my Library). I've got playlists called "Sound Effects," "Audible.com," "Classical," and "Dictionaraoke." I've got playlists called "Holiday," "Favorite Artists," and "Moldy Songs." Some are named "Most Played 250," "iPod Hits," "Recently Played," and "The Girls." Finally, my most valuable playlist (I typically just shuffle play songs from my Library, after all) is called "Unrated & Unplayed." It lists all of the tracks which have either not been rated or played (the word "or" takes up valuable space that a single-character ampersand gives back).
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Posted 03 Dec 2003 at 7:18pm #
What's in iPod Hits? Is it stuff you only listen to on your iPod? How do you make that playlist "smart"?
Posted 03 Dec 2003 at 7:43pm #
iPod Hits
[Rating] [is in the range] [**** and *****]
[Album] [does not contain] [Audible.com]
Posted 03 Dec 2003 at 10:35pm #
Fewer than I should. I actually make dumb play-lists for characters I'm writing to get in the mood when doing fiction. I also have an iPod playlist since I've got an original 5GB model. Beyond that 'Recently Imported' for things I sucked in in the last two weeks was a big hit when I was consuming music.
Posted 03 Dec 2003 at 10:54pm #
I guess I must be really dumb... but how in the heck do you use the smart playlist feature anyhow?
I should say that I don't allow auto-syncing so maybe that's why they don't seem to work with my 3G iPod.
Posted 04 Dec 2003 at 2:15am #
50%. Six smart lists, six normal lists. The normal lists are music I like, handpicked and sorted in six different categories, ranging from "Nice and calm" to "Evil rapid death" depending on my mood.
Posted 04 Dec 2003 at 3:19am #
iTunes playlists
Following up to an entry on NSLog, here’s a list of my smart playlists in iTunes. “Getting moldy” — My...
Posted 04 Dec 2003 at 9:40am #
This blog might be of some use Smart Playlists.com
Posted 04 Dec 2003 at 10:32am #
Thanks amarre!! That website is great. I use smart playlists for so much stuff. I don't understand how anyone could manage 1000s of songs without them.
I'm very anal about the tags on my mp3s (AACs), and have gotten in the habit of copying the Style and Tone information from http://www.allmusicguide.com into the comments field. So I have smart playlists for everything like "Southern Rap" "West Coast Rap" "East Coast Rap" "Album Rock" "Arena Rock" etc.
Posted 04 Dec 2003 at 5:58pm #
iTunes Playlists
From nslog(): Question: How many of your playlists are smart playlists? Right now it's about half and half - 13...
Posted 06 Dec 2003 at 11:47pm #
Smart Playlists in iTunes
I was just thinking about how much I use Smart Playlsts, and I see others are blogging on that very subject (1, 2). My favorite smart playlists: Been a while: Songs we haven't played for at least 40 days. When...
Posted 07 Dec 2003 at 8:23pm #
I'm not that much into smart lists; I mostly just use shuffle, though I have a smart playlist called 'no classical', which should be self-explanatory.
What I really want is something I call "Three Shot Burst" - a shuffle play mode which plays three random songs by a random artist, then chooses another random artists, etc.
Cause sometimes, on by-song shuffle, a song comes up and I want to hear more by that artist. On the other hand, by-album shuffle is typically too much by an artist.
I've submitted this as a suggestion, but who knows if it'll happen.
(Another thing that would be cool is a way to save and import equalizer settings.)
Posted 20 Mar 2004 at 7:42am #
I just have one smart playlist... "15 Most Played"... When I want to burn a CD and don't know what to burn... I just burn the songs from this playlist.
Carebear... I am also very "anal" about the tags. But I use the "Comments" field for noting any extra (featured) artists in a song... which comes in very handy. (When I search for Eminem, not only do I get Eminem results, I get all the 50 CENT, Dr. Dre, Obie Trice songs he appeared in.) I actually think Apple should add a "Featuring" field...
Then I also make the comments field my right most column when browsing through music.