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My "Daily Mix"
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I listen to my iPod at work almost all day long. I have hundreds of CDs ripped to iTunes, and my song ratings roughly follow a bell curve. I wanted a good mix of music that properly accounted for my tastes (playing lots of 4- and 5-star songs), yet automatically kept a good rotation instead of playing the same songs over and over.
So, here's what I started with:
Baseline - Excluded a bunch of genres, like Classical
Daily Mix 5 - Playlist is "Baseline", and My Rating is 5
Daily Mix 4 - Playlist is "Baseline", and My Rating is 4, and Last Played not in the last X days, limited to Y minutes. I made Y about the same as the total number of minutes of the "Daily Mix 5" playlist, and I made X = (total number of minutes of all 4-star "Baseline" songs) / Y.
Daily Mix 3 - Playlist is Baseline, and My Rating is 3, and Last Played not in the last X days, limited to Y minutes. Here I made Y a small fraction of "Daily Mix 4", and I computed X the same way.
Daily Mix 2 - Playlist is "Baseline", and My Rating is 2, and Last Played not in the last X days, limited to Y minutes. Here I made Y a fraction of "Daily Mix 3", and I computed X the same way.
Daily Mix - (This is the smart playlist that I listen to.) Playlist is "Daily Mix 5", or Playlist is "Daily Mix 4", or Playlist is "Daily Mix 3", or Playlist is "Daily Mix 2"
Then, I decided I wanted to hear more songs from the 1980's. So, I cut the Y of "Daily Mix 4" and "Daily Mix 3" in half, and I added a three new smart playlists:
80's - Year is from 1980 to 1989
Daily Mix 80's 4 - Playlist is "Baseline", and Playlist is "80's", and My Rating is 4, and Last Played not in the last X days, limited to Y minutes. I made Y the same as I had just made "Daily Mix 4", and I computed X the same way as the others.
Daily Mix 80's 3 - Playlist is "Baseline", and Playlist is "80's", and My Rating is 3, and Last Played not in the last X days, limited to Y minutes. I made Y the same as I had just made "Daily Mix 3", and I computed X the same way as the others.
Then I added "Daily Mix 80's 4" and "Daily Mix 80's 3" to the "Daily Mix" smart playlist.
I also adjusted "Daily Mix 4" and "Daily Mix 3" to also say 'and Playlist is not "80's"', so that exactly half my 4- and 3-star songs are from the 80's and exactly half are not. Without doing this, you'd probably get a variable percentage (greater than 50%) of songs from the 80's, which maybe is what you'd like.
It's a little complicated, but I love it! Giddyup!
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by James on Dec 08 | 3:38 pm
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