Chapter 13: Making Smart Playlists

You have the option of making mediocre playlists for your iPod that simply “do the job”. Or you can master the art of creating Smart Playlists that wow everyone including yourself. Smart Playlists are one feature of iTunes that is very underused. A Smart Playlist is automatically updated depending on what kind of criteria you set for them. iTunes lets you create playlists by combining your music tracks from a variety of albums, artists, and genres.

Using Smart Playlists lets you take the playlist to an even higher level. Smart Playlists were first introduced in iTunes 3. With the Smart list you are able to personalize the music that you listen to by updating your playlist with criteria that includes last played, my rating, play count, and comment. You have the choice of using any or all of these criteria when you are creating a Smart Playlist. You also have the option of eliminating some of the criteria, such as song name.

The great thing about a Smart Playlist is that it is something different for everyone who creates a playlist. One thing that you will want to know how to do on your iPod is “rate a song”.

How to rate a song:

1. To rate a song all you have to do is press the center of the wheel two times.
2. The first press will push the wheel into “jog mode” while the second push of the wheel will push the wheel into “rating mode”.
3. Once you are in the rating mode you will see that there are stars on the screen. You can then turn the wheel to increase or decrease the number of stars that you are giving aparticular song.

Make sure that iTunes is set to either one of the two automatic transfer modes when you are in the iPod options screen. If you are not in one of these modes you won’t be able to transfer the play counts, play dates, or ratings in an easy manner to your iTunes library.

Access the Smart Playlist Dialog
You can access the Smart Playlist dialog box from the iTunes menu file. You can break the file menu down into three different areas:

• (1) the match line,
• (2) the criteria lines, and
• (3) the limiter area.

The match line will determine just how your criteria are evaluated. The line will change in a contextural way depending on the criteria lines. When you have specified multiple criteria the match line will show the any/all pop up. If there is no multiple criteria the pop up won’t appear.

Create your List

1. Begin by making certain selections from the pop up menu in the area called criteria line.
2. Select your songs based on certain attributes, operators, and values.
3. The criteria line will usually only display one line. If you want to display
4. more lines press the “+” button.
5. The match lines option is what will determine how each of the criteria is evaluated.

Smart Playlists really start to show how smart they are when you combine certain rules. When you want to add a criteria line or a new rule all you have to do is click on the “+” icon. The number of criteria lines that you can create can be endless. Every rule that you create will be evaluated as a Boolean operator. This means that only when there is a true match to your specified criteria will the track be added to your Smart Playlist. When a false result is turned up, the song won’t be added to the list.

Once you have selected your criteria the limiter area will let you limit the number of true results that will be returned by the Smart Playlist.

Track Attributes
To make great Smart Playlists it’s important that you understand the many track attributes that you can choose from. No matter where you get your music from, such as the iTunes Music Store or copied from your own CDs, attributes will always be looked at in the same way. There is, however, one attribute that will group CDs track together and that is the album name attribute.

You can group your songs together in a variety of ways including year, genre, artist, and play count. The following list is some of the attributes that you should become familiar with if you want to make Smart Playlists:

• Album: This is the album on which a particular track was released.
• Artist: This is the artist who has recorded the track.
• BPM: Beats per minute (also known as “tempo”). This is number value that accurately describes the number of beats that there are in one minute of time. iTunes doesn’t calculate BPM but you can calculate it with a third-party application. The BPM is a great way that you can add criteria to your Smart Playlists based on tempo.
• Comment: This field is “user defined” which means that you can use it for whatever purposes you want. For example, you might want to include information here about certain tracks such as which ones you borrowed from a certain friend.
• Grouping: This attribute is used when you want to group more than one movement in a single classical piece.
• Kind: The kind attribute is an audio file format. Some of the current audio files that are supported include AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless, MPEG, and WAV.
• Last Played: Every time that you play a track, iTunes will recored the time and date when it was played. This way you can find out which songs you play more than any others and add them to your Smart Playlist.
• My Rating: You can rate your music by giving it anywhere from 0 to 5 stars in the iTunes library as well as on your iPod.
• Play Count: This attribute will keep track of how many times you play a specific song.
• Playlist: The playlist attribute will either exclude or include tracks that are found in other playlists. You can use this attribute for creating Smart Playlists that are quite complex.
• Size: The size attribute lists the size of each track in megabytes.
• Song Name: This one needs no explanation.
• Time: The time attribute keeps track of how long each track is.
• Track Number: Every track on an album will be assigned a certain track number. For example “6 of 10”.
• Year: The year attribute lists the year the track was first released.

Making Smart Playlists is a one way that you can get the most out of your iPod. You will be able to listen to exactly the lists of songs that interest you the most. This is a great way that you can create a specific playlist for the gym or for your walk.