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.

Creating a Standard Playlist with Songs in It

If you know some songs you want to place in a playlist, you can create the playlist so that it includes those songs as soon as you create it. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Browse or search the Library to find the songs you want to be included in the playlist. For example, you can browse for all the songs in a specific genre or search for music by a specific artist.
2. In the Content pane, select the songs you want to place in the playlist.
3. Choose File, New Playlist from Selection. A new playlist will appear on the Source List and will be selected. Its name will be highlighted to indicate that you can edit it, and you will see the songs you selected in the Content pane. iTunes will attempt to name the playlist by looking for a common denominator in the group of songs you selected. For example, if all the songs are from the same artist, that artist’s name will be the playlist’s name. Similarly, if the songs are all from the same album, the playlist’s name will be the artist’s and album’s name. Sometimes iTunes picks an appropriate name, and sometimes it doesn’t.
4. While the playlist name is highlighted, edit the name as needed and then press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac). The playlist will be ready for more songs.

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.