Great for the morning commute. This list is generally around an hour to an hour and a half of random picks. Just right for when your playlist selections seem stale.
Create a Smart Playlist:
Last Played - is not in the last - 3 days
Limit to - 25 songs - selected by - random
Tip: To re-randomize the list, select all and press delete.
Ah, nice one. A couple of suggestions for better results & mix-disc friendliness:
Time - is less than - 7'00
Limit to 80 - minutes - selected by - random
The 7 min max track time parameter is totally your call. When I'm making a random mix disc like this, I'm usually more inclined to hear singles rather than a 20-minute thunderstorm recording clumsily plopped in the middle of a set.
Of course, if you don't like the dice that are rolled, you can always just go through the generated list, delete whatcha don't wanna hear, and it'll auto-repopulate for you. Goodbye scary Conet Project sample, hello Buzzcocks (hopefully).
by Perfunctory Username III on Oct 09 | 11:57 pm
This is nice. Why don't you submit it as a contribution?
by dfbills on Oct 10 | 12:04 am
Why didn't I think of deleting an unwanted song in a random playlist? That works brilliantly!
by japester on Dec 07 | 7:59 am
Yes, the delete is an often overlooked feature.
by dfbills on Dec 08 | 1:58 am
Is there a way to get a random list to update from the iPod itself?
Play the whole playlist. When it's finished, if you go into the playlist again, you'll find a brand-new selection of songs. Caveat: if you skipped an unwanted song, it will still be in the list. Solution: press the select button once to invoke scrub mode and scrub to the end of the unwanted song. The iPod will consider this a fully played song and it won't reappear in the playlist if you've set any time-based criteria.
That's another important point. If you fail to specify songs "not played for x amount of time", the same bunch of songs will show up because you're not filtering out the songs just played.
You may like to check the selection of songs in your playlist in iTunes before you synchronise. This somewhat defeats the purpose of the randomising feature, however, as you've just added a whole lot of work to an automated process.
You should probably be using a system of keywords in the comments field to filter out unwanted stuff. There are plenty of examples of this on this web site.
Also, consider deleting stuff you don't want to play!
by japester on Jan 12 | 5:45 am
right on! I can't believe that this is the first post about scrubbing on here! -essential
kurly: This is a question relating to dynamic updating of SPL’s using the following criteria (as an example):
•Grouping Contains: .p/a.
•Grouping Contains: ...
Ah, nice one. A couple of suggestions for better results & mix-disc friendliness:
The 7 min max track time parameter is totally your call. When I'm making a random mix disc like this, I'm usually more inclined to hear singles rather than a 20-minute thunderstorm recording clumsily plopped in the middle of a set.
Of course, if you don't like the dice that are rolled, you can always just go through the generated list, delete whatcha don't wanna hear, and it'll auto-repopulate for you. Goodbye scary Conet Project sample, hello Buzzcocks (hopefully).