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Advanced iTunes: Smart Playlists & Scripts
By greg | May 27, 2008
iTunes has seemingly become the default music application in the computing world. Yes, that includes those that use PC, too. Like most of humanity, I have been using iTunes for quite a few years now, and while it has its irritating quirks at times (though almost 99% of the time a fix/script can be found to remedy any annoying feature [or lack there-of] in iTunes), I’m happy with the program. iTunes serves to make simple music tasks – organization, playlist creation, CD-burning (who does that anymore), music purchasing, music sampling, iPod syncing (if you still manually manage your iPod you’re crazy), and more – a relative breeze.
After using iTunes for some time, you find that your music habits and desires change, your music preferences change, and your music library undoubtedly grows. You also find yourself saying some like “iTunes would be perfect for *insert situation here* if it only would do *insert feature here*.” Certain playlists grow outdated, unnecessary, tedious to update, and managing your library becomes difficult. If any of you are like me, you have regular playlists that more-or-less contain songs by a single artist that excludes that one terrible album or those few songs you really don’t like. If not, you have playlists that contain your “favorites,” right? With the addition of more songs and with the linear progression of time, updating this playlists can become a pain in the arse. “Favorites” become “songs I never want to hear again,” and so on. This post will hopefully offer you a few solutions to tedious organization and maybe even introduce you to a few features you didn’t know existed.
Smart Playlists:
If you don’t use Smart Playlists, shame on you! Smart Playlists can take up a bit of time to get set up initially, but you won’t regret the time spent, I promise (there are a few “Playlists” you’ll want to setup initially which I’ll explain in more depth later). Smart Playlists are simply put playlists that you create that group music in playlists according to various classifications such as names, comments, play count, ratings, etc. It makes organization a lot simpler, it makes for relatively hands-off updating, and it makes your music listening experience more enjoyable.
Here’s an example of a few regular playlists I had in which Smart Playlists were the perfect solution (to name just a few).
- My “Shuffle” Playlist
- Playlists when with certain friends
- “Favorites”
Let me explain the 1st more in depth. I had a shuffle playlist that more or less was put to use when decisiveness was lacking. It was pretty much the equivalent of “Shuffle” on the iPod except minus holiday music, classical music (only like that for sleeping or homework), podcasts, and so on. I updated this whenever I ripped a new CD to my computer, but as you can imagine, this would slip my mind every now and then. In order to avoid frequent updating, I created a Smart Playlist that looks like the following:
This is a perfect example of the usefulness of Smart Playlists. First notice rows 2 and 4. Those two lines exclude all music that is classified under the Classical and Holiday genres. Rows 1 and 3 show other ways to classify things in iTunes (using existing playlists). The 1st row is a Music Only Smart Playlist. This is a Smart Playlist I’d highly recommend making. It’s convenient for other playlists you’ll most likely make in the future. This honestly may be sufficient for your “Shuffle” needs. It simply filters out everything that’s not a music file. Here’s a screenshot of my “Music Only” playlist:
The 3rd row is something I added for my own sake. It’s simply a regular playlist that I created that consists of songs I don’t want to listen to on a normal occasion but still want on my iPod (such as “Saturday Night Fever” and the Disney soundtrack 
. It’s named starting with a Z so that it’s placed at the bottom of my playlists on my iPod. Notice the 2nd column differences (“is” and “is not”). I think that’s pretty self-explanatory. Adding/deleting classifications is as simple as hitting the “+” or “-” buttons. The bottom three check boxes are pretty self-explanatory as well.
My other two Smart Playlists that I mentioned, are simpler to make. The playlist “when with certain friends” makes use of Comments. This is a playlist I create for the times I’m with certain friends (that cater to our common music tastes). What can I say? It’s more fun when somebody else is singing along with you. Under the song information of all songs (right-click –> Get Info), there’s a “Comments” field that you’ve probably seen but never actually used. With Smart Playlists, this is a great tool you should get familiar with. Say I’m making a playlist for one of my friend Tom. I simply highlight all the songs he likes (go through command/shift selecting) and add the word “Tom” to the comment field (see note below). Now I create a smart playlist (option++n) and add 2 fields. For the first, I make sure it’s in the “Music Only” playlist. For the next, I select “Comments” in the first drop-down, “Contains” in the 2nd, and type “Tom” in the third. Not terribly fast, but if you do it gradually (when you hear a song he/she likes, simply comment it) you’ll have it done in no time. Making song lists for groups of friends becomes a piece of cake after this as you just combine other smart playlists you’ve already created.
(Note: When selecting multiple songs and editing the comment field, you completely overwrite everything that was previously there. In other words, it does NOT append the comments – yes, it’s a pain. To remedy this, download the “Append comments” Script from Doug’s Scripts. This will allow you to append comments through the iTunes script drop-down menu [looks like a scroll]. If you have any questions, feel free to email me.)
The hardest part of the “Favorites” playlist is rating songs. If you do this regularly, you’re set. If not, this is simple to do gradually. Whether listening in iTunes or on your iPod (only works if you sync your iPod w/ iTunes), simply rate songs as you go. Simply create a playlist and add two categories: Rating (4 stars and up for example) and Playlist (Only Music). If you want, you can make a Smart Playlist that contains music that’s unrated. It might speed up the rating process.
Scripts:
Doug’s Scripts contains hundreds of useful iTunes scripts that work on the fly. (I mentioned the “Append Comments” one above in the note.) 
All of the scripts have been coded in such a way that you don’t have to place them in the ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts folder. It’s already done for you. Browse through them if you have some spare time. They’re quite helpful. Some particulars I like are the Import Audio Files from iPod script (really really handy! Only works with Mac formatted iPods) and the iWannaHearThat script. The installations are pretty self-explanatory at Doug’s site. To run the script, simply select the Script icon from the menu bar and select the appropriate script (See screenshot).
If you have any questions, suggestions, corrections, or other feedback feel free to email me or leave a comment below.
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Topics: Apple, Mac, Mac tips, PC | No Comments »