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iPod What's the point of this?

S

someone28624

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 15, 2007
849
11
Buffalo
My room mate makes a playlist for every artist and every album in her music library on iTunes. Then if she wants to listen to that artist or that album, instead of just finding it in her library, she scrolls through all of her playlists and finds the right one.

I kinda felt like, "Meh, whatever suits you" but then, when at school and able to view hundreds of people's iTunes libraries, this actually seems like a fairly common occurrence.

I also just googled "Organize iTunes" and found articles suggesting making smart playlists for each artist.

Can anyone clue me in on what the point of this would be, since you can easily play all songs by an artist in both iTunes and iPods?
 
Perhaps these people don't know about the "Browse" view mode?

I'm right there with you, no point in duplicate functionality.
 
1) Well, if her iPod can't hold her entire library, she can just sync certain artists' playlist.
2) Burning a compilation CD would be quicker.
3) Maybe she just "Think Different":apple:
 
I do this

The reason being is say there are multiple artists on one track (a lot of rap albums have guest features). If you have the guest artist in the Name field (the song name field) or in the Artist field, they will not show up in Browse mode under their names. So I have Smart Playlists created for each artist so that if they are in the Name field or the Artist field, they will show up in my Smart Playlist. Does this make sense?

If there is an easier way to do this, I'm all ears.
 
Use the search feature.

If you search for "Dave", it'll show every category that has Dave. Then you use Album Art mode to go to your album/artist section you want, or just scroll down. It's really not that hard.
 
eawmp1 said:
1) Well, if her iPod can't hold her entire library, she can just sync certain artists' playlist.
Click to expand...
That's one reason why I do it for some artists.

Also, since some artists have multiple albums, I find it easier to put all their songs in one playlist. Convenient.
 
I make a playlist for an artist-album sometimes if I have just bought it and want to highlight its presence on one of my iPods. I sync my pods manually so it's easier to drag a playlist to the pod and just let it copy the playlist and the music in one move. See otherwise I have to drag the music over there and then also make the playlist ON the iPod.

Another reason to make an artist-album list is that you can start that playing and then be working on other aspects of your iTunes library while the music plays, and iTunes will still keep track of what it's supposed to play next, paying attention only to that playlist.

But if you split your browser window, highlight some artist and album and start playing a track of music that way, then iTunes will not retain that same view of tracks you wanted played, if you start cruising around elsewhere in your library looking at other stuff while that music is playing.

Like if you're listening to a highlighted album in your library, and you suddenly remember someone emailed you the lyrics to a song in another album and you want to paste them into iTunes, so you go fish that track up and open its info window and get what your friend mailed you for lyrics and paste that in there...

.... and meanwhile the playing track from the other album ends...

Well then iTunes will stop playing because the view it had is no longer available to it; what's in the library browser window now is something else, a different artist, some other album. Or depending on how you have your iTunes browser window set when the track ends, it might play some completely other track, because say the same genre is still highlighted but not that same artist.

So that made me go nuts, until I realized I could avoid it by just playing from a playlist instead.

I do go through and delete a lot of that type of playlist periodically, but I especially keep them around when the music is new to me and I will be wanting to select it fairly often or put it on several of my iPods.

Finally, I have a few playlists that just have one track in them. I prefix the playlist with 000-- or something to make it sort high in the list of all playlists. They are usually just current favorite songs and so they are really handy any time I want to hear them, just look at the top of my playlists for the right one instead of hunting around in the big library.
 
That is seemingly a lot of work for very little reward... especially when you can do it dynamically with the standard iTunes controls. Perhaps that's just because I'm thinking about how I would do this for +13,000 tracks.

However, if you are not always in front of a computer (jab at the the more technical MacRumors-ites...er... slashdotters) this may be more useful. Also, for a huge classical music collection (w/ many different artists performing the same pieces) it may be a pretty good idea.

All in all, I think its overkill.
 
Back when itunes first came around, I would make a playlist for each album. A few months into it, I was like, "wait, what am I doing?" and then I stopped! the end.

LizKat said:
I make a playlist for an artist-album sometimes if I have just bought it and want to highlight its presence on one of my iPods. I sync my pods manually so it's easier to drag a playlist to the pod and just let it copy the playlist and the music in one move. See otherwise I have to drag the music over there and then also make the playlist ON the iPod.
Click to expand...

On this topic: Lizkat (or anyone), I have a kind of stupid question. I synced my itunes to my ipod, then I archived my music on my laptop, and then deleted most of it off the laptop. So my ipod updates from now on will be manual updates. Question: When I drag playlists from itunes to my ipod, and the playlists contain music that's already on my ipod, those files won't get duplicated on my ipod, will they? Transferring a playlist just transfers the "list," right? and not the files themselves?

Also, I really wish the ipod had a "frequently played" section, where I can quickly start up my favorite albums! I guess I could just make playlists for my favorite albums...
 
I make auto playlists for artists that I have many albums for to collect all songs from that artist easily from compilations, and also to have it automatically remove all songs prior to a given date so I can listen to that artist on shuffle (by album or song) and not hear the same tune until I've listened to all the work I have from that artist.
 
I was tempted to do this when I switched from Musicmatch Jukebox a few years ago, since it sorts by album or artist, and has a dropdown for artists. However, I never felt like it, and now see no reason to do so, especially since iTunes 9.

The browse field works just as well, if not better.

However, I can see why people would do this for other less obvious reasons.
 
I don't get that either

The only playlist I have on my iPod is my exercise playlist... Its a specialized group of music that helps me get warmed up, reved up, then a bunch of adrenaline pumping music to help keep me running when I want to quit.
 
This (playlist) method seems even less relevant now iTunes9 allows you to Sync music by Artist.

iTunes is expert and getting you to spend hours messing around with your library when you could/should be listening to the (goddam) music:D (see my thread on artwork for hypocrisy/irony)

I sometimes wonder where the line is between iTunes and the Music, for some I think the balance is a little off. iTunes/Media Player>Music.

This is why I gave up on Foobar many moons ago, was spending too long worrying about the player, like constantly polishing your Turntable pre-digital.
 
This sort of reminds me of my friends who will have a folder saying "Movies" then for each individual film they have another folder with the film name and then all that's in that folder is the actual file. I just don't see the point.
 
instaxgirl said:
This sort of reminds me of my friends who will have a folder saying "Movies" then for each individual film they have another folder with the film name and then all that's in that folder is the actual file. I just don't see the point.
Click to expand...

Oddly enough, this is how iTunes now sorts its movies if you use the new media sorting.

However, I also see that iTunes has introduced iTunes Extras, which is the film version of iTunes LP (I didn't hear anything about this.. iTunes LP took the news, I didn't know anything about movies until I saw the little icon in the movies section). Perhaps the folders are needed for this reason to maintain visual balance when browsing your folders.

I'm fine with it. In fact, I prefer it this way.
 
I have a huge iTunes library of 52,000+
The browser is clogged, so I make smart playlists of my most played/collected artists, and put them into a playlist folder. Now I don't need to retype a band name 1000 times, and I get to have my artists-specific collections all together in whatever order/presentation I prefer.
 
After I discovered you can make playlist folders I started adding more playlists. Whenever I get a new full album I always make a playlist for it so I can play it on my ipod without much hassle. It's nice because I can go into that playlist and have the album art column on the side and it looks smooth.

I make a playlist for all my favorite mostly complete albums, as well as a playlist for all my favorite artists. In these playlists I can go into grid view and it is nice and organized. If I just went into the main browser and did that, it would be a mess!

Let me get some screenshots up here so you can see what I mean...
 
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