Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with playlists

No Disrespect, Mr. Crosby, But I Need New Music

moviehawk — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:10:59 -0800

Looking for recommendations for good alternative Christmas music from the last 10-15 years, either original or by way of cover. Some of my favorite music on my "holiday" playlist is the non-traditional stuff. Currently on my list and in heavy rotation are:

Weezer's "Christmas Song" and "Christmas Celebration"
Ingrid Michaelson and Sarah Barellis' "Winter Song"
Death Cab for Cutie's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"
Barenaked Ladies "Barenaked for the Holidays" album

What do you know of that's been released in the last 10-15 years that could be added to my playlist to lengthen the gap between Andy Williams and Nat King Cole songs?

How to get my iPod to sync in the order I want.

tonylord — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:10:04 -0800

I can't figure out how to get my ipod to sync an audiobook playlist, a podcast playlist and then fill up with music from another playlist. Can you help? Hi there,
I'm running a MBP with Snow Leopard and the latest version of iTunes.
My questions is about syncing itunes with my 2G iPod nano. I have the iPod to sync automatically with a podcast smart playlist, an audiobook non-smart playlists, and a non-smart music playlist.

Each time I sync, the size of the podcasts/audiobook playlists changes (either because I have made changes, or because new podcasts have been downloaded). This sometimes goes over the free space on the iPod and sometimes Itunes tells me this and says "Itunes will sync as many songs as possible", sometimes it just tells me there isn't enough free space and cancels the sync and sometimes it volunteers to turn off podcast syncing, which is what I specifically don't want. I haven't been able to figure out why I get different messages at different times.

What I'd really love is to get iTunes to be able to sync first the audiobook playlist, then the podcasts smart playlist and then fill the rest of the iPod from my music playlist. Is there a way of doing this?

Playlists won't stay random after transfer to iPod

friarjohn — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:32:43 -0800

Playlists set to random in iTunes won't stay random on my iPod. How can I fix this? [searched around and didn't see this exact issue addressed]

I've built a couple playlists (one smart, one regular) for my 5th Gen 30GB Video iPod and set them to random in iTunes. After I sync and disconnect my iPod the playlists are no longer in random order. They are in alphabetical order by album. In Settings, Shuffle is currently set to songs.

This hasn't always been a problem. It just cropped up recently, but I don't normally use a lot of playlists as I mostly listen to podcasts and audiobooks and just shuffle all songs when I want music.

What setting am I missing?

Songs of the City

sandraregina — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:29:06 -0800

I think my question might be too vague to google properly, so I turn to you. I'm looking for a wide variety of songs about cities. Not necessarily about a specific city, but in general. A couple of examples of the type of song I'm looking for is Dread the Day (Ghosts of Lemora) and Take Back the City (Snow Patrol). I don't care about musical genre. I'll listen to just about anything. :)

Is it possible to manipulate iTunes this way?

Jim On Light — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:50:08 -0800

I'm putting together this jamband playlist for an overseas trip. Pretty simple, right? There was a question asked about manipulating iTunes playlists to shuffle whole albums at a time, but this is a little more specific, and I'm on a PC. Windows XP.

What I am looking to do (but cannot figure out a way to do) is to have a shuffle-able playlist that shuffles groups of songs instead of one song at a time. The groups are basically jam sections of a show, and I have several shows. This make sense yet? I would like to group together 2-4 tracks in a group (as in 4 separate tracks that play gapless) and shuffle the groups so that the groups of songs shuffle, but the individual songs do not.

Is there a way to do this at all?

Thanks!

Useful iTunes keyboard shortcuts?

OmieWise — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:28:55 -0800

Is there a way, within iTunes, to change playlists (or navigate back to the main library) and to place the cursor in the search box using just the keyboard? I cannot find these options on any list of iTunes keyboard shortcuts, but I'm trying to rescue many gigs worth of music, and all the clicking around is killing me.

How can I browse iPod playlists by ALBUM instead of artist or song?

stst399 — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:36:04 -0800

How can I browse and listen to iPod playlists or genres by ALBUM instead of by artist or song title? One of the annoying things about the iPod interface is that the only way to play by ALBUM is to go into the ALBUM section. If one gets to the music by GENRE, then the music is listed by ARTIST. And if one goes in though the PLAYLISTS, then the music is listed by SONG.

But, for example, I would like to scroll to GENRE and then SOUNDTRACK: SCORE to see my movie music and then select, say, "Battlestar Galactica" or "Harry Potter". I want to browse by the ALBUMS and select one to be played.

Is there a way that this can be done? Is there a Smart Playlist that can offer the music up this way?
Why wouldn't Apple have such basic functionality? Am I missing something?

I have Windows Vista, iTunes 8.0.0.35, and an iPod Classic (5th Generation). Thank you!

Removing a song from multiple playlists in iTunes?

planetthoughtful — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:08:20 -0800

Is there a way to remove a song from all playlists in iTunes without having to delete the actual song? I'm wondering if anyone knows of a method or 3rd-party tool (that works on Windows XP) that can remove a song from all static playlists in iTunes without having to delete the actual song itself? I often find myself working manually through multiple playlists to remove a song, when I don't actually want to delete the song itself and would love it if anyone can suggest a way to make this easier.

Windows Media 11 question

Daddest — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:59:22 -0800

Greetings, I have burned a audio cd with windows media player 11 and would like to print out the list of songs. In order to do this I need to find and install mpexp.dll. The only site that I can find that has this insists that I enter a security code that states Only enter symbols attached to a cat. Of course it is impossible to determine which symbols to enter because they want you to join the premium service for a fee. Does anyone know where I can find this dll. By the way the site is Rapidshare.com, obviously a site to be avoided. I also find it very frustrating to have to go through all this bunk just to print out a list!

Libraries, Playlists, Ratings... Oh My, iTunes!

polyester.lumberjack — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:13:30 -0800

I have a very confusing iTunes problem, regarding transferring songs to an external hard drive, and maintaining playlists and ratings... hopefully it will not be confusing to any of you, brave MeFites! I have a huge iTunes library on my laptop's hard drive. I have an external drive, fresh from the box, ready to carry these files...

However! I only want a particular set of songs transferred over, and the other songs, I wish to remain on my hard drive. I thought I could simply create a playlist in iTunes of the desired tracks, then select-all, and drag-and-drop those suckers on to the external drive. Alas, no.

Some Google-ing confirmed that the most common way to transfer files from iTunes to an external drive would be to just open Finder windows, and drag-and-drop the folders, forgoing the iTunes program completely. However, using this method means I transfer songs I don't want transferred... so (sigh) here are my questions:

• Is there a better method to transfer over just the songs I want? There are over 3,000 songs I want, currently in a playlist. I tried digging in the iTunes library folders and dragging-and-dropping the songs I wanted, but I made it to the "B" artists before I realized this was insane.

• Can I transfer just an iTunes playlist? I have some playlists in iTunes that are nested. Will they still nested? That sure would be nice!

• How about ratings? I'd love to keep those as well...

• And even more fun, when I have new songs on my laptop that I want to dump on to the external, what would be the best method of keeping that straight? My first plan was to just keep a playlist of songs I want to add, but... well, you can see where that thinking has lead me!

Couldn’t my iPod read my mind just a little bit?

SampleSize — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:53:42 -0800

My iPod/iTunes is completely out of control. I have 8,000+ songs, and they are minimally rated. My default rating when I add tracks is 4 and I downgrade tracks if I don’t want them to come up in shuffle, which runs off a playlist that’s “all songs rated 4 or higher.” This just ain’t cutting it and I find myself skipping more songs than I listen to. Two main problems:
1. The kind of music I want to hear changes depending on setting (car, home, work, etc) and my mood. Because of this, and my large library of music, (and the fact that I haven’t even kept on top of my ratings) I usually find myself skipping 3 or 4 tracks for every one that I let play.

2. At this point, I have a lot of music that I listened to once and forgot about. A friend was flipping through my iPod on a recent road trip and saying, “Hey, wow! You like [insert band name]?” And I was, like, “I do?”

Sometimes, at home, I just give up and switch over to last.fm or Pandora, which sometimes seem to do a better job of guessing what I want to hear. A big problem with those, however, is that they’re not available when I leave the computer and take the iPod (mostly in the car).

I’ve tried the The Filter iTunes plugin a few times and found it buggy and not-so-great at generating good playlists anyway. I’m aware of MoodLogic, but my understanding is that they stopped updating it in 2003; I’ve never tried it. I just (while writing this question) discovered MusicIP Mixer and I’m testing it out now.

So…I’m aware that this is a very broad question, but does anyone have suggestions for beginning to tame this beast, either by software (preferably) or organization methods? The idea of trying to sort through tracks one-by-one, manually, is overwhelming. I love having the large library of music, and I love being able to carry it all with me, but it’s out of control at this point.

Remotely edit playlists and mp3s with WMP

loquax — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:43:59 -0800

Editing Windows Media Playlists remotely So I have two PCs, both on a wireless network, with WMP 11. My music is all on one PC, basically a file server. The other PC sees the files and the whole library fine using the media sharing thing in XP/Vista, including playlists. BUT, I can't edit the playlists (or the tags/ratings of the files) from the remote library using the WMP interface. Which is a pain. Anyone know any clever way I can do this?

(I'm using WMP because it works easiest with other stuff, so while I'm a big Winamp fan, I can't really use any suggestions other than WMP suggestions)

Thanks!

Device-based smart playlists in itunes aren't very smart...

disclaimer — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:03:34 -0800

Itunes smart playlists on an ipod are apparently quite stupid: A smart playlist that will list by date added to the ipod, not the entire itunes library? I want a playlist on my ipod that displays songs added *to the ipod* for a specific range (or "in the last two weeks" really), not the date the songs were added to the itunes library. When I create a smart playlist on the ipod, it looks like the entries for "date added" on the ipod all match the "date added" into the library,which makes me think the ipod doesn't actually know when songs were copied to it. Can this be true? I know those two dates are often different depending on when i connect the ipod to the PC.

The end result I want is the ability to organize the songs on the ipod by the date they were added to the ipod, not the date the songs were imported into itunes.

Itunes 7.02, Windows XP.

I appreciate any help you can offer to resolve this critical issue in my life. Help me live through another day with fresh music in my world.

IDing where a song was skipped

andifsohow — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:39:25 -0800

I have two iPods - a 60 GB for general use and a shuffle for exercise. I want to create playlists that delete songs I skip on the shuffle, but not songs I skip from the 60 or in iTunes. I just got the shuffle recently and am still crafting a master playlist for it. So I put a lot of stuff on there, but since 1) I have more music than I have time to listen to and 2) there's no screen on the shuffle to tell me what I'm listening to, songs I've skipped are often the only way to know what I want to delete. But my "Recently skipped" list is cross-pollinated by iTunes and the 60. I can't find anything in the Smart Playlist menus to indicate the source player that skipped a given track. What can I do?

Non random randomness.

Second Account For Making Jokey Comments — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 22:50:24 -0800

How can I configure a Smart Playlist in iTunes to play songs randomly but, should it randomly select one particular album comprised of three songs, that it plays that one album in the order intended? I just downloaded an EP by Australian 'supergroup' The Wrights, which features their cover of what is arguably one of the greatest rock songs ever made, Evie. For those who don't know the song, Evie is actually comprised of three separate songs that must be played in order for the narrative to make sense.

My problem is as follows.

I recently created an 'Ultimate' MP3 playlist for my iPod in the style described here. So far it has worked perfectly for me when I'm out and about, with my iPod randomly picking nothing but excellent songs from a larger selection of over 1000 MP3s.

I want to configure a smart playlist that will be selected randomly by my iPod but, on those occasions when it does select to play the album, I want it to play the tracks of the album in the order originally intended.

In other words, how can I configure a Smart Playlist to do this;

iPod plays Random songs --> iPod randomly selects this EP and plays songs in exact order of track 1, 2, 3 --> iPod goes back to playing random songs once EP is done.

Help me move my playlist across the file structure divide.

gergtreble — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:27:06 -0800

I have 2 installations of iTunes. I want to transfer a play-list from one to the other. Both have identical libraries. However the file paths of the two libraries is different on each computer. Is there a way to do this? Theres The Music files on computer A, have the file structure:

\Artist\Album\*.mp3

Where * is whatever the filename is, i.e. Its a mess (years of P2P natch).

Computer B has a much cleaner file-structure

\Artist\Year - Album\Tracknumber-Trackname.mp3

All ID3 tags on all files across both computers are correct and virtually identical.

I have a large (6000 song) playlist on computer A that I want to have on computer B. Is there a way to do this?

Ive tried exporting the song list from A then importing it to B but due to the differing file paths It doesn't work.

I was hoping that there would be some way of using the ID3 tags to make this work.

Thanks Metafilter.

Randomly selecting albums, rather than songs, to fit on my iPod.

chorltonmeateater — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 08:02:02 -0800

How can I use iTunes smart playlists to fill my iPod with a good mix of new, favourite and random albums (not just songs)? My iTunes library is now too big to fit on my 40 GB iPod, and rather than manually manage what goes on there I would like to use smart playlists to give me a mixture of old and new stuff I would like to listen to. There are, of course, already many guides to doing this, but they all have one problem as far as I'm concerned; they all concentrate on individual songs rather than albums.

Is there a way to do this for albums using smart playlists? The "iPod Selection" playlist automatically created by iTunes to fit onto the iPod treats things as albums, but isn't dynamic and I can't see a way to regenerate it.

Make itunes fill up my ipod!

cschneid — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 14:02:18 -0800

How do I tell itunes to just do it's best at filling up my ipod? I have a 1 GB ipod nano, and my music collection is much larger than that. What I want to be able to do is to have a playlist like 'my top rated' and then another playlist with the rest of my music assigned to take up whatever remaining space is left on the ipod.

The other thing I want to happen is for this second playlist (the bulk of music playlist) needs to update when I add new music. That is a more general question really, how do I make smart playlists recalculate? They seem so nice when you make them, but they don't ever seem to update correctly.

How do I convert XML into XSPF?

monsterhero — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 23:04:52 -0800

How do I convert XML files into XSPF? I'm looking particularly at the XML files offered at by the Audioscrobbler Webservices. They provide XSPF lists for most of the track charts, but not for the Recent Weekly Track Charts for groups. Is there a simple way to generate an XSPF file from the XML?

Where to find historical radio station playlists?

symbebekos — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 20:57:17 -0800

Where to find historical radio station playlists? As a kid I listened to 103.9 WDRE, a modern rock format station in Philadelphia, and recently it occurred to me that if I could track down a large percentage of the songs they played and stick them in a playlist for iTunes to shuffle, it would be a little like having the (dear departed) station on my desktop. The valuable data is not the songs I remember hearing, but rather what I don't remember but would if I heard again. So: is there a source for old radio station playlists? I've Googled around, but to no avail.

"Or" Filters in iPod Smart Playlists

pettins — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 12:54:33 -0800

iPodFilter: Can you do complex filters in Smart Playlists? I want to create a smart playlist combining more than one Genre. (eg Songs from Rock or Pop)

Is it possible to enter "OR" style entries so that it can collate more than one Genre into a Smart Playlist?

(Ipod Nano on Windows XP)

Dont let me loose my playcounts!!!

gergtreble — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:42:55 -0800

Save my itunes playcounts and ratings! Damnable windows has crashed! Well it had to happen. My laptop has crashed, windows wont boot. Oh the Dispair!

Im using Knoppix to rescue all the files I didnt have a backup of (thankfuly not many). And all is going swimmingly

But heres the crux of my question. Whilst im transfering files is there a way of rescuing the playlists, playcounts and ratings from my install of itunes? Is it as simple as finding the itunes DB file and saving it? Im sure there must be a way. Help me metafilter!

a country between us

ilikecookies — Sat, 20 May 2006 18:56:57 -0800

songs about/featuring d.c./l.a? I'm in DC, he's in LA. I'd like to make a mix that celebrates our respective cities with maybe a touch of wistfullness.

For DC I've got:

Magnetic Fields - Washington, DC
The Postal Service - The District Sleeps Tonight
Lutricia McNeal - Washington
and... that's it

For LA I've got:

Gary Jules - Downtown Los Angeles
Bram Van 3000 - Drinking in LA
M. Doughty - No Peace Los Angeles
The Decemberists - Los Angeles, I'm Yours
Atmosphere - Los Angeles
Dizzy X - Lost Angeles
Beth Hart - LA Song

I know the Red Hot Chili Peppers sing often about locations in and around LA, but the boy is not a fan.

Suggestions?

What songs do you recommend about survival against odds or in the face of adversity?

slavlin — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 09:28:02 -0800

What songs do you recommend about survival against odds or in the face of adversity? I am putting together a CD of songs to remind me I can push through anything. Examples of what I am looking for are: 18 Wheeler by Pink I Get Knocked Down (Tubthumping) by Chumbawumba I Will Survive by Cake (I like their version best, sorry) Any suggestions are helpful, but I am not particularly interested in breakup songs. If it is not a song where you can not sum it up into something along the lines of "Bring it!" or "Is that the best you got?" then it is probably not what I am after.

Relocting playlists in iTunes?

Manhasset — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 18:19:40 -0800

Moving iTunes Playlists? I just bought a new drive and have dragged music from anoter drive to it as I want all my music in one place and was out growing the other drive.

I know from experience that if I delete the original files and then try to play a playlist, the tunes won't be found.

How do I tell it to keep the playlists intact but find the files (identically named/foldered) on the other drive? Changing the location of my library in the preference doesn't do it. I'm on OS X.

Stuff used to be in A Drive => Music but is now copied to B Drive => Music