Wednesday, June 01, 2011

iTouch Playlists

This post feels familiar, so I may have already done something similar in the past - but I am just now recovering my iTouch music database after a computer failure several months ago, so just getting back into my music.
Basically, I feel that I am the only person on the planet that listens to my music in randomized playlists. I am amazed that the iTouch (or iPod, or any other music player I've seen for that matter) does not allow the user to create playlists from the device, and add songs into (multiple) playlists while they are playing. Often when listening to newly loaded CDs or songs I think "this is a great driving tune, and is also a general good song for parties around the pool", so while listening to the song I want to add it to both of those playlists - but I can't, I need to remember the song and do the playlist udpate the next time I connect to iTunes.
I have a cludge work-around that I use that does a bit, but want to share it anyway for the benefit of humanity... I use the star rating system to categorize the music for moving into play lists when connected to iTunes.
- newly loaded songs have no rating so I move all of these into playlist "0-rating". This allows me to select only unrated songs, shuffle them for listening, and then rate while listening using 1 of the other star ratings.
- 1-star: don't like it, delete from library on next iTune connection.
- 2-star: softer background or dinner music
- 3-star: general inoffensive tunes for weekend breakfast listening, an additional playlist called "SundayMorning" is a merge of all 2 and 3 star songs.
- 4-star: good tunes
- 5-star: great tunes, an additional playlist called "GoodTunes" is a merge of 4 and 5 star songs.

So as I listen to the unrated songs live on my iTouch, I give them a star rating. Then when I get back to iTunes and sync, I sort the library by star rating and move all the songs to the playlists listed above, delete all the 1-star, and then go into each playlist and delete any with changed ratings.
It is a primitive system since there are only 4 usable stars, but it mostly works.

If someone knows a way to actually put songs into multiple playlists while on the go and listening, please let me know.

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