Re-discovering your music collection - The Smart Playlist Way

[jk2004]

Please choose the appropriate forum for this topic. Thank you. I use the Smart Playlists extensively. Use the comment field to add more descriptive information and use the Smart Playlists to create real radio show effect.

Now, recently I added a Smart Playlist with a condition (among other conditions) :

Playcount=0

And guess how many songs that I had never listened to in the iPod, though I have added to my iPod in the process of adding entire albums, appeared there.

Of course there were many tracks that I had not picked for listening before but appear to be worth having in the playlists.

So I could discover some more good tracks within my collection itself.

jk

[iPac]

sounds like a good idea, i only really listen to a small selection of music on my ipod...............2pac playlist :D

[VousDew]

Good idea. I made a playlist of 30 songs whose counts are 0, and I'm suprised what's on there.

[iZON]

OK, that's cool. But after playcount '0' the Smartlist is redundant, then you have to keep adding '1' then '2' etc.

Here's a variation on the playcount. By creating a Smartlist with 'not played in the last' and then '3 weeks' randomised and limited to 50 tracks, I've now got a Smartlist (called Jukebox) which so far has played a 70/30 mix of unplayed/and recently played tracks.

[Rod Smith]

I do a lot of that kind of thing, but never thought of using comments to organize lists. Thanks for the tip! You can put subject, mood, activity ("jogging" -songs you like to hear when running for example) and list will pick up all songs that contain whichever words in comments you specify. Very cool!

[insomn_ia]

Originally posted by Rod Smith
I do a lot of that kind of thing, but never thought of using comments to organize lists. Thanks for the tip! You can put subject, mood, activity ("jogging" -songs you like to hear when running for example) and list will pick up all songs that contain whichever words in comments you specify. Very cool!

I do the exact same thing, except for basketball and for working out at the gym.

[VousDew]

Yeah, but then you have to add comments for every song in your library. Nuts to that.

[Rod Smith]

I guess you don't have to do it. I have a lot of songs in itunes. I won't be putting comments on all of them!

[jk2004]

It would not be as bad as it sounds. Ofcourse you would not be able to listen and update the comment field in your entire collection in a day. Practising it regularly will get you there after a couple of months. I use iTunes also a lot to play my collection. So when ever you find a good song to be tagged, you just do it on iTunes. After a couple of months you would have tagged a considerable portion of your collection. I still have lot of tracks which have not been tagged.

And when you do it for a while, you will automatically come up with few keywords to use. Then things become much easier. I like that classification more than the Genre classification because I listen to tracks in many languages.

jk

[goosebump512]

using comments to create playlists really isn't so hard. i've been doing it for a while... using tags like "ohw" for one hit wonders, "mom" for music that i like becuase my mother played it when i was a kid, "sing" for songs i love to sing along to, "rec" for songs that were reccommended to me by whoever... and they create really interesting lists.


some playlists that i've enjoyed (that don't require comments tags) are "loved and lost" (my rating is 5 stars, play count is less than two, limit to 50 songs sorted by least recently played, live updating). also, "the question is..." (song name contains "?", limit to 100 minutes selected by random, live updaying).

[Johnnybatters]

Is there a tutorial for the new smart playlist? I can't figure it out.

[timb_nz]

What else can you base Smart Playlists on?
ie can you get it to be done on lyrics?

(sorry, absolute n00b)

[Code Monkey]

Read this if you want to see an example of a way of making smart playlists into a virtual DJ tailored to you:

http://filebox.vt.edu/users/channum/files/smarlist_management.doc

There is almost nothing you cannot do via smartlists short of coming up with a way to rotate whole albums.