Shaun R. Haber

Last week I removed all music from my iPod so that I could re-build my library in an organic manner. I quickly adopted a suitable management scheme that harnesses the full power of iTunes.

The problem:
I have a 40gb iPod. I have over 60gb of music in my iTunes library. I’d like a simple way to manage my music so I can cycle through some material while keeping others as perennial favorites.

My solution:
Use the full power of iTunes:

• My Rating System
• Smart Playlists
• iPod Syncing with Playlists

I’ll start first with the ‘My Rating’ system. This is the feature that allows you to define a number of stars (0 to 5) to rank a song. I’ve always thought this was a dumb feature. Who seriously browses through their entire library and ranks each song to an abritary rating?

I realized, however, in conjuction with Smart Playlists, this can be a powerful feature. I’ve created 6 Smart Playlists, where each one contains only songs ranked at a certain rating. I categorized each Smart Playlist according to the number of stars it refers to (there is an odd bug in iTunes regarding this, documented here with the work-around):

• No stars - Unsynced
• 1 star - Live
  Live concerts, comedians, etc.
• 2 stars - New
  New (to me) albums, etc.
• 3 stars - Rotate
  Music I listen to in phases, may rotate in/out of my iPod
• 4 stars - 4-star
  My current favorites
• 5 stars - 5-star
  Classic favorites (Beatles, etc.)

Initially I had no ranked songs, so my entire library fell into ‘Unsynced’. I then setup my iPod to automatically sync with the playlists: ‘Live’, ‘New’, ‘Rotate’, ‘4-star’, and ‘5-star’. As I browse through my library, I would add songs to my iPod by changing their ranking, and thus moving them out the ‘Unsynced’ playlist and into one of the other five.

An interesting note is that these playlists differ from their traditional use in that they primarily serve as a management tool. By organizing my music into these different sections, I can quickly find, for instance, all the new material I want to hear while all other material is filtered away.

This setup has a few assumptions: I can have no more than 40gb worth of songs ranked at any given time. As I rotate songs on/off my iPod, their rankings will change (from 3 to 0 stars or vice versa). Songs can be demoted/promoted if my musical tastes changes over time: Perhaps a 4-star album gets demoted to 3 stars, and thus falls in the rotation cycle.

I’m not sure how the rating system affects the Party Shuffle. So far I haven’t noticed any difference, but I don’t use Party Shuffle that much. Even if my 4-star and 5-star songs are played more often, well, that’s the point, right? Any of my ‘Live’ or ‘New’ material are songs/albums I would deliberately choose to listen to, so I’m not worried about the star ratings affecting my shuffle play.

It is possible to set up a system like this without using the My Rating system. The real power is in the Smart Playlist/iPod sync combo. I could have done this using keywords, genres, etc, but for now the rating system works fine.

[UPDATE] I just realized there is a checkbox in Party Shuffle to play higher rated songs more often. That’s cool.