Useful iTunes smart playlists
All of these are “All” (logical and/set intersection) playlists.
Music only
- Playlist is Music (Library)
- Kind does not contain “URL”
- Kind does not contain “stream”
- Kind does not contain “ideo” [sic]
- Kind does not contain “PDF document”
- Genre does not contain “Comedy”
- Genre does not contain “Spoken Word”
- Genre does not contain “Podcast”
Never played (music queue)
- Playlist is “Music only”
- Play Count is 0
≥ 3.5 stars
- Playlist is “Music only”
- Rating is greater than ★★★ · ·
iPod
The goal of this playlist is a balance between churn (so that I keep hearing music I haven’t heard in awhile) and quality (so that a bad or mediocre song does not take up space on my iPod that could have gone to a great song).
- Playlist is “Music only”
- Skip Count is less than 3
- Playlist is “≥ 3.5 stars”
- Time is less than 25 minutes (25:00)
- Limit to 6 GB selected by least recently played
Customize standards and limit to your requirements.
Classical music (mostly excluded from this playlist by the Time criterion) enters my iPod through a separate playlist: a smart playlist selecting 12 hours of least-recently-played material from my “Programming music” dumb playlist.
Often-played but unrated music
If you’re like me, you have a lot of music that has racked up more than a few plays, but that you never rated. Most of this predates my installation of I Love Stars, with which I’ve rated nearly all of the music I’ve added since then.
By listening to this playlist with I Love Stars running, I’ll be able to rate all of these songs and so give the good-to-great ones a shot at being on my iPod. (I used to have “Play count ≥ 5” in the iPod smart playlist, but not everything that I have that has 5 or more plays merits inclusion on my iPod.)
- Playlist is “Music only”
- Play Count is greater than 4
- Rating is · · · · ·