@lesbiansayswhat: the site started working. My smart playlist is 5 days long.

lesbiansayswhat

Website down? But, this very much pertains to my music collecting habits. Will try it this week.

lesbiansayswhat

I having been using a similar smart list. I star the songs that I hate with 1 star. The songs that I haven't listened to obviously don't have any stars. Songs with 2 stars are the ones which can be demoted any time to 1 star. So I have 2 smart lists. One with songs less than 1 star and one with songs greater than or equal to 3 stars.

kaushalmodi

@Kevinpalooza: I had to read it three times to figure out why the heck they would call their blog that.

taybay

I usually just sort by Last Played and hit play. I don't have an iPod, so maybe this is more useful for those that do.

blot

I'm almost assuredly not the first to point this out, but good grief, couldn't they have picked a better name than podophile? Even if it's the greatest, most useful site ever would you really be comfortable telling your friends about it?

Kevinpalooza

Songs that you don't play? There is such a thing? Man!

Here is my needlessly complicated playlisting scheme that I am secretly quite proud of. I very rarely fiddle with my tunes except for once in awhile when I get a song in my head and *have* to hear it -- other than that, this scheme keeps me in a good mix. And no pesky ignored tunes! Eventually, they all cycle through.

My insanity:

1. Any songs that are better than the general population get four stars. (Originally these were the songs I had dubbed mix-cd-worthy.)
2. Any songs that I love so much I'd gladly listen to again regardless of when I listened to them last get five stars.
3. Everything else stays unrated.
4. Create a new smart playlist called "Recently Unplayed." Set it to contain anything that has not been played in the last three months.
5. Create another smart playlist called "Recently Unplayed Better Songs." Set it to contain anything that is rated four stars and has not been played in the last six weeks.
6. Create another smart playlist called "Best Songs Not Played This Week." Set it to contain anything that is rated five stars and hasn't been played in the last week.
7. Create a final smart playlist called "Playlist of Record." Set it to contain songs that are in ANY of the last three playlists. This is the playlist I nearly exclusively listen to (actually, I point Party Shuffle at it).

I occasionally fiddle the date limits on the various playlists so that there's usually 600-700 songs in the final playlist with about a third of them higher-rated.

Bonus complications:
8. Create a regular playlist and name it "On Notice." As you listen to your music, dump in all of the songs you realize you can no longer stand.
9. Create a smart playlist and name it "Recently Unplayed and Allowable." Set it to contain songs that ARE in "Recently Unplayed" and are NOT in "On Notice."
10. Use "Recently Unplayed and Allowable" in step 7 instead of the original "Recently Unplayed" list.

Even more complicated:
11. Create a regular playlist and name it "Do Not Open Until Xmas." Dump in all of your Christmas music.
12. Add a rule to "Recently Unplayed and Allowable" stating that it cannot contain songs in "Do Not Open Until Xmas."
13. Around November, or whenever you can stand to hear Christmas music again, remove the rule. (This is my lame workaround for the lack of an iTunes rule like "if today's date is...".) Christmas music will now percolate through your main playlist again, but it won't rule the day.

I recently added another few rules to segregate a couple hundred songs to play exclusively on the iPod in the car, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Also, although I fully expect most people think this is utterly insane, I just know there is at least one person out there who read this whole thing and found it unbearably hot.

mschlock

I have a great smart playlist:

Plays everything 10 times.
If something catches my "ear" I rate it 2 or 3
If something doesn't get any rating after 10 listens, it gets pitched.
Items rated get set back to zero and listened to 10 more times.
I don't listen to anything within the last 2 weeks.

I'm perfect in every way.

Maulleigh

You should mention that many other media players outside of iTunes use Auto-playlists, which are essentially the same thing.

I know, I know, I should never imply that there's anything media related outside the Apple world...my bad.

Tony of TonyandJuan.com

i went through and deleted 240MB of music last night -mostly the ones that the entire album wasnt played much

fullyrandomtandem

@blot: yep it is great to use on ipod

fullyrandomtandem

I actually created one of these after the post about the best of 2007.
Dont forget that you have to exclude digital booklets and music videos.
I also made mine so that it uses all of my music instead of just music from 2007.

fullyrandomtandem

Here are the major parts of my iTunes setup which has evolved over time:

First, "not played or skipped": skip count = 0, play count = 0, rating is not 1, rating is not 2. This play list is to help me go through music I haven't listened to yet. When I feel like rating music, this is the playlist I listen to.

A note on my rating system:

1 - mark for deletion
2 - song has a glitch (eg.wasn't ripped properly), need to get a new copy.
3 - play this semi-often
4 - play this fairly often
5 - play this very often

If not rated and I've played or skipped the song before, then assume the song is okay but I don't want to hear it too often. It's probably worth keeping.

Next, I have a cluster of playlists that shuffle my music according to rating and last played.

"hard": heavy music or music with lots of profanity.

"soft": soft rock, love songs, etc.

"speech": audio books, etc...

"0345_source": genres I'd normally want to listen to. Not in playlist "hard", "soft", "speech". Last skipped not in the last 30 days. Rating is not 2.

"0stars_closeplayed": Rating is 0 stars. Playlist is "0345_source". Last played in the last 6 months.

"0stars_farplayed": Rating is 0 stars. Playlist is "0345_source". Playlist is not "0stars_closeplayed". Play count is greater than 0. Limit to 10 items selected by least recently played.

"3stars_closeplayed": Rating is 3. Playlist is "0345_source". Last played is in the last 13 weeks.

"3stars_farplayed": Rating is 3. Playlist is "0345_source". Playlist is not "3stars_closeplayed". Limit to 250 MB selected by least recently played.

"4stars_closeplayed": Rating is 4. Playlist is "0345_source". Last played is in the last 7 weeks.

"4stars_farplayed": Rating is 4. Playlist is "0345_source". Playlist is not "4stars_closeplayed". Limit to 500 MB selected by least recently played.

"5stars_closeplayed": Rating is 5. Playlist is "0345_source". Last played is in the last 3 weeks.

"5stars_farplayed": Rating is 5. Playlist is "0345_source". Playlist is not "5stars_closeplayed". Limit to 1000 MB selected by least recently played.

Now that you have all that set up, create a list to tie it together:

"0345_farplayed": Playlist is 0stars_farplayed or 3stars_farplayed or 4stars_farplayed or 5stars_farplayed.

Then one more layer to add any finishing touches:

"for ipod": Playlist is 0345_farplayed and last skipped not in the last 30 days.

The "for ipod" playlist is the one I sync to my ipod. What I'm trying to accomplish with all the above is:

- higher rated songs are played more often (higher rating = less time passes before a song is eligible to be re-played).
- the number of higher rated songs make up a higher percentage of the final playlist. That way lower rated songs are not only played less often, they show up less in the playlist.

I'm always fine tuning songs ratings. When I hear a song too often, I bump it down one or more stars. If I want to get rid of a song, I give it 1 star to mark it for deletion. I've got a "1 star" playlist which I purge regularly (I've deleted countless songs - something you can't do with CDs).

If I find I'm reducing the rating of too many songs, I'll adjust the "played in the last X days" settings in each of the Xstars_closeplayed lists.

Hope you find this useful. :)

jcobol

i use smart lists all the time... nothing new.

atomicrabbit

I have a smart playlist for songs not played in 6 months or more, which I listen to on shuffle whenever I don't feel like listening to something specific. Keeps my library constantly flowing!

adam807

I really need to figure out why my iPod 3rd gen isn't updating playcounts back into iTunes. :(

so much useful info missing

engtech