Playlist Creation

[Yuiichi]

Hey guys,

Although I'm not new to music, I'm relatively new in terms of organizing it - specifically playlists. I normally just shuffle through my entire library, but I find that I often get a lot of songs that I don't really want to listen to. Then I thought "hey, wouldn't playlists be a more efficient way of listening to my music, depending on my mood?"

What I want to know is: how do you guys make playlists? I want to have a good mix of songs - not just my most favourite ones, like the top rated playlist, so that I can get a general taste of all of my music.

Your input is appreciated!

[divigation]

I have lists that break away specific albums for artists, like the studio albums for the Beatles or NIN albums I am into right now, etc., allowing me to shuffle through multiple albums but but only the ones that I want. Then I have mood/energy lists where I go through and throw in songs that would roll well together across different genres and artists depending on if I am looking for slower or faster, more or less intense, etc. Those are my main lists, other wise all of my lists are built so that I can throw particular sets of music on to my shuffle or nano with ease.

Mostly I am an album kind of guy, so I don't have a ton of playlists, but those are the ones I do have...

[MarkFleser]

I usually use pretty much all smart playlists and go pretty much by genre and then I subdivide that by some of my favorite artists. I use the folders a lot too because they act like a playlist for everything within it.

[Matsta]

I havent really mastered smart playlists but wat i usually do is make a quick playist with some songs i want to listen too. I do this like once a week so i always have some sweet music to listen too

[korinwoodo]

Myself I really like the Itunes auto-created Recently Played playlist. I use that one the most. I also have a "Current" playlist, in case I lose some off the Recently Played. When I'm working I also have a really long playlist I dont need to be busting out the iPod every couple minutes. In addidtion to those I have a couple of playlists for certain compilations that I have downloaded, which include various artists so they get ****ed when I catalog them.

I know a girl who has a playlist for literally every friggin mood you could ever think of. Its actually kind of wacko, but whatever, each to his own.

If you want to get a random selection of all your music, just fire up the party shuffle and select the first 20 songs, make a playlist, copy them in, and repeat for the next 20 songs. Dunno, just an idea

[trmcculloch]

I reguarly use ones like unplayed, recently added, highest rated etc and really like Tangerine. Creates really random playlists for me based on beat intensity (dont ask) which aren't always good but have been good in expanding what I normally listen to.

If you chose a favourite song then create a playlist based on that in Tangerine it really seems to capture a specific mood. I have the most trouble trying to think up names for all the random playlists that I end up creating.

[baseballboy828]

I use some smart playlists: Top Rated, Most Played, and a standard playlist, My Favorites, which I update every once in a while.

[Shawn Grimes]

I don't really use playlists at all. What I do is just set iTunes to shuffle mode and let her go. Playlist creation is just something I've never embraced with my online music collection because I don't really see the advantages of using them.

[Jeff]

I find myself forgetting about more and more artists that I really enjoy as my music library grows. This makes me want to go and create a bunch of nifty smart playlists, but I find for them to be successful I'd have spend hours fixing up my library info by adding album years, genres and the like that are missing.

Since I've yet to spend the time fixing up my library and making playlists I seem to be listening to strictly albums. The album cover browser recently added helps with this.

[kungfueats]

I have two smart playlists that I use a lot.

One is called "Forgotten" and it's a list of 50 songs selected randomly that have a rating three stars or above and I haven't played in six weeks.

The other one I use quite a bit is "Most Unrated". It's a list of 50 of my most played songs that don't have a rating. It turns out to be generally good music, but just haven't given it a star rating yet.

I'm sort of new to smart playlists as well. A few things that helped improve my selections were to setup filters that remove all Podcasts and Spoken Word entries and remove everything that is over 15:00 or 20:00 minutes.

Chris
http://www.kungfueats.com