I have a lot of 5 star songs and because of this I also have quite a few smart playlists with '5 stars' as a limitation. But what about my 5 star songs that dont get a shout in these other lists? Simple. Using the great new playlist is/is not function, create a smart playlist as follows..
My rating is *****
Playlist is not (use all your 5 star list)
Limit To 1 hour (or your preference)
and select by least recently played (to keep it fresh)
Liam1010
I had always wanted to have a playlist that had my classic "80's" music, which for me would be rock AND pop. It was impossible to do this before (without doing a couple dozen "genre IS NOT") but with the release of the new iTunes it is easy.
Create two smart playlists, with one called 80s pop (Genre IS pop, year range 1980-89) and one called 80s rock (Genre IS rock, years 1980-89). Then create a third smart playlist, with "Playlist IS 80s Rock" and "Playlist IS 80s Pop" and set the Match to "any." This playlist will have all your music from the 80's that is rock and pop.
Any number of combinations of playlists like this shows off the new powerful feature of iTunes 4.5, and allows for much more in depth smart playlists.
My system is fairly straight forward. I have over 3300 tracks. I use all the criterias iTunes offer, even grouping for very specific stuff like female singers, british groups, guitar heros, etc...
1 star, least favorite. 5 stars most favorite. 0 star for songs that are fillers (those weird 30 seconds tracks with no purpose except in the context of an album.)
BPM goes from 1 (soft music) to 5 (fast gym music or hard rock and roll songs)
I have two major smartplaylists:
1. A wakeup call (early morning music):
3 stars and up
BPM of 2 and less
Limited to an hour
(which is flexible depending on my schedule)
2. Daytime (I use at work)
1 star and up
Limited to 4 hours
Genre does not include Classic
Genre does not include Disco