I want to know what I've been listening to a lot recently.

December 7, 2005 8:12 PM

iTunes Smart Playlists: how do I see what I've been listening to a lot recently?

I have one playlist that pulls the most-played tracks from everything I've played in the last week, but since it uses the all-time most-played tracks, I tend to get a list that looks pretty much the same as my Top 25 Most Played. Is there any way to wrangle Smart Playlists so that I can see what I've listened to repeatedly in the last seven (or however many) days?

(XP/iTunes 6/G5 iPod, if that helps)

posted by heeeraldo to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Would it be possible to use a service like Last.fm? I don't use it with an iPod myself, but there are those who do. It does a great job of doing just what you seem to want.
posted by frykitty at 8:31 PM on December 7, 2005

Can't be done.

(with the built-in tools, anyway)
posted by cillit bang at 9:31 PM on December 7, 2005

Unfortunately, iTunes records only the date of the last time a track was played -- it does not save the date of each individual play. Too bad, too, because that would be great information for smart playlists and statistics.

I echo the recommendation of Last.fm. I use it (with an iPod, and with the music I listen to on my G5) and love it. The plugin works silently and without any fuss.
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:52 PM on December 7, 2005

Why can't you just set the smart playlist to pick tracks played in the last seven days? It's a standard option.

Am I missing something more complicated?
posted by ascullion at 10:19 PM on December 7, 2005

Why can't you just set the smart playlist to pick tracks played in the last seven days? It's a standard option.

That will give you a playlist of ALL songs played in the last 7 days -- you can't limit it to only the ones, for example, "played more than 3 times in the last 7 days".
posted by Robot Johnny at 10:26 PM on December 7, 2005

It's cool that iTunes can remember things like when you last listened to a track, how many times you've listened to it, and how much you like it, but I think you're overcomplicating the music-enjoyment activity a bit. Why not simply ask yourself what you've been listening to a lot lately? It's bound to be good enough for 99.44% of purposes you'd need the data for.

That said, what you need to accomplish this is a database to record each time you listened to a song, along with some way to run reports against this data. For obvious reasons iTunes doesn't have such a feature, but it would be reasonably easy to do it using FileMaker if you had a Mac. Theoretically you could also do this on Windows, but I couldn't begin to tell you how to do it...
posted by kindall at 11:28 PM on December 7, 2005

You're not the first to notice.

There are numerous AppleScript-based hacks for iTunes [e.g.] I can't find it now, but one guy had a huge, complex set of scripts that promoted and demoted track ratings based on listens (rather than the other way around, you see).

That said, I love Last.FM, which has recently upgraded its recommendations -- you can now see weekly "musical neighbors" and recommendations based specifically on the last week of music listened to. And of course you still have a membership-length archive of your weekly preferences (by artist, and by track).

I'll tell you, though, that I manage to have a happy experience by using Smart Playlists called "fresh" and "hot", which are tracks added in the last N days rated over K stars (30/2 and 60/3). I drag stuff from there into the Party Shuffle, which I traditionally feed from my 3-5 star song list. (I've been tempted a few times to make an identical list, except not played in the last day, to prevent awkwardly close repeats.) They're far from prefect but there are some fairly sophisticated things you can do with Smart Playlists alone.
posted by dhartung at 12:30 AM on December 8, 2005

That will give you a playlist of ALL songs played in the last 7 days -- you can't limit it to only the ones, for example, "played more than 3 times in the last 7 days".

No, but you can make a playlist that is 'played more than 3 times' AND 'played in the last 7 days'? Isn't that good enough?

I see.. i think that, actually, Apple got this one right. Keeping details of every time a file is played would make the library even more unweildy than it is already. Maybe.
posted by ascullion at 8:13 AM on December 8, 2005

No, but you can make a playlist that is 'played more than 3 times' AND 'played in the last 7 days'? Isn't that good enough?

Well, if you're trying to narrow your library down to what you've been listening to a lot in just the last week, the playlist you describe will return songs you may have listened to ONCE in the last week, but say 35 times over the past two years... it's not what heeeraldo is asking for.
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:32 AM on December 8, 2005

Speaking of Last.fm, here's what MeFites have been listening to alot recently...
posted by sad_otter at 9:38 AM on December 8, 2005