i will freely admit: my ipod is old. not only, old, but old and small. it only has 20GB capacity, and the music in my computer exceeds that.

the problem: running out of space

for a while, i’ve been trying to figure out a clever way to sync only the music i do or would listen to (i keep the rest around on the computer for posterity, or in case i change my mind in the future.)

part of the solution: ‘smart’ playlists

i have a playlist called “big master playlist” that matches all rules:

• less than 5 skip count
• any rating at all

that’s worked pretty well, but i’m starting to run out of room again. i need to exclude more, but i don’t want to shun tracks that i perhaps haven’t listened to because they just don’t come around in the shuffle too often. so to those ends, another playlist.

you’re in, or you’re out

i have created another smart playlist to find all the stragglers. match all the criteria:

• play count is less than 1
• skip count is less than 1

therefore: i have never played this song before. and now i’m listening to that playlist, exclusively. when i make it through a song successfully, it drops off the list. when i skip a song i don’t care for, it drops off the list. i will listen to it until it’s empty. (if you want to be more forgiving, you can increase the numbers to 2 plays or 2 skips, etc.) this will allow me to improve my master playlist.

make the smart playlist smarter

then i can add a rule to my master list that requires a track to have a play count greater than zero. that means, sometime, somewhere, i listened to that song, so it can be considered (against the other rules in the set).

obsessive?

yeah this is way too much thought and worry. but thinking is cheaper than a new ipod. and if you had more than 16gb of music, and you purchased one of those snazzy new iphones, you might need a strategy like this, too.

Posted on July 31st, 2008 by mike
Filed under: apple, gadgets, music