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Post by davidmn on Apr 7, 2009 14:33:54 GMT
I have a playlist of my favorite songs and I like to stick it on shuffle when I game. How smart is shuffle? Does it give priority to recent additions to the playlist or songs with low play counts? Does it play the songs with higher star ratings more often? If not then is there a plugin to let iTunes be clever?
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Post by HeatherKay on Apr 7, 2009 15:56:17 GMT
I found that a straight shuffle wasn't exactly random. For whatever reason, various tunes always came up, and tracks I knew were in there, but hadn't been played for ages or whatever simply never appeared. Many's the time I'd find the same selection reappearing on a regular basis - a bit like a radio station play list - which gives the impression the shuffle is based on the play count of each track. So, bizarrely, the more a track is played the more likely it is to be played again. To counter this lack of imagination, I set up a smart playlist. I set criteria such that only tracks that hadn't been played in the last month would appear in it. That gave a much more random selection, ensuring some of the more obscure stuff got an airing occasionally. I enjoy the challenge of getting more randomness into iTunes. It makes sense when you have your entire music collection stored in there, to at least give everything an occasional outing.
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Post by davidmn on Apr 7, 2009 16:40:26 GMT
I will check out the smart playlists. The stuff played loads of times just keep coming up! UPDATE I have checked it out but now I have a problem, how do I stop smart playlists including Podcasts and Audio Books? The arrows point to items which I dont want!
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Post by HeatherKay on Apr 7, 2009 17:42:20 GMT
how do I stop smart playlists including Podcasts and Audio Books? That's part of the extensive smart playlist filters I've set up. Add a rule by clicking the (+) button. You can add a rule anywhere in the hierarchy, and it won't always be at the bottom of the list. The important part is the "Match ALL of the following rules:" bit at the top. You'll find you can set it to not include a lot of things, but you occasionally have to be creative about the way you set it up. You'll also find you will be refining it regularly for a while. If it finds something you don't want included, edit it there and then to knock it out of the listing. Hope that helps.
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Post by davidmn on Apr 8, 2009 7:51:53 GMT
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Post by HeatherKay on Apr 8, 2009 8:29:20 GMT
Cool! Excellent news! Glad I could help.
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Alex Coplan
Senior Member
The future of mac...
Posts: 387
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Post by Alex Coplan on Apr 22, 2009 16:11:42 GMT
Smart playlists, infact evertything 'smart' is pretty awesome!
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