Photo Credit: maury.mccown

I have been looking for different variations of playlists to use for my iPod mini (I know…I need to update to the latest generation iPod). I find a few decent ones, but as my music collection gets bigger, I need more to accommodate my music needs, like organizing the pillows discography from my Rick Astley tracks. So I bring you my own playlists that everyone can use on their iPods (This may work for non-iPods, but my knowledge is limited to only iPods).

This guide covers many ways to get the best out of their music collection. We are going to use the Smart Playlists feature. Smart Playlists automatically organizes your playlist based on Artist, Ratings, Genre, and such without having to manually editing static playlists! I’ll even show you a couple of playlists that I use on a regular basis that will get you started.

Creating a Smart Playlist

Let’s make our playlist! First, go to File -> New Smart Playlist…. This will bring up a screen to setup our first playlist.

To make a playlist, we are going to add the following options:

• Match | all | of the following rules:
• Play Count | is less than | 1
• Limit to | 50 | items | selected by | Most recently added
• Matched only checked items
• Live updating

The window should look like this:

Click OK to finish, and we have a new Smart Playlist! Let’s go over on what we did: selecting “Play Count” will organize the playlist by the number of times the song has been listened to…in this case, it will be less than one, as in never played. The next option will limited the number of songs the playlist will hold. For this playlist, we will choose 50 (more or less; It’s up to you). Finally, the last two boxes, “Matched only checked items” and “Live updating”, are very important for this playlist. If a song is unchecked, it will not be included in the playlist (this is good for if you’re not ready to listen to a particular song, or for another reason), and the last option will update the playlist immediately.

Let’s name our playlist, “New Music”. Very simple, eh? Next, let’s go deeper into the library by grouping (aka “Tagging”) your songs, and let our Smart Playlist do the rest.

Tagging Songs + Tagged Playlist

For this example, I’m going to tag a track with the label, “Japanese”. This tag will organize tracks with the label into one playlist. If you have tons of J-Pop in your collection, this will help you out.

Now, let’s make a playlist with the “Japanese” tag. Note: you can rename the tag to whatever you want, such as “J-Pop”! ^_^

• Grouping | contains | “Japanese” (Remove the quotes)
• Live updating

The box should look like this:

Click OK, and name the new playlist “Language: Japanese”. Notice anything different about this playlist? Since we didn’t check the first two checkboxes at the bottom, “Matched only checked items” and “Live updating”, this playlist will gather every single track in your library labeled with “Japanese”. If you decide to organize your library with this method, it will take some time. The fastest way to add the label is to Shift + Click on the tracks you want tagged, right click and select “Get Info”, and add the label to the “Grouping” field.

“Rated, but Not Forgotten”

For our final playlist, we are going to sort songs that haven’t been heard in a long time: e.g.: a year. We’re going to call this playlist, “Rated, but Not Forgotten”. The playlist will sort songs that were rated in the past, but didn’t get enough playtime. This playlist is a bit advanced, but the following techniques will come in handy for your own playlists.

• Match | all | of the following rules:
• Play Count | is less than | 2
• Rating | is in the range | *** (3 stars) | to | ***** (5 stars)
• Limit to | 6 | hours | selected by | least recently added
• Match only checked items
• Live updating

The window should look like this:

Confirm, name the playlist, and we’re finished! Now you will be able to enjoy songs that you forgot were on your computer. Right now, my iTunes library has 3168 songs, but that number won’t always be exact as I maintain my catalog on an almost daily basis. Hopefully, I’ll have a new iPod by years end (as along as Apple keeps their current iPods on the market), and I can enjoy more of my custom playlists, on the go. I hope you have enjoyed this guide. Happy listening!