Filed under: How-tos, iTunes, TUAW Tips
5 Smart Playlists to help you manage your iTunes library
Smart playlists have been a feature of iTunes since version 3.0 (circa 2002), and they provide a means for you to create automatically-updated playlists that fit a certain criteria. For me, they serve as a hands-off way to stay up-to-date on my latest music and Podcasts, as well as a repository for a certain genre of music. To create a smart playlist, click on "File" and select "New Smart Playlist" (or you can use the command-option-n keyboard shortcut).
If you want a playlist that contains only holiday music, you could specify that the playlist include all songs with either the "Christmas" or "Chanukah" genre tag on it. Because smart playlists auto-update, you needn't worry about adding songs to it: as long as the track's tags meet the criteria, it is automatically included in the playlist -- unless, of course, you choose the "limit to" option, which limits the the tracks in the playlist based on your choosing.
Read more for five of my favorite smart playlists, as well as criteria for how to create them.
Recently added Podcasts: This Smart Playlist allows me to stay up-to-date with my Podcasts.
- Match all of the following rules
- Media Kind is "Podcast"
- Date added is in "Last 7 days" (or whichever date range you prefer)
Recently added music: This Smart Playlist lets me listen to the music I've recently purchased, downloaded, or ripped.
- Match all of the following rules
- Media Kind is "Music"
- Date added is in "Last 2 Weeks" (or whichever date range you prefer)
My favorite songs: This Smart Playlist allows me to listen to some of my favorite songs, based on play count.
- Match all of the following rules
- Media Kind if "Music"
- Play Count is greater than "50" (or whatever play count you desire)
The genre-based Smart Playlist: For that "Jazzy," "Classical" or "Grungy" listening mood you happen to be in.
- Match all of the following rules
- Media Kind if "Music"
- Genre is "Jazz" (or whatever genre you prefer)
The genre and year-based Smart Playlist: For listening to a genre and specific period in time that just rocked, i.e., the British Invasion.
- Match all of the following rules
- Genre is Alternative (or the genre of your choosing)
- Click on the ellipsis button (...) and make sure "Any of the following rules" is chosen with the corresponding drop-down menu
- Year is within the range "1990" to "1999"
Back in 2004, Apple partnered with BMW to release the iPodYourBMW car kit, which at the time was only one of a small handful of kits that allowed you to control your iPod from your car stereo. However, the BMW iPod kit required you to sync your name your playlists "BMW1," "BMW2," "BMW3," "BMW4," and "BMW5" to correspond with the factory radio's preset 1 through 5 buttons (button 6 is reserved for your entire iPod library). For this, Smart Playlists have been a godsend for me.
Readers, tell us about some of the Smart Playlists that you use.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
dallasward007 said 8:15AM on 10-30-2009
But has Apple fixed the sync issue on smart playlists that has popped up?
Reply
Jonathan Riches said 8:21AM on 10-30-2009
This would be a great article...unfortunately iTunes 9 means iPhone or iPod touch users have to manually update their Smart Playlists each time they add new music because leaving Live Update on results in a bug where all the music is jumbled out of order. Really annoying.
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Brian Allen said 10:21AM on 10-30-2009
What order is expected in a smart playlist?
Mendelson9 said 2:05PM on 10-30-2009
I have the same problem. FIX IT APPLE!!!
diefy1977 said 9:00AM on 10-30-2009
My favorite smart playlist format utilizes the ratings (greater than 3 stars) and is sorted by date added with the newest songs in my library at the top...I always have access to my favorite 250 new tunes...
Reply
Le Big Mac said 9:03AM on 10-30-2009
I use a combo of star-ratings and last played to create a playlist of the songs I like the most buy haven't listened to in a while.
Stars >=4
Last played > 3 months
(add other restrictions re genre, etc.)
Reply
p96 said 4:32PM on 10-30-2009
Yes, variety being the spice of life and all that: Last Played > 4 months, Skip Count < 5, Genre != Podcast, Genre != Books & Spoken, etc..
It fixes the issue of iTunes random seeming to favor certain songs and artists and never seeming to play other songs one wants to hear.
Lu said 9:14AM on 10-30-2009
One of my favorite smart playlist is one for songs recently added and never listen to (play count = 0). Unfortunately, while until some time ago this playlist used to automatically update on my iphone (deleting a song from the playlist once I listened to it), now it just updates when I sync the phone with itunes. Does anyone know if this is a bug of the latest releases of itunes (or iphone firmware), and if exists a trick to fix it?
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Jax said 9:36AM on 10-30-2009
I populate my iPhone with songs I haven't listened to in a week that have at least 4/5 stars using a smart playlist. I've rated all of my songs depending on how much I like them. This way since my iPhone only holds 16 GB, I always get a fairly fresh playlist of good songs. I also sync a playlist called "iPhone songs" that I fill with a few random songs that I want regardless of when I last heard them, and I sync another playlist of songs I've downloaded but not listened to yet. It works pretty well for me.
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Jesse Jones said 9:40AM on 10-30-2009
A really useful playlist that I've created recently is one that makes a playlist of songs that I play a lot, but have never rated. I have 10k+ songs in my library, so i'm trying to get a large(r) percentage of my library rated to help Genius, etc.
Media Kind is Music
Rating is less than 1
Limit to 1GB selected by most played
Call it "Need to Rate"
Then, when I'm out and about, I can put on this playlist, listen to songs that I like and rate them!
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David Lindenan said 3:40PM on 11-03-2009
This is great! The only problem, though, is that if you rate the songs while you are playing, say half-way through, it will remove the song and stop playing music. I've turned off Auto-Update but how do I manually update my playlist? Don't see anything in the context menu. Ideas?
pantsparty said 9:52AM on 10-30-2009
I use smart playlists to make workout playlisits.
BPM Range is 130-140 criteria
You can get a .xml file to import and create a whole set of these BPM smart playlists here,
http://cadenceapp.com/support/xml/70to200BPMT20MP.xml
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Mickey said 2:44PM on 10-30-2009
But how do you determine the bpm in the first place?
TrendGiveAfuck said 10:07AM on 10-30-2009
Why have a Smart List for genre, when you already have a genre list in the iTunes browser next to artist and album lists?
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Brian Allen said 10:20AM on 10-30-2009
The genre doesn't cover the whole picture. You may want just highly rated songs in the genre as 3 stars to 4.
Or, the genre tags are not perfect. Many songs may be tagged as Rock, Alternative, Punk, or Pop with them all really being closer to the Rock genre.
You can blend these mixes of songs together to make a smart Rock genre playlist.
jdechko said 12:09PM on 10-30-2009
When I'm in the mood to listen to a particular genre (or style of song), I usually will turn on Genius, which gives me the benefit of a fresh playlist and some songs that go with my mood that I might not have thought about. This has the added benefit of working even when your tags are a bit screwed up and for some cross-over genres.
gerwen said 10:11AM on 10-30-2009
Check out this fantastic guide on smartlists (.pdf):
http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/view.php?id=1154607&da=y
It changed the way i listen to music.
Reply
Jesse Jones said 10:23AM on 10-30-2009
Your link didn't work (for me). It just downloads the "view.php" file - not a PDF...
gerwen said 10:34AM on 10-30-2009
Strange, works for me in IE, and Firefox, but not Chrome. Right-clicking and save link as in Chrome seemed to work.
It's not my guide, and I got the link from a sig on a message board.
Anyone else get it to work?
bdot said 10:54PM on 10-30-2009
use the "print" menu.
open the link in WHATEVER browser you want, the selcet :
- File > Print
then click on the PDF button in the lower-left corner, then click on the "Save As PDF" option.
hope that helps!!!