Sunday, October 31, 2010

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.

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