Finally, with the release of iTunes 9, Apple added more refinement options and criteria to smart playlists. What are some smarter playlists you've come up with?
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iPod What are your "smarter" playlists?
- Thread starter OrangeCuse44
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Media Kind was a welcome addition for me. It may have been added earlier, but I didn't notice it until I installed 9 and revisited my smart playlists for use on my new nano.
On one set of smart playlists that utilized a "by random" setting, I had to limit the file size in order to prevent movies/videos from attempting to sync to my older 2nd gen nano. Unfortunately, that also prevented longer trance music and megamixes from being picked, which disappointed this dance-music fool.
I revised it using Media Kind (Media Kind is Music), and it now works the way I really intended.
I'm planning on reviewing that entire set, now that Apple has finally seen fit to allow Autofill on all iPods and not just the shuffle.
On one set of smart playlists that utilized a "by random" setting, I had to limit the file size in order to prevent movies/videos from attempting to sync to my older 2nd gen nano. Unfortunately, that also prevented longer trance music and megamixes from being picked, which disappointed this dance-music fool.
I revised it using Media Kind (Media Kind is Music), and it now works the way I really intended.
I'm planning on reviewing that entire set, now that Apple has finally seen fit to allow Autofill on all iPods and not just the shuffle.
You don't have to do that anymore now that iTunes 9 allows you to sync all music by a certain artist.
I know, I have playlist for iPod too because I don't want 400 songs from one band only. I use smart playlists for playing music off iTunes, fast and easy!
Like what?
That's not new to iTunes 9. It has been there for a long time. In fact, I'm curious to know what, if anything, is different in iTunes 9 regarding Smart Playlists. I elected not to move to iTunes 9.... didn't like some of the bugs people were reporting and there's nothing I've heard of yet that 9 has that 8 doesn't. Apple's site doesn't go into much detail. Anyone care to enlighten me?
As far as I know, it was only "Kind" there before. I believe "Media Kind" is newer.
I keep mine fairly simple. I have
Kind is Apple Lossless audio file
Kind is WAV audio file
Now I organized by Playlist folder = Artists Name
Under that I put Smart Playlists for each Album I own of that Artist
Example
Playlist Folder = Dragonforce
Smartplaylist = Album is Valley of the Damned
Smartplaylist = Album is Sonic Firestorm
Smartplaylist = Album is Inhuman Rampage
Smartplaylist = Album is Ultra Beatdown
The smartplaylists are inside of the Playlist Folder so when you collapse the playlist folder just the name of the group is present.
I've also used playcount is less than to define songs I don't listen to often. The flipside to that is playcount is greater than... to define songs I listen to the most.
I would like to be able to do an and function like this...
Artist is "Bob Dylan" AND Album is "Greatest Hits".
A lot of albums are call Greatest Hits or Best of or Ultimate Collection and using the AND for both artist and album name would get around this.
Kind is Apple Lossless audio file
Kind is WAV audio file
Now I organized by Playlist folder = Artists Name
Under that I put Smart Playlists for each Album I own of that Artist
Example
Playlist Folder = Dragonforce
Smartplaylist = Album is Valley of the Damned
Smartplaylist = Album is Sonic Firestorm
Smartplaylist = Album is Inhuman Rampage
Smartplaylist = Album is Ultra Beatdown
The smartplaylists are inside of the Playlist Folder so when you collapse the playlist folder just the name of the group is present.
I've also used playcount is less than to define songs I don't listen to often. The flipside to that is playcount is greater than... to define songs I listen to the most.
I would like to be able to do an and function like this...
Artist is "Bob Dylan" AND Album is "Greatest Hits".
A lot of albums are call Greatest Hits or Best of or Ultimate Collection and using the AND for both artist and album name would get around this.
Perhaps a clarification of my playlist usage is in order.
Normally, when listening to headphones, I just shuffle all the songs on my nano. However, when I have them attached to external speakers, I have to be careful around my family, including my young daughter. So my playlist setup is this:
nanoEssentials: A standard playlist that contains my perennial faves.
nanoRandom: A Smart Playlist that chooses songs not already in nanoEssentials at random, excluding certain genres I'm not particularly fond of. I re-randomize this one every two weeks or so, to keep my selection from getting "stale". This is the one on which I had to limit the sizes, because Media Kind was not available at the time I created it.
nanoAll: A simple Smart combination of the above two (match Any of: Playlist is nanoEssentials or Playlist is nanoRandom). I use it only as a setup for the next one...
nanoKidSafe: A Smart Playlist that contains only those tracks in nanoAll in which Grouping contains KidSafe. I've tagged many of my "family-friendly" (no profanity or decidedly adult themes in the lyrics, or overly harsh sounds) tracks with the KidSafe designation. When I'm playing my nano out loud, I simply shuffle this playlist; it saves me from making a mad dash to skip that hardcore hip-hop or goth/industrial track.
Normally, when listening to headphones, I just shuffle all the songs on my nano. However, when I have them attached to external speakers, I have to be careful around my family, including my young daughter. So my playlist setup is this:
nanoEssentials: A standard playlist that contains my perennial faves.
nanoRandom: A Smart Playlist that chooses songs not already in nanoEssentials at random, excluding certain genres I'm not particularly fond of. I re-randomize this one every two weeks or so, to keep my selection from getting "stale". This is the one on which I had to limit the sizes, because Media Kind was not available at the time I created it.
nanoAll: A simple Smart combination of the above two (match Any of: Playlist is nanoEssentials or Playlist is nanoRandom). I use it only as a setup for the next one...
nanoKidSafe: A Smart Playlist that contains only those tracks in nanoAll in which Grouping contains KidSafe. I've tagged many of my "family-friendly" (no profanity or decidedly adult themes in the lyrics, or overly harsh sounds) tracks with the KidSafe designation. When I'm playing my nano out loud, I simply shuffle this playlist; it saves me from making a mad dash to skip that hardcore hip-hop or goth/industrial track.
In the past it was a text entry box and not a dropbown box... oh, and it didn't work at all. Now it does.
With the old system, if you had a mix of MP3 and AAC and Apple Lossless files in your library, it was hard to put both in the same smart playlist. Now you can just select "music" under Media Kind.
I'd still expect such a system to be labelled 'format' or 'file format' rather than kind. The way it is now makes more sense.
That's what Finder calls it. File "type" in the Windows world is file "kind" in the Mac world.
I just want to understand the advantage in doing this. What's the difference over just searching for the artist and hitting play after all others are filtered out?
Only if you have a small library!
There is no advantage. It's a very poor use of playlists, especially if you have a large library. Playlists should be used when grouping songs that can't be easily identified by a search. The last thing I need is 3,500 artist playlists, when a search takes only seconds.
I have some nested playlists that pick a random group of songs to fill X space but not if they were played in the last 3 days. Then when I sync my iphone it removes all the heard songs and puts fresh ones on there. In order to keep my favorites from being removed I sync another playlist of most plays and top rated songs.
One thing I wish we had is a "random refresh" option where if you told it to pick X songs by random refresh it would really randomize each time say you synced or every 24 hours. It was confusing at first to realize the smart playlist I setup for X random songs only randomized once and never again.
One thing I wish we had is a "random refresh" option where if you told it to pick X songs by random refresh it would really randomize each time say you synced or every 24 hours. It was confusing at first to realize the smart playlist I setup for X random songs only randomized once and never again.
I give each of my favorite artist a smart playlist. Then I can quickly click on an artist and find the album I want to play.
Might not be necessary if you have a small library but even after cleaning out the duplicates and deleting the extra crap I still have over 600 albums.
I've been doing it this way for a long time. I'm not saying it's the best way but is just what I like to do.