Managing a Large Music Library on a Small iPod

I have an 8gb iPhone and a 1gb iPod shuffle. So what’s my secret to managing my nearly 7500 song library with so little space? Smart playlists – which are by far the best and yet least utilized feature of iTunes.

Here are my favorite smart playlists and how to recreate them for yourself:

I keep all my playlists limited to checked items only and make sure they are all live updating. Also essential is the “Non-music” smart playlist which will contain all of your videos, podcasts, audiobooks, etc. “Playlist is NOT Non-music” will be a criteria for all of the following smart playlists.

Top 5%
Limit to 365 songs by MOST OFTEN PLAYED

5 Stars
Rating is 5 Stars

New Music
Date added is within the last 1 month

New and Good (this is the playlist that I sync to my iPod shuffle as well)
Rating is in the range 4 stars to 5 stars
Limit to 1gb by MOST RECENTLY ADDED

And then we have my ultimate all-inclusive mix so I don’t miss anything else… Here’s my post from smartplaylists.com which describes it:

I’ve been using iTunes for over 2 years now and up until recently I’d been listening pretty much exclusively to my “My Top Rated” playlist of 4 and 5 star music (which was about 2000 songs out of my 7000 song library). But I realized I was missing out on a lot of newly added music that I never rated and older stuff that I had rated lowly but then later changed my mind on so I needed to find a solution. Browsing around here I realized I could nest playlists and proportion how much of what I was getting by using limits (previously I couldn’t image why you ever want to limit a playlist), and now I’ve created what I consider to be the ultimate playlist.

Component playlists:
I have a non-music playlist that filters out all my videos/digital booklets/audiobooks/itrip stations/etc that is excluded from all of the following

SPL 1: (This pulls up highly rated new music that I haven’t listened to much)
match ALL
1) My rating is in the range 4-5 stars
2) Last played is not in the last 1 day
3) Last skipped is not in the last 1 week
4) Playcount is less than 5
limit to 100 by most recently added

SPL 2: (This pulls up unrated or lowly rated new music that I haven’t listened to much)
match ALL
1) My rating is in the range 0-3 stars
2) Last played is not in the last 1 day
3) Last skipped is not in the last 1 week
4) Playcount is less than 4
limit to 55 songs by most recently added

SPL 3: (This pulls up higher rated music that I have listened to at least some)
match ALL
1) My rating is in the range 3-5 stars
2) Last played is not in the last 1 day
3) Last skipped is not in the last 1 week
4) Playcount is greater than 5
limit to 30 songs by random

SPL 4: (This is a catch all so I don’t miss anything else)
match ALL
1) Last played is not in the last 1 day
2, 3, 4) Playlist is not SPL 1, SPL 2, or SPL 3
limit to 15 songs by random

The active playlist that I use to listen to (you could just put them in a folder but that doesn’t show up on the ipod):
match ANY
1-4) Playlist is SPL 1, SPL 2, SPL 3, or SPL 4

This playlist gives me 200 songs total, usually ranging 11-12 hours which is the maximum I can imagine listening to in a day, I sync my iPod every night. If I were going out of town I’d multiply the limits by however many day’s I’d be gone.

Also, if you want to fill your iPod with music cheaply and legally, here are my favorite resources for free and legal mp3s:
iTunes music store: has 2 or more free songs every week, changes each Tuesday
Amazon.com
purevolume.com
absolutepunk.net (news relating to the type of music I like, they direct me to free downloads of songs I’d like to hear)
spinner.com mp3 of the day

Let me know if you have any other free and *legal* mp3 resources and if you have any smart playlist ideas of your own.

Related posts:
Make Your Own iTunes Plus Files
25 Days of Free Christmas Music from Amazon
Managing RSS Feeds
The Top 10 Sources for Free and Legal Downloads… Yes Friends, Your Ipod Just Might Explode
iTunes Tip: Storing Your Media on an External Hard Drive

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