A playlist which prefers to play songs I REALLY like over filler?

June 30, 2014 1:34 PM

I'm wondering if it's technically possible to "weight" a song's importance on a playlist so that it has a higher chance of being played. With that weigh ranging from "100% certainty" to "do not care one way or the other."

Right now I'm building the playlist for my wedding in a couple of months. We are probably going to use an iPhone, iPod or laptop attached to a hopefully decent audio system. I'm planning on using either Spotify or iTunes to organize said playlist. I'm thinking I'll break it into at least two playlists, some of which would be more mood-oriented and some more party/raucous music-themed, but either way the total amount of tunes will be around 7-8 hrs (plus more in case the wedding goes over the time limit).

My issue is this: owing to the amount of required music, there's definitely going to be some filler in the list to make sure that nothing repeats. At the same time, there are several songs which I would like to ensure get some airtime. Note that this isn't something like a first dance where there'd be a break in the music; these are just ostensibly random songs which would be coming up in the course of the evening. What I want to do is pick like 10 or so songs and *guarantee* that they be played at some point during the festivities, though the exact time doesn't really matter.

Is there any way to handle this using the players I mentioned earlier? Do I need to rate the music that I want to hear the most? Do I need to build multiple playlists and then somehow combine them into a "smart" playlist? Alternatively if there's another music app that could handle this then I'm totally open to suggestion. Right now I'm leaning Spotify because it has a large streaming library so that would be a pretty necessary feature for any alternative I go with in its place.

posted by miltthetank to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

1. Create a playlist that is half an hour shorter than your party is intended to go (e.g., if you're throwing a six hour party, put in five and a half hours of music. All of your must-play tracks go here.

2. Shuffle this playlist.

3. Add another two hours of music to the end of the playlist to fill out the party and cover you if it runs long.

4. Save playlist.

5. Play in non-shuffled mode.

You'll get all of your must-play tracks in the first five-and-a-half hours of the playlist.

Good luck! :)
posted by DWRoelands at 1:44 PM on June 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

iTunes will weight playlists by the songs' star rating. Of course, you have to star rate everything you put in the playlist, but it seems like you're willing to do that anyway.
posted by Diablevert at 3:17 PM on June 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

On Spotify you can just add a song to a playlist multiple times.
posted by Jacqueline at 4:17 PM on June 30, 2014

^But then it might play multiple times.

I think your best bet is a Spotify Premium playlist (or heck just a CD) set to play in order rather than on shuffle. You'll know exactly what's playing when, no surprises.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:31 AM on July 1, 2014

You can make a smart playlist with, say:
3 gigs of songs rated 5 stars
2 gigs of songs rated 4 stars
1 gig of songs rated 3 stars
etc, etc.

You can also set up the smart playlist so that after a song is played once, it drops off and is replaced by something new. (You'll have to adjust the gig ratio above to fit your time needs.)

I have my iTunes organize like this and it's awesome. It DOES require that you rate your music, but that's something you can spend a few hours a week doing in the months leading up to your wedding. I have a smart playlist set up for unrated songs that I rate as I listen to.

My system is a simpler version of this, but it's where I got the idea from.
posted by Brittanie at 8:36 AM on July 1, 2014