Section 25. Publish a Playlist as an iMix


25. Publish a Playlist as an iMix

Before You Begin

See Also

Import a Music CD into iTunes

Give Gift Music to Someone Else

Purchase a Song, Album, Video, or Audiobook from the iTunes Music Store

Create a Web Link to Your Favorite Music for Sale

Create a Playlist

Rate Your Music in iTunes


One of the nicest things about the interconnected, instant nature of the iTunes Music Store is its collaborative atmosphere. As customers buy music, artists' download pages are automatically updated with information about their most popular songs, the main genre pages are populated with hot links, and feedback to the store's employees is sent with the speed of email. Perhaps most fun of all, though, is a unique feature of the iTunes Music Store that's become wildly popular: iMixes.

Key Term

iMix A playlist of music from the iTunes Music Store that you create in iTunes and then publish to the Music Store's servers to share your musical tastes with the world.


After you publish your iMix to the iTunes Music Store, other customers can find your iMix more or less accidentally by searching for artists and albums with music that's in your iMix. If they like your taste in tunes, they can purchase individual songs from the iMix or buy the entire iMix's song listing at once. These customers can even cast a voteone to five starsrewarding your DJ skills by bumping it to the top of the list of available iMixes for more people to find. More than 300,000 iMixes have been published at the time of this writing, and it's no secret why: It's easy, fun, and free.

Publish the Playlist as an iMix


Add Music to Your iTunes Library

First build your iTunes Library by adding CDs to it (see Import a Music CD into iTunes) or by purchasing music from the iTunes Music Store.

Create a Playlist of Purchased Music

Create a playlist by clicking the Add Playlist button underneath the Source pane. Give the playlist a descriptive name and populate the playlist with songs from your Library, as discussed in detail in Create a Playlist.

Select the Playlist

Click the name of the playlist in the Source pane. A gray right-arrow icon appears next to it, as you've seen throughout the Music Store and your Library to indicate a QuickLink to a location in the Music Store.

Publish the Playlist as an iMix

Click the arrow icon. A dialog box gives you the choice to give the playlist's contents as a gift (see Give Gift Music to Someone Else) or to publish it as an iMix; click Create iMix to proceed.

You are then prompted with a dialog box warning you that publishing an iMix sends information about your music to the iTunes Music Store. Click Create to proceed. If you intend to create multiple iMixes, you can avoid this warning dialog by enabling the Do not show this message again check box first.

iTunes connects to the Music Store (you must have an active Internet connection) and exchanges information with the server's database about the songs in your playlist. Then it presents a screen containing all the songs in your playlist that are in the iTunes Music Store. (Only songs that you bought through the iTunes Music Store show up here; this also means that music from artists not available in the Music Store will not be included in your iMix.) Next to a mocked-up piece of album art made up of the art from various songs in your playlist are text fields where you can enter a title (initially the same as the playlist name) and a description for the iMix. Make these fields as evocative as you canthey're what other Music Store customers will use when searching for interesting iMixes from which to buy music.

Tip

Don't use profanity in your iMix title or description. For one thing, doing so is immature and rude; for another, it can bring the Music Store's wrath down on you for abusing the inherent trust of the collaborative system and can result in the loss of your account.


Click Publish when you're ready to make your iMix public to the world.

Tell Your Friends About Your iMix

After you've successfully published your iMix, you're shown its download page (as any other customer will see it) and a banner along the top that tells you that the iMix will be available for one year, after which iTunes will delete it from the Music Store. There's also a Tell a Friend button; click this button to send an electronic postcard to one or more friends or family members letting them know about your new iMix. Fill in their email addresses (separated by commas), your name, your email address, and an optional message explaining what you're sending them. The message will contain the album art mock-up and a link to your iMix page so that your friends and family can view it in their own copies of iTunes and maybe buy the same songs you have if they like them. Click Send to deliver the message.

Note

An email notification is sent to you after you publish an iMix to confirm that the iMix was successfully published.


View Your iMix

After you leave your iMix download page, there are several ways to get back to it in the future. The easiest is to click the gray right-arrow icon on the playlist name in the Source pane. (This gray arrow appears permanently after you've published a playlist as an iMix.) In the dialog box that appears, click View.

Another way to view your iMix is to click the iMix link on the iTunes Music Store home page. There is a link on the following page labeled Go to my iMixes, which takes you to a list of all the iMixes you have published.

While you're there, browse other users' iMixes. You can give any iMix a star rating (from one to five stars) by selecting the appropriate option button in the top area of the window and clicking Submit, just as any other user can do with your iMix. The cumulative rating for an iMix is noted in the Average Rating heading at the top of the window.

Tip

You can update the contents of an iMix by simply publishing it again. Click the gray arrow icon on the playlist name and then click in the dialog box that appears.


Remove an iMix

To remove an iMix, click your Apple ID in the Account box and authenticate by entering your password when prompted. Then click the View Account button. In the account information screen, click Manage iMixes. This button takes you to a page where you can view all your iMixes and their average user ratings; you can delete individual iMixes from your account by clicking the Remove button. (Your local playlist is not affected if you remove an iMix.) Click Done when you're finished.




iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap
iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672328992
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 150
Authors: Brian Tiemann

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