iTunes Playlists

iTunes includes two types of playlists: Standard and Smart Playlists.

Standard Playlists work great if you want to group a set number of songs together. You have total control over what songs get into the playlist. Great if you know exactly what you want.

Smart Playlists make it so that iTunes builds a playlist based on criteria of your choosing. Smart Playlists will scan your entire library to find whatever matches your criteria, and they update their contents as new stuff is added to your iTunes collection.

Is one any better than the other? I guess it depends on what you like. Personally, I prefer Smart Playlists over Standard Playlists. They are much more flexible. The majority of what I'll be sharing here uses Smart Playlists.

Odds are that you have some sort of holiday music in your iTunes library. A good smart playlist to build is one where you try to include all of your holiday music in one shot. In the case of the holiday playlist sample, I filtered only for Christmas music simply by grabbing only album names with Christmas in the title or specific songs (like John Lennon's Happy Xmas (War is Over)).

If I had a lot of songs like Happy Xmas, I would have just built a Standard Playlist for those songs and then used that playlist as a criteria (yes, Smart Playlists let you use another playlist as criteria).

Of course, I could just as easily make it so that I filter out the Genre of holiday, but I like the idea of having a different playlist for every holiday that I might have music for. That way, if I have just Christmas or just Halloween music, I can add that back into the mix during the appropriate time of year.

I like having a Music Only playlist. For this one, I used the built in Playlist of Music as a basis.

The Genre check is a leftover from when Podcasts were stored right along with Music in iTunes. I didn't want to listen to a Podcast in the middle of a Music Only playlist. Odds are, if you wanted to recreate this, you wouldn't need it. However, it is possible that you have Spoken Word, or Books, or some other Genre in your library that you don't want to hear in your playlist. Feel free to exclude them with the Genre is Not .. format.

You will have to look at your Music collection (if you don't see Genre listed, Control click or right mouse click at the top of the list (in the column headers) to add it. You will have to type in the Genre in your smart playlist exactly as it appears in the music list to exclude it.

Then it is a simple matter of adding additional Playlist options. In this case, I filter out French Level 1 (while it is a good idea to learn a new language, who wants a lesson in the middle of their music), and I filter out Christmas Music.

When it is Christmas time, and I want the songs included, I simply remove the filter from my Music Only playlist. Like magic, I will hear Christmas music along with my other stuff. When Christmas is over, I just add the filter back in.

Using Genres is an effective way to know what you are listening to. However, they only work if all of your stuff has been set up with a Genre. It is a good idea to build a Genre testing smart playlist in order to find songs that do not have a Genre, and then setting the Genre appropriately.

Here is a smart playlist that uses Genres to limit the results (instead of specific playlists). The major difference is that John Lenon's Happy Xmas (War is Over) would show up (as it defaults to Rock for Genre), but you could technically edit that out. Or, you could not limit the Genre of Holiday and use the playlist idea as I did before. Whatever works for you.

I don't often think too much about what I want to listen to; I just use the iTunes Party Shuffle mode. However, I don't want just anything to show up, so I switched the default Source from Music to my own Music Only playlist. That way, while I won't know what I'm going to hear next, I do have an idea of what I won't be listening to.

It is a good idea to fairly rate your music. This can be used to build special playlists (my all time favorite songs), and it can even be used in the iTunes Party Shuffle mode to ensure that you are hearing your favorite music more often than stuff you didn't really like all that well.

This is an easy smart playlist to set up. I use it whenever I import new music (either through the iTunes store or via CD).

Since I listen to iTunes in Party Shuffle mode most of the time, what I hear is fairly random. However, I still want to make certain that all of my songs are given a chance. So I set up a smart playlist that uses my Music Only playlist as an input, and I just added a criteria that the song hasn't been heard in at least 90 days.

This way, I get a chance to hear some stuff that I haven't heard for a while just by using this playlist instead of using the Party Shuffle.