Smart Playlists In iTunes

A month or so ago, I wrote a post called "Why I Don’t Like The iPod Touch" in which I described the shortcomings of the current iPod I am using.

I still find this thing annoying to use but one thing has made it vastly better – iTunes Smart Playlists. I’ve always had an iPod with more space on it than my iTunes library so I’ve never needed to filter my library.

Ewan left the first comment to that post about the iPod touch and said:

For the space limited Touch, couldn’t you create a smart playlist in
iTunes (ctrl-alt-n in windows), to say "Date added is in the last 4
weeks" as your options, and that way the iPod touch would always have
your newest added tunes on it, even if you don’t have time to manually
add them? That way running out of space will be less of an issue.

I finally got around to doing just that. And while I was at it, I created a whole bunch more smart playlists and I sync them too.

My iPod Touch is so much more fun now. Thanks Ewan and thanks Apple for smart playlists!

#My Music#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. Aaron

    I ended up doing exactly the same thing after reading this on Lifehacker over the weekend http://lifehacker.com/35574… – I’ve been smiling all morning.

  2. Jim

    Just got a new itouch. 32GB which is plenty for me. My pet peeve is it does have the volume control on sides like iphone. You have to go into the song to adjust volume, unless I am missing something.

  3. Peter

    Fred-Definitely go check out that Lifehacker article Aaron posted — I was just about to post the same thing. Even if you don’t use any of the examples given there it will inspire you to use Smart Playlists in all sorts of clever ways.My personal favorites is the one that play ONLY songs NOT played in the last 4 weeks . 🙂

  4. simon

    ahhhh legend i was wondering how to do this

  5. Andrew

    Funny, as soon as I got my Touch it was the first thing I synced. A smart playlist with the last few weeks of stuff.I guess because I use smart playlists and add lots of new music it just seemed the right way to do it to me.Now if only I can figure out why my wifi stopped working last week…andrew

  6. Geoffrey Gifford

    Fred, Smart Playlists are one of the best features on iTunes. Not only for getting the newest tracks but also BPM, exclusions and general mood.Much better than rating systems (which I think are useless).This is a little off topic but why doesn’t Steve Jobs write a nice check and buy Pandora and Audioscrobbler?Integrate those items into iTunes and use listening patterns to match up with Pandora’s sonic attributes system.Have a Pandora Panel on the right side of iTunes and get recommendations based on either current song or current listening patterns.A dynamic Smart Playlist.Broaden musical tastes, sell more songs, save Tim’s project.

    1. fredwilson

      I agree that iTunes needs to be way more social