Define Criteria for the Smart Playlist A
Smart Playlist dialog box appears, giving you access to the specifications of the Smart Playlist query. Various check box options are available, such as limiting the list to a certain number of songs. You can add as many organizational criteria as you want by clicking the
+ button after any shown criterion. You can filter songs using any of the available info tags, as well as comparison operators such as
contains or
starts with for textual entries,
is or
greater than for numeric entries, or
is after or
is in the range for date entries.
You can, for instance, create a list composed of all songs in the
Rock genre that were made in the years
1966 1974 , whose track number was
1 . You can even specify that songs in the playlist must also belong to another playlist, such as a Smart Playlist that contains all music by any of several selected artists . You can also achieve great control by limiting the playlist to a certain size or number of songs, and adjust the
selected by criterion to any of several schemes, such as
highest rating, least often played , or
random . The details are all up to you.
NOTES
By default, new Smart Playlists are created with the Live updating option enabled; this means that as you add new music to your iTunes Library , or change the info tags for songs so that they match the Smart Playlist's criteria, the playlist updates automatically to include them. Disable this option if you want the playlist to remain in the state it's in when you first create it, and not to automatically change as you add more music.
Songs shown in Smart Playlists are just references to the songs in your library, just as they are in regular playlists. However, you can't manually rearrange or remove individual songs from Smart Playlists because they're automatically selected according to your criteria.
Smart Playlists are especially useful in conjunction with the
My Rating and
Play Count fields. For instance, you can create a Smart Playlist that consists only of songs you've rated three stars or higher, or to which you've listened at least five times, or both conditions at once. (See
36 Rate Your Music for more information.) As you rate your songs and listen to the ones you like best, a Smart Playlist that you might have set up to include only highly rated or frequently played songs automatically becomes populated with your favorite music.