Smart Playlists

Smart playlists are just about the best thing going for iTunes, other than built in, multi-format ripping or CD buring in both audio or MP3, or the nifty "Browser".  I use them all the time.  To my winamper friends, it's an alien concept.  So, here's some of my more useful playlists.

Favs

This is a neat one which, if you have a properly rated collection, will provide you with your own personal radio station.  The "Last Played" setting ensures I don't ever overhear a song.  A variation of that would be to put a limit on it, and sort it by Least Often Played, that way you'll always have a fresh mix of your favorites.

Fav-Blues

This is just like my Favs, but tuned for Blues only.  I've turned down the Star rating a bit to open up the field more.  Without it, I could have just used my Favs playlist, with the Browser set to play only Blues.  With it, I have some blues that would never appear in the main Favs.  I have about 4 Fav- playlists.

Never Played

Every so often, you'll infuse your collection with a ton of new songs that you should probably listen to at least once.  What's the point of carrying around songs that you may never listen to?

Newest

Sometimes, when I rip or download a bunch of new songs this playlist becomes useful, as it will usually contain the songs which need to be properly tagged, or have album art downloaded for. 

Rarely Played

This playlist focuses on songs I haven't heard in a long time.  It does so by choosing the 100 songs that haven't been played in the longest time.  iTunes will randomly pick one of those 100 songs, play it and remove it from the playlist and add the new 100th least recently played song.  I have that "Genre is not Comedy" bit in there because I recently added all 54 "Bud Light Real Men of Genius" radio commercials, and since I didn't play them all yet, this playlist was half filled with commercials.

Unrated

I'm a rating nut, and I try my best to have all my songs rated, but it's quite a challenge.  This playlist helps me out.  "My rating is less than 1 star" finds all my unrated songs.  "Last Played is in the last 3 days" means I have a good chance of remembering the song.  I check this every so often and rate the ones that are in there.  You'll have to tune the "3 days" bit so there's always a manageable amount of songs in there.