I’ve been using this scheme for my iTunes playlist for about 10 years now. It’s a good system – when it worked. Unfortunately, when I went through the process of re-organizing my playlists, the dates got all messed up. I’ve went about two years with my smart playlists pulling songs in a dumb manner (half my songs were “added” in the last 2 years).
I finally spent some time and put together a new system. Instead of basing it on when I added the song, I just based it on the year of the song*. So now, I have the following component playlists:
- Songs from before 1990
- Songs from 1990 – 1994
- Songs from 1995 – 1999
- Songs from 2000 – 2004
- Songs from 2005 – 2009
- Songs from 2010 – 2014
- Songs from 2015 – 2019
- Songs that I’ve added in the last year
- Songs rated 1 or 2 stars (above playlists are only 3 stars or higher)
- Songs that are not rated (added recently)
I have general rules on all of them where it omits songs played within the last 8-12 weeks (12 weeks for the 00s, shorter for older and newer songs) and limits to 10. From that I build a single smart playlist which should be a mix of all time periods, songs that I enjoy listening to but haven’t listened to recently, and have a stronger weighting towards new songs.
Hopefully this system will provide enough variety for another decade, at which point I think everyone will be streaming.
*I know that this is not always accurate, because greatest hits or compilations will have a year of when that CD was released, rather than each individual song
Hi! and welcome to the eclectic personal blog of Kevin Quan. Come in, stay awhile, peek into the nooks & crannies, and learn a bit about me and my interests.