Creating a Standard iTunes Playlist

You have two ways to create a playlist. One is to create a playlist that is empty (meaning that it doesn’t include any songs). The other is to choose songs and then create a playlist that includes those songs.
The place you start depends on what you have in mind. If you want to create a collection of songs, but aren’t sure which specific songs you want to start with, create an empty playlist. If you know of some songs that you are going to included, choose them and create the playlist. Either way, creating a playlist is simple and you end up in the same place.
You can create an empty playlist from within iTunes by using any of the following techniques:

■ Choosing File, New Playlist.
■ Pressing Ctrl+N (Windows) or „+N (Mac).
■ Clicking the Create Playlist button (see Figure).

Whichever method you use will result in an empty playlist whose name will be highlighted to show you that it is ready for you to edit. Type a name for the playlist and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac). The playlist will be renamed and selected. The Content pane will be empty because you haven’t added any songs to the playlist yet.

The Extra-Special Smart Playlist

A smart playlist is smart because you don’t put songs in it manually. Instead, you tell iTunes what kind of songs you want included in it by the attributes of that music, such as genre or artist, and iTunes picks those songs for you (see Figure). For example, you can create a playlist based on a specific genre, such as Jazz, that you have listened to in the past few days. You can also tell iTunes how many songs to include. The really cool thing is that smart playlists can be dynamic, meaning that the songs they contain are updated live, based on your criteria. As you add, listen to, or change your music, the contents of a smart playlist can change to match those changes; this happens in real time so that the songs included in a smart playlist can change too. Imagine that you have a smart playlist that tells iTunes to include all the music you have in the Jazz genre that is performed by Kenny G, the Pat Metheny Group, Joe Sample, and Larry Carlton. If you make this a “live” smart playlist, iTunes will automatically add any new music from any of the artists to it as you add that music to your Library. The content of a live smart playlist changes over time, depending on the criteria it contains.

The Standard-But-Very-Useful Playlist

Simply put, playlists are custom collections of songs that you create or that iTunes creates for you based on criteria you define. After a playlist has been created, you can listen to it, put it on a CD, move it to your iPod, share it over a network, and more.
There are two kinds of playlists: standard playlists and smart playlists.
A standard playlist (which I’ll call just playlist from here on) is a set of songs you define manually. You put the specific songs you want in a playlist and do what you will with them. You can include the same song multiple times, mix and match songs from many CDs, put songs in any order you choose, and, basically, control every aspect of that music collection (see Figure).
Playlists are very useful for creating CDs or making specific music to which you might want to listen available at the click of the mouse. With a playlist, you can determine exactly what songs are included and the order in which those songs play. Playlists are also very easy to create and they never change over time—unless you purposefully change them of course.