12 Jan 2004 | Anonymous Coward said...

Smart playlists will let you shuffle music you rarely play.

12 Jan 2004 | RS said...

That's true for power users, but for an average iTunes user (like myself), experimentally selecting "File > New Smart Playlist.." is the only way to discover that functionality.

12 Jan 2004 | pete said...

I was actually gonna blog this same idea. This comes especially handy when my workout mix just doesn't seem to cut it on certain days and I need to mix it up a bit.

I like the idea of the discoverable playlist the best. With a 40gig pod I have a lot of music on there that I rarely listen to and probably need to re-discover.

12 Jan 2004 | brian w said...

iTunes comes with several Smart Playlists built-in, to help people notice them. And they were a much-touted feature when they debuted. You can make one like "Last played - not in the last - 1 - month" and set it to a random sampling of 100 songs, for instance. I got that one from smartplaylists.com, a good site for more ideas.

12 Jan 2004 | Cade Roux said...

Two words: Rio Karma (and right on the portable)

12 Jan 2004 | Jonny Roader said...

I don't own an iPod 'cos I don't have a use for a personal music player these days, but I remember cursing every Minidisc and CD Walkman I owned because they couldn't randomly play a personal playlist like my home player.

Oh, and I recently rediscovered Daydream Nation too. Teenage Riot was still the standout track for me.

12 Jan 2004 | Robert Occhialini said...

Okay. Here's how you would do what you want to accomplish.

1) Make a smart playlist of frequently listened to music. I have one called "2500 most played." You can limit it to a number that makes sense for the size of your library and listening habits. You do this by selecting "Limit to x songs" selected by "most often played" from the smart playlist dialog.

2) Make a smart playlist of music that you have listened to infrequently. I have one called "unplayed madness" which is music that I have never listened to. You can do this by selecting "Play count" "Is less than x" in the smart playlist dialog. You can always adjust the less than number to get a decent number of songs. Alternatively, you could select "Limit to x songs" selected by "least often played."

3) Listen to these lists with shuffle on.

Hope this helps.

RO

12 Jan 2004 | Jake said...

Unfortunately, Smart Playlists only work with third-generation iPods. It's a feature of iPod Software 2.0, which is not available for first- and second-gen iPods.

This is another frustrating example of Apple pissing on its early adopters. Boo.

12 Jan 2004 | Mister T said...

Eh? I have a first gen iPod running 1.3 and smart playlists work fine...

13 Jan 2004 | Jameson said...

Yes, Smart Playlists work on first- and second-gen iPods and yes they represent a workable solution to the problem, but you can't generate them without hooking into iTunes; adding smart shuffle features to the shuffle options list would allow users to dip into these modes on-the-fly.

What doesn't work on first- and second-gen iPods is On-the-Go Playlists, which would certainly be a nice thing. Boo, indeed, Apple. I'd gladly trade Solitaire for the ability to create playlists in the field. But it's not worth lugging around a dock or custom cables -- if it's about the $300, maybe we early adopters could just buy the software upgrade? Please? Apple?

13 Jan 2004 | Jake said...

Oops. I should've been more clear. What does not work with 1.3 is "Updating Smart Playlists." For example, if you create a Smart Playlist in iTunes that has songs where "Last Played" "is not in the last" "12" "months" and you sync that up with your iPod, the matching songs will all get copied to the iPod. That's true. But once you play one of those songs on a first- or second-gen iPod, it does not get removed from the playlist even though it obviously has been played in the last 12 months. At least not on my second-gen iPod.

13 Jan 2004 | Noah said...

"but you can't generate them without hooking into iTunes"

But that's the functional concept of the iPod from day 1--a portable extension of the desktop music library, by way of iTunes.

13 Jan 2004 | One of several Steves said...

This is another frustrating example of Apple pissing on its early adopters. Boo.

Using that logic, Apple should never innovate, update or improve a product, because that shuts early adopters out.

13 Jan 2004 | cedric said...

i'd like the option to 'shuffle albums' so each album plays in its entirety before moving on to the next one. also, a color screen which shows the album cover!

a similar idea for iTunes (check out the screenshots):
one and two

13 Jan 2004 | Matthew Oliphant said...

I just want simple things. To be able to print a nicely formatted playlist that would fit into a case, and to let me reorder a playlist without sorting the list by number first.

13 Jan 2004 | Michael Spina said...

I used to just listen to my entire library on shuffle, but I kept repeating tracks, and I'd never get to some. So I sort my library by song name (shuffle, for all intents and purposes) and play straight through, and I have a "Last played" smart playlist so I could pick up where I left off after shutting down the computer.

Every track is played, so I don't have to worry about digging up old stuff.

13 Jan 2004 | brian w said...

Cedric: iPods *do* have a shuffle-by-album feature. When you turn on shuffle, the first choice is "song" and the second is "album" (maybe this is a 3G feature; I didn't check my old iPod as well). And Matthew, iTunes (well, on the Mac side) has scripts that make nicely formatted playlists in AppleWorks and OmniGraffle, which are easily adapted to work with any AppleScriptable application.

13 Jan 2004 | Matthew Oliphant said...

And Matthew, iTunes (well, on the Mac side) has scripts that make nicely formatted playlists in AppleWorks

It does? Okay, then I am an idiot. I'll try and figure out how to do it.

13 Jan 2004 | Bill Brown said...

One of Several Steves: I think Jameson indicated that he'd be willing to pay for the software upgrade. As a first-gen too (missed it by a month, damn!), I felt slighted by the 2.0 upgrade and I would gladly have paid for an upgrade. I don't see that there's any particular hardware limitation preventing such an upgrade so I don't understand why they wouldn't offer it up for a price.

13 Jan 2004 | Brad Hurley said...

And Matthew, iTunes (well, on the Mac side) has scripts that make nicely formatted playlists in AppleWorks and OmniGraffle

Actually those scripts don't come with iTunes; you have to hunt them down yerself. You can find a playlist script on Doug's Applescripts site, which exports your playlist to a text file and lets you choose which fields you want to export. The script for exporting to AppleWorks is buried somewhere on Apple's site but you should be able to find it via a site search. It was developed for iTunes 2, but it still works in iTunes 4.

The OmniGraffle script is available from Omni's site, but you have to have the latest version of OmniGraffle for it to work. If you bought a Mac that came with OmniGraffle, the script most likely won't work; you have to pay for the upgrade.

The AppleWorks and OmniGraffle scripts create CD covers and/or CD labels. The export to text one from Doug's Applescripts just creates a list that you can print out in whatever format you like.

13 Jan 2004 | Brad Hurley said...

Phooey, sorry for the bad link to Doug's Applescripts...

The correct one is:

http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/scripts/scripts03.shtml

13 Jan 2004 | sandor said...

I contend that iTunes' shuffle algorithm -- and maybe the iPod's, too; I don't have one -- is already skewed to play your more popular music. I can't prove this without doing some long-term analysis, obviously, but over the last several years of using iTunes, I get the sense that I'm hearing the same songs or albums or artists over and over again, while missing others entirely. I can easily see this being a conscious decision on Apple's part. Anyone else sense this behavior?

13 Jan 2004 | Brad Hurley said...

Ah, and here's where you can find the Applescript for exporting a playlist to AppleWorks and creating a CD cover (tray inserts). Nicely formatted is stretching it a bit...the templates they provide are hokey but if you use the plain one and a nice font it can look nice.

http://www.apple.com/applescript/itunes/index.html

Wasn't so hard to find after all.

13 Jan 2004 | Matthew Oliphant said...

Thanks Brad. I'll get it when if I go home.

workworkwork

13 Jan 2004 | josh said...

Album shuffle works on my first-generation dinosaur. And people have had "random shuffle is totally NOT even random" conspiracy theories since CD players came out. I know I did when my college roommate's 18-disc changer showed a creepy and unfortunate predilection for Blind Melon.

13 Jan 2004 | Don Schenck said...

Random CD playing, a pet peeve of mine.

Why?

Because some players pick a CD first, then a random track. Well ... if you have one CD with (for the purposes of a wild example) one track, and you have a six-disk player, that track will randomly play 16.7% of the time ... way too much.

I solved it by creating six one-track CD's! :-)

13 Jan 2004 | One of several Steves said...

I must be in a distinct minority, but I've found the shuffle/random feature of any and all music players I've ever owned to be utterly useless. I don't want to listen to things randomly. One, the transitions between songs (especially on multi-CD players) is too long. Two, you end up with songs being played next to each other that have no business being played next to each other (some deep house wouldn't go real well next to a Beethoven sonata, both of which reside on my CD player). Three, I'm an album guy. I like listening to the whole thing, for the most part, and not just singles.

15 Jan 2004 | Phillip Winn said...

1osS, I'm an album guy, too, but I love randomness. Having a gospel tune melt into a hard rock tune melt into Chopin is half the fun!

Also, iTunes lets you specify how much overlap you want between songs, and I've got mine set so that the new song starts to kick in when about four seconds are left on the old one. No gaps.

I *do* wish that I could specify that certain songs should not be played individually, because live albums tend to do weird things. I could rip live albums as one giant track, but UGH!

16 Jan 2004 | One of several Steves said...

Also, iTunes lets you specify how much overlap you want between songs, and I've got mine set so that the new song starts to kick in when about four seconds are left on the old one. No gaps.

OK, that is cool. Nice way to set up your own club DJ-style mix.

25 Jan 2004 | Tom said...

As Cade Roux mentioned the Rio Karma has the shuffle features you are looking for and more. I just got the karma yesterday, it's a great little mp3 player.

25 Jan 2004 | Jason said...