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Smarter Genre Playlists
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OK, this is my strategy for creating Genre-based playlists.
What I do is enter multiple Genres in the Genre field, seperated by commas. For instance, Blondie's "Heart Of Glass (Live)" from the "Blondie Live" album has the following Genre:
New Wave, Live, Disco
So let's say I want to hear only Disco songs. I create a new Smart Playlist:
Genre - contains - Disco
Live updating
and label it "Genre: Disco"
And I can get my groove on to my heart's content.
Why not just label it "Disco" and use the built-in Genre picker list? Because songs, like people, cannot be easily summed up in a one word description. However, several words usually works (for songs anyway). This makes Genres much more accurate and useful. Songs can now cross over different Genres and appear in multiple Genre playlists.
You can also create more complex and interesting playlists this way. Say I only want to listen to live New Wave stuff today. I just use the "Genre: Live, New Wave" Smart Playlist:
Match - all
Genre - contains - Live
Genre - contains - New Wave
Live updating
Not only do I get Blondie's Heart Of Glass (Live)", I also get:
"New Religion (Live)" - Duran Duran
"Doctor Doctor (Live)" - Thompson Twins
"Loveland (Live)" - B-52's
You get the idea. There's no end to the interesting Smart Playlists you can create!
I am hoping that in the future Apple will change the built-in genre browser to identify the genre strings separated by commas as multiple genres, and not just one string run together. That way the Smart Playlists won't be needed. Instead you could just highlight "Live" and "New Wave" and get the same playlist. Until then, Multiple Genres and Smart Playlists are the perfect combination.
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by Louis A Bustamante on Nov 30 | 12:24 am
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Regular Backups of Music
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Apple has posted a document: "iTunes: How to Use a Smart Playlist to Make Regular Backups of Your Music."
Discussion:
If you have an optical drive that can burn a CD or DVD, you can make regular backups of your music files.
To make an initial backup of all of your music files, follow the steps outlined in technical document 93033, "iTunes 4: How to Back Up Music".
Once you have backed up all of your existing music, take note of the date and time you completed the backup and then continue with the following steps.
Create a playlist of music you've added since your last backup:
1. Open iTunes.
2. From the File menu, choose New Smart Playlist.
3. Configure the Smart Playlist so that it includes all songs with a Date Added that is after the date of your last backup.
4. Click OK.
5. Name the Smart Playlist something like "Backup Playlist".
Burn a backup disc of all the files you have added since your last backup
1. Open iTunes.
2. Open iTunes Preferences.
-Mac OS X: From the iTunes menu, choose Preferences.
-Windows: From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.
3. Click Burning.
4. Click Data CD or DVD
5. Click OK.
6. Select Backup Playlist in the Source list.
7. Click Burn Disc.
8. Insert a blank disc. If you have added more songs since your last backup than can fit on one disc, iTunes can burn them onto two or more discs.
9. When iTunes finishes burning the disc, eject it and write the current date on it.
Next time you do a backup
1. Open iTunes
2. Select the "Backup Playlist" in the Source list.
3. From the Edit menu, choose Edit Smart Playlist.
4. Change the date to the date you wrote on your last backup disc and repeat steps 1 through 9 above.
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by dfbills on Nov 20 | 12:23 am
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