Smart Playlists.com

My Playlist System

For what it's worth, here's how I organize my playlists:

1) Current playlists include the following. (Many of these gleaned from SmartPlaylists.com!) The ":" in the first few SPLs brings these playlists to the top of the display, so I can find them quickly - -

: iPod Shuffle
: Kid's Playlist (comment contains 'Kid's Name')
: New Music Store
: (New Album(s)) - makes new purchases / loads easy to find.
: Current Favorite Group

Other playlists:

Acoustic (comment contains 'Acoustic')
Acoustic-Slow (BPM < 3; I use a BPM 1-5 scale, 1 = very slow, 5 = very fast)
Acoustic-Faves (4 or 5 stars)
Acoustic-Slow (BPM=1,2)
Acoustic-Medium (BPM=3)
All '70's (comment contains '70's)
All '80's (comment contains '80's)
Alternative (I like to have Genre playlists -- makes music easier to find)
Beatles '62-'66
Beatles '67-'70
Beatles-Acoustic
Bedspins (my former band. Any songs on our play set get flagged with comment = 'Bedspins')
Classical
Costello-Acoustic
Costello-Albums
Costello-B-sides (all the 'bonus disc' stuff from the Rhino re-releases)
Costello-Live
Country
Dance
Folk
Forgotten Faves
Hip-Hop/Rap
Jazz-All
Jazz-Fast
Jazz-Instrumental (comment does not contain 'vocal')
Jazz-Medium
Jazz-Slow
Jazz-Vocal
Live
Love - Pop
Love - Rock
Mellow Mix (BPM is <= 2)
R&B
Ray Charles - Slow (BPM = 2)
Ray Charles - Med / Fast (BPM >= 3)
Recent Faves
Recently Added
Rock-Fast
Rock-Medium
Soul-Fast
Soul-Mellow
Swing
Top 25
Women in Rock (comment contains '@+')
@ Needs BPM (no BPM)
@ Rate / Delete (no rating or just 1-star)

2) Comments field can be very useful in further defining your music. I use '70's', '80's', 'Live', 'Vocal', 'Acoustic', and '@+' (female lead singer and / or band)

3) BPM is very helpful to segment your music into slow, medium, fast. I use a 1-5 scale, 1=very slow, 3=medium, 5=very fast / intense

4) Finally, I tried "Radio Station" playlists (SPLs that reference other SPLs) but was frustrated by the lack of auto-refreshing on the iPod. To get around this, most of my playlists above are constructed as one-hour long with "Not Played in the Last ___ Days / Weeks Months". So, each of these SPLs auto-refresh on the iPod.

I dump these one-hour long SPLs together in On-The-Go to suit my mood. (For example, I might combine "All '80's" with "Recently Added" with "Forgotten Faves"). Advantage is, if I change my mind during the day when I can't synch to iTunes, I simply clear the On-The-Go and start again.

by Scott on Aug 05 | 8:00 am

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Ultimate Playlist

I was trying to find the perfect mixed playlist... the kind you want to put on and just leave on shuffle for hours. Obviously, like many people, I have more 4-star than 5-star songs, more 3-star than 4-star, and so on. I also have a lot of 2 and 3-star songs I haven't listened to yet.

First I made a "Starting Point" playlist that excluded Classical, Opera, Audiobooks, etc. - any genres I don't want popping up in random playlists. I also exclude albums I've labelled under the grouping field as "Full-Album", albums you want to listen to end-to-end, not have mixed into random lists. Songs longer than 12 minutes are also excluded. Finally, I also excluded 3 bands who I have a LOT more music of than other artists - everyone probably has a couple artists like this.

I then made nine playlists, the first six selecting only from this "Starting Point" playlist.

1)


5-star songs 
not heard in the last 3 days. 
This comes to about 12 hours


4-star songs not heard in the last 7 days
limited to 12 hours
selected by least recently played


3-star songs
not heard in the last 14 days
limited to 3 hours
selected by least recently played


3-star songs
with Play Count=0
limited to 3 hours
selected by random


2-star songs
not heard in the last 28 days
limited to 1 hour
selected by least recently played


2-star songs
with Play Count=0
limited to 1 hour
selected by random

The seventh, eighth and ninth playlists do not select from the "Starting Point" playlist. Instead, each selects an hour's worth of 3-5 star tracks from the 3 artists I excluded earlier, selected by least recently played.

My master playlist (which is the only one of these that I actually sync to my iPod) combines these 9 playlists.

My final playlist is about 34% 5-star, 34% 4-star, 17% 3-star (split between unheard and least recently heard tracks), 6% 2-star (split like 3-star), and 9% out of my favourite 3 artists. The music I like the most is refreshed most rapidly, the music I like the least won't be heard more than once a month.

by dharmabum on Aug 04 | 8:00 am

[3] comments (2502 views) | [0] Trackbacks

Me Versus You

One of my 'just for fun' playlists is the following :


Match *any*
Artist CONTAINS 'VS'
Name CONTAINS 'VS'

This brings back all my tracks that feature artist 1 Vs. artist 2 which is usually some interesting collaboration or mix.

by Samiad on Aug 03 | 8:00 am

[3] comments (1014 views) | [0] Trackbacks

Album Playlist

When I find an album that I would like in a playlist, I just put "ALBUM***!" in the comments section of all the tracks (even thought some tracks are individually rated below a 3 and some above a 3 - the album as a whole is a 3 in my book), then create playlist:

 
Comments contains "ALBUM***!"
with live updating
limit to ??? songs selected by album

Now I have a playlist in album sequence for albums that I have rated with 3 stars. I also have playlist for 1 star, 2 star, 4 star & 5 star albums. You have to use the "!" and the end of your star rating or 1 star list will pick up 2,3,4 & 5 star rated ablums.

by RastaG on Aug 03 | 8:00 am

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The Wonderyears

BBC Radio One have a feature called The Wonderyears where they play a song from 1990, then the next from 91, then one from 92 etc. I wanted to recreate this using Smart Playlists.

Smartlists are pretty powerful, but still a bit messy, so this is a bit messy.

For every year in this list, you need a smart playlist that will select ONE song from that year. E.g.


Year is 1990.
Limit to 1 song by random.

Create lists for each year (so for my 1990 - 1999, I need ten playlists).

Then, create a master list called 'The Wonderyears' with the following rules.


Match ANY of the following
playlist is 1990
playlist is 1991
playlist is 1992
etc.
etc.

Limit to ten songs sorted by random.

This brings ten tracks back from each playlist - the limitation is that there is no way to sort by year in ascending or descending order. The playlist will be random.

If anyone knows how to hack these playlists to play in order of the year I would appreciate knowing!

by Samiad on Aug 02 | 8:00 am

[3] comments (1096 views) | [0] Trackbacks

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	Chris Henley: Try this guy out. He has some great stuff. http://ott ... Jun 13 \| 1:56 pm Chris Henley: IS this site still running? ... Jun 09 \| 5:06 pm Elizabeth: Now, is there a program that will put these lyrics on your Ipod? That would be genius... :D ... Apr 18, 06 \| 6:11 pm Sara S: Ah, I see your point now, especially with the running example. About the only workaround there would be to make ... Apr 16 \| 10:29 pm vaughnn: Sara, Thank you again for your consideration! ... Apr 15 \| 10:45 pm vaughnn: Good question Sara! I (usually) don't listen to the iPod with it in my pocket and little ear buds plugged into ... Apr 15 \| 1:53 pm Sara S: I don't think you're really reading what I wrote. Maybe I'm not explaining myself well. I didn't adovcate creating a single ... Apr 13 \| 10:13 am

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