iTunes Power Tips, Part 4: New Smart Playlists
By Mike Charles
Apple recently rolled out iTunes 9, which included a slew of new features–none of which seemed to be of particular interest to DJ Tech Tools. However, Apple quietly updated my all-time favorite feature, the Smart Playlist, to include a powerful new option: nested conditions. This really excited the nerd in me, and I’d like to show you how this new option will help Smart Playlist-using DJs.
NOW WITH EVEN MORE SMARTS
Smart Playlists in iTunes 9 now include, the ability to create nested conditions in your Smart Playlist. In the past, every statement in your Smart Playlist’s conditions was either an “and” statement or an “or” statement. The only possible way to create an “and + or” condition was to build a playlist, and then build a second Smart Playlist off the first playlist. Clear as mud, right? Let’s walk through an example that will show you why you should care about this new feature.
Let’s say we want a playlist that includes all of our best-rated breakbeat tracks. The criteria are:
- All tracks with a Rating of 4 or 5 stars
and:
- All tracks where the Genre contains “breaks”
or:
- All tracks where the Grouping contains “breaks”
What we need to do here is locate any track where the Rating is in the 4 to 5 range and either the Genre or Grouping fields contain the word “breaks.” In old-school iTunes, we would have needed two separate Smart Playlists: one playlist to find any track that had a genre or grouping of “breaks,” and a second playlist that found all tracks rated 4 or 5 in the first playlist. That would have looked something like this:
Playlist 1, named All Breaks
Playlist 2, referencing Playlist 1
Now with iTunes 9 we can accomplish the same task with a single playlist. Create a Smart Playlist and tell it to look for all tracks with a rating of 4 to 5.
Next click the new Ellipsis [...] button. This creates a second level of conditions under the first level, effectively eliminating the need for multiple playlists to accomplish a single task. At this second level we have two criteria:
Genre – contains – Breaks
or
Grouping – contains – Breaks
Use the Plus Sign button to add more than one condition, and be sure to change the matching criteria at this second level to “any” instead of “all.” It should now look like this:
Now we have a playlist that finds all tracks with a range of 4 to 5 and either the Genre or Grouping fields contain the word “Breaks,” and we did it in one step instead of two. At first glance it seems like a minor update, but I’m positive that fans of my iTunes Power Tips series are happy to welcome this new tool to the arsenal.
ANOTHER MIKE CHARLES PSA
This PSA goes back to how it all began, with tagging. Tag early and tag often, because without good tags none of this will work. If by chance you missed any of the previous portions of this series, check ‘em out now.
September 28th, 2009 at 3:25 am Quote
Nice one Mike, I’ve been using smart playlist’s since you first brought them to my attention in your previous post’s and now I really couldn’t imagine a time without them. I’ve only been a computer based dj for a year now and I really don’t think itune’s would play such a major part in my dj’n if it wasn’t for your post’s and this recent update has addressed my only issue with smart playlists.
Fingers crossed for continued improvements with Traktor and itunes integration.
Would love to see an article on why Traktor still struggle’s reading some id3 tags different to itunes and how to remedy it.
September 28th, 2009 at 5:54 am Quote
Nice article and nice picture of the smart car
I love the blue version :D
September 28th, 2009 at 7:12 am Quote
Nice, nested conditions is excellent, as I was having overlap issues when things with the same qualifying words overlapped and had to fix it in a rudimentary way, this is so much better, now I can put indie dance and indie rock back in their places!
September 28th, 2009 at 8:46 am Quote
great information! i’ve enjoyed all of your articles regarding music management with itunes, and always come away knowing useful things that i hadn’t before known.
September 28th, 2009 at 9:02 am Quote
Thanks for sharing Mike- that is indeed a big improvement and will make music management way easier!
September 28th, 2009 at 12:42 pm Quote
That’ what I want, a smart integration between these apps.
and thanks for sharing your knowledgement
September 28th, 2009 at 4:46 pm Quote
Another relevant and insightful post. I’m considering making DJTechTools my homepage at this point.
September 28th, 2009 at 5:01 pm Quote
haha along with skratchworx and gizmodo, djtechtools is my coffee-reading material! Great tips Ean. . .how is the tks for the oxy8 coming along?? :D:D
September 28th, 2009 at 5:16 pm Quote
Thats good company to be in. We appreciate the compliment.
September 28th, 2009 at 5:54 pm Quote
September 28th, 2009 at 6:00 pm Quote
btw there is something wrong with forum search (doesnt seem to work regardless of wether im logged in or not)
and how come my posts keep getting deleted?
VCI-300 TSI? Is there one coming or not? please? :)
Or are VCI-300 posts and forum searches ignored my default? lol.
September 28th, 2009 at 6:03 pm Quote
ignore the question about post getting deleted. seems to have magically re-appeared :)
September 28th, 2009 at 6:22 pm Quote
http://djlogic.es/?p=3770
i would still pay for one if all the led’s worked and it came with an nice overlay! :)
September 29th, 2009 at 1:26 am Quote
Excellent catch, Mike! I hadn’t seen this yet, and it is just what I’ve been hoping for. It’s good to know I can do away with all my multiple lists now. I’ll be using this for sure.
September 29th, 2009 at 6:13 am Quote
I saw this when my itunes updated and wondered how long ’til you guys wrote an updated article.
Good work
September 30th, 2009 at 5:00 am Quote
thanks for this example. i just found the feature yesterday in iT9 but couldn’t make it work rightaway (mostly the nested and the all/any option). now i know :) great.
October 6th, 2009 at 1:46 pm Quote
Wow. These new playlists are really smart. I made a playlist with the condition “Genre=’Dead’” and it automatically selected all my DnB tracks. So rad. Thanks Apple!