A smarter playlist for iPod mini

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A smarter playlist for iPod mini

“When you plug an iPod mini into a computer that bears an iTunes library larger than the mini’s 3.7GB capacity, iTunes offers to create a playlist that contains a subset of the tunes on your computer. This is a very cool feature, but not as cool as it could be. You see, when iTunes creates that playlists it gives no consideration to file size.”

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Comments

1

This is news? That one schlub made a 3.7 GB playlist?
Good for him.
Here’s a better resource : smartplaylists.com

What’s next? A 12 year old girl finds a way to organize her Pink songs?

Posted by wisewaif on February 23, 2004 at 8:18 PM (PST)

2

The article basically tells a way to improve on the default Mini playlist: by excluding certain filetypes. A good tip—and not every MacWorld reader is an iPod expert, after all.

But there’s a BETTER way: iTunes has the ability auto-synch MULTIPLE playlists, chosen in Preferences. (And you can use that filetype tip in each one.)

I’d suggest the following:

1. A Smart Playlist of favorites—by rating or by most-played. Set a threshold that fills, say, about half the Mini—or whatever you want.

2. A Smart Playlist (of enough MB to nearly fill the rest) of LEAST-RECENTLY PLAYED songs. (Exclude lowest-rated if you wish.) Every time you auto-synch, songs that have been played will be dumped automatically and replaced with new—so that eventually all your music gets shuffled through. Cool!

3. Want your custom mixes or other playlists too? You can probably fit most of them just fine: they probably overlap a great deal with your “favorites” Smart Playlist. If they don’t all fit, de-select some.

4. I’d personally want ALL my newest music, no matter what the rating—so I have a chance to change my mind on what I think of it. So I’d want a Smart Playlist of 50-100 “Newest Added.” I’d just keep #2 small enough to make room.

(The resulting MB size of all this will vary a bit—so I wouldn’t attempt to fill the whole iPod—maybe 90%? That leaves space for emergency file backups/transfers anyway.)

Now you have a Mini with all your favorites and custom mixes ALWAYS there, all your newest music, AND “everything else” available too—on a rotating basis—with no further effort ever required. (Unless yo do your “favorites” list in a way that grows or shrinks over time—then you might want to re-size the “least-recently-played” list too.)

All this, providing access to a collection larger than the Mini’s 4GB.

Posted by Nagromme on February 24, 2004 at 12:19 AM (PST)

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