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the smart playlist - tools to enjoy more music

I'm going to start this off by admitting that of my large music collection I have only listened to about 70%.  Admittedly, it's hard to purposely listen to the 30% you've never heard, when the portion you have listened to represents 16,000 songs.   I listen to music most of the day, most of the time to keep or change my mood.  However, I am a huge music fanatic, and sometimes it's as if it's my job to expand my musical horizon, and that of many others.   This technology age at times makes it more difficult, in some cases, as I can't just grab a disc and throw it in my player for a listen.  However, I'd be lost with out it.   Seriously, I added a large collection 2 years ago from a friend, I've completely forgotten what I added that day, but with the help of smart playlists, I can slowly get through the collection a little by little.

I know very little these days of other music players, iTunes and the iPod have become my players of choice.  Within iTunes, a smart playlist is a very helpful tool.   It's not your old mix-tape type playlist, but those do still exist.  To add a smart playlist: MENU -->FILE --> NEW SMART PLAYLIST.   If you rate your music, the easiest playlist to add is a best of.  The first  drop down is where you chose a what whether it be, genre or artist etc.  If this is your first time, keep "Artist" in the box, "Contains" in the next box, and in the third box, add you favorite artist.  So after you have done the obvious and added Pearl Jam, next hit the plus sign on the right, and add another rule which will pop up on the next line.  Change "Artist" to "Rating", automatically "Contains" will switch to "is" and the 5 start rating will pop in.  Finally, assuming you have any Pearl Jam in your catalog and rate your music, you now have a Pearl Jam best of playlist. 

I offer that you cannot begin to enjoy your collection at it's fullest unless you can break it apart and slice it and dice it in new ways.   I've been able to step back in time and listen to my high school music without use of a real time machine, check out top music from when I was born, listen to some Funk that I've never listened to before, and compile all my holiday music without scouring 1600 artists.   

For, those advanced users,  I would like to recommend a date added playlist.  For instance, on Friday I caught up with an old friend, and met some and reconnected with other musicians.  I ended up with some new albums in the process.  With a playlist featuring "Date Added" "is" "2/26/2011", I had to also add a second rule "Media Kind" "Is not" "podcast" 

For more info.. go mess around with some playlists...... have fun!  I''ll revisit this soon. 

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