Understanding Why Smart Playlists Are Called Smart

You create a smart playlist by defining a set of criteria based on any number of different attributes.
After you have created these criteria, iTunes chooses songs that meet those criteria and places them in the playlist. An example should help clarify this. Suppose you are a big-time Elvis fan and regularly add Elvis music to your Library. You could create a playlist and manually drag your new Elvis tunes to that playlist. But by using a smart playlist instead, you could define the playlist to include all your Elvis music. Anytime you add more Elvis music to your Library, that music would be added to the playlist automatically.
You can also base a smart playlist on more than one attribute at the same time. Going back to the Elvis example, you could add the condition that you want only those songs you have rated four stars or higher so that the smart playlist contains only your favorite Elvis songs.
As the previous example shows, smart playlists can be dynamic; iTunes calls this live updating. When a smart playlist is set to be live, iTunes changes its contents over time to match the criteria. If this feature isn’t set for a smart playlist, that playlist will contain only those songs that meet the criteria at the time the playlist was created.
Finally, you can also link a smart playlist’s conditions by the logical expression All or Any. If you use an All logical expression, all the conditions must be true for a song to be included in the smart playlist. If you use the Any option, only one of the conditions has to be met for a song to be included in the smart playlist.

Becoming a Musical Genius with Smart Playlists

The basic purpose of a smart playlist is the same as a standard playlist—that is, to
contain a collection of songs to which you can listen, put on a CD, and so on.
However, the path that smart playlists take to this end is different from standard
playlists. Rather than choosing specific songs as you do in a standard playlist, you
tell iTunes the kind of songs you want in your smart playlist, and it picks out the
songs for you and places them in the playlist. For example, suppose you want to create
a playlist that contains all of your Classical music. Rather than picking out all
the songs in your Library that have the Classical genre (as you would do to create a
standard playlist), you can use a smart playlist to tell iTunes to choose all the
Classical music for you. The application then gathers all the music with the genre
Classical and places that music in a smart playlist.

Deleting a Standard Playlist

If you decide you no longer want a playlist, you can delete it by selecting the playlist on the Source List and pressing the Delete key. A prompt will appear; click Yes and the playlist will be removed from the Source List. (Make sure to check the Do not ask me again check box if you don’t want to be prompted in the future.) Even though you’ve deleted the playlist, the songs in the playlist remain in the Library for your listening pleasure.

Listening to a Standard Playlist

After you have created a playlist, you can listen to it by selecting it on the Source List and using the same controls you use to listen to a CD or music in the Library. You can even search in and browse playlists just as you can the Library or CDs. (That’s the real beauty of iTunes; it works the same way no matter what the music source is!)

Setting the Order in Which a Playlist’s Songs Play

Just like an audio CD, the order in which a playlist’s songs play is determined by the order in which they appear in the Content pane (the first song will be the one at the top of the window, the second will be the next one down, and so on). You can drag songs up on the list to make them play earlier or down in the list to make them play later.

Removing Songs from a Playlist

If you decide that you don’t want one or more songs included in a playlist, select the songs you want to remove in the playlist’s Content pane and press the Delete key. A warning prompt will appear. Click Yes and the songs will be deleted from the playlist. (If this dialog box annoys you like it does me, check the Do not ask me again check box and you won’t ever have to see it again.)

Adding Songs to a Playlist

The whole point of creating a playlist is to add songs to it. Whether you created an empty playlist or one that already has some songs in it, the steps to add songs are the same:

1. Select the Library as the source.
2. Browse or search the Library so that songs you want to add to the playlist are shown in the Content pane.
3. Select the songs you want to add to the playlist by clicking them (remember the techniques to select multiple songs at the same time). To select all the songs currently shown in the Content pane, press Ctrl+A (Windows) or „+A (Mac).
4. Drag the selected songs from the Content pane onto the playlist to which you want to add them. When the playlist becomes highlighted and the cursor includes a plus sign (+), release the mouse button (see Figure). The songs will be added to the playlist.
5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 until you have added all the songs you want to include in the playlist.
6. Select the playlist on the Source List. Its songs will appear in the Content pane. Information about the playlist, such as its playing time, will appear in the Source Information area at the bottom of the iTunes window.