Smart Playlists: iTunes as DJ

iTunes can create playlists for you based on criteria that you specify. When you're in a hurryor if you're just curious to see what iTunes comes up withuse iTunes' smart playlists feature to quickly assemble playlists. Smart playlists take advantage of all that information that's stored along with your musicits genre, artist, year, and moreto enable you to enjoy and present your music library in some fun ways.

Creating a smart playlist involves specifying the criteria for the songs you want included in the playlistfor example, songs whose genre is jazz and whose year is in the range of 1960 to 1969. You can choose to limit the size of the playlist using various criteria, including playing time (don't create a playlist longer than 74 minutes); disk space (don't create a playlist larger than 2 GB); number of songs (limit this playlist to 20 songs); and much more. You'll find some smart playlist ideas on page 52.

The smart playlists feature is really just a sophisticated search command. But remember, a good playlist is more than a series of songs that meet certain rules it also presents those songs in a musically and emotionally pleasing way. A ballad may segue into an up-tempo tune, for example, or a laid-back instrumental may follow a dramatic vocal.

So go ahead and use iTunes' smart playlist feature to quickly throw together playlists. But to really do justice to your music, fine-tune the order of the songs in the smart playlists that iTunes creates. Or build your playlists by hand.

Creating a Smart Playlist

To create a smart playlist, choose New Smart Playlist from the File menu or press the Option key while clicking the playlist button ( ) in the lower-left corner of the iTunes window.

Be More Specific: Adding Criteria

When you want to be more specific, use more than one rule in your smart playlist. In this example, my smart playlist will contain all George Duke songs from the 1970s that are under five minutes long.

Smart Playlist Tips

Changing a Smart Playlist

To modify a smart playlist's criteria or update settings, select the smart playlist and choose Edit Smart Playlist from the File menu (or press -I).

Create a Purchased Music Playlist

iTunes lists items you've purchased from the iTunes Music Store in a special playlist named Purchased. However, the Purchased playlist lists only songs you've purchased using that particular computer. If you move those purchased songs to a different computer, they won't show up in its Purchased playlist. And that can complicate backup sessions.

The solution? Create a smart playlist containing only music you've purchased. Set up the Smart Playlist window to read Kind contains protected AAC. Keep the Live Updating box checked, and you'll always have a full list of your purchases, no matter which Mac you use to do your buying.