Brace yourselves . . . periodically I will have opinions on this blog. Today, pretty much just before and during dinner (as I lunged to the laptop between bites much to Laura's chagrin), I started playing with Smart Playlists in iTunes. Before today, I didn't know they even existed. But then, I was on my way to work this morning in the GTI (which I also LOVE . . . maybe another day I will verbosify that topic) and I learned something. On the podcast I was listening to ("The Apple Phone Show"), one of the commentators talked about how the 8 gigs on the iPhone isn't that bad of a limitation and explained why. He said he sets up a Smart Playlist in iTunes with certain conditions so he always has stuff to listen to that he hasn't heard in a while. Pulling down the File --> New Smart Playlist, I discovered fantastic features. Using pull-down boxes, you can set it up so you have a live-updated list that meets any of a zillion criteria. In order to set up a list of music I haven't heard in a while, I can set multiple conditions like "last played is not in the past 90 days", "genre is not Christmas", "artist is not Yanni", and so on. Once I've heard a song on the list, either at home or on my phone, it disappears and a new one that fits the criteria joins the list.
So yeah, everybody in cyberspace probably had this mastered already. But if I can bring this joy to just one soul, it's worth it.
Friday, August 17, 2007
I LOVE . . . iTunes Smart Playlists
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2 comments:
Pretty cool feature! Is that with songs you download on the phone or is it songs that play over the web? Or both?
Just hope you don't loose your settings, eh. Then you'll have to do a repeat of bouncing between dinner and laptop. :-)
It reminds me a little bit of Pandora.com. You select a favorite artist and it plays music from similar artists. If you hear a song you like, click the thumbs-up icon, if you don't like it--thumbs-down. It shapes your station to the kind of music you like. Its designed to introduce you to new music that you might like. You set up multiple stations depending on your mood. It has some good Christmas music.
They are songs that I have in my library on my laptop. What's cool, though, is that I can sync the songs to my phone and it takes into account if I listen to them and rate them there.
I've heard of Pandora but not messed with it much. Sounds like a cool way to get exposure to new music.
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