Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions itunes playlists

I have a Classic Rock playlist that includes a large selection of Led Zepplin songs. Since I have every Led Zepplin album, almost half of the songs in the playlist are Led Zepplin. Is there is way to have the songs come up less often when randomly playing the playlist? (So that several Led Zepplin songs never come up at all when randomly listening to the playlist) I thought that maybe if I rate all Led Zepplin songs as 1 star and all others in the playlist as 5 stars then many of the Led Zepplin songs wouldn't come up at all when I shuffle though the songs, but that is not the case. Don't get me wrong, I like Led Zepplin, but it is supposed to be a Classic Rock playlist not a Led Zepplin one.

- Nick

Reducing Led Zeppelin content??? on purpose????

Sacrilege!!!

Actually, I don't use iTunes so I don't know.

"Less Zeppelin"...there must be a 'Communication Breakdown' here, 'cause I'm not feeling a "Whole Lotta Love". "In the Evening" I don't mind some Zeppelin, but to take a few songs out would be a "Heartbreaker" because they play such good "Rock and Roll" and leave most other bands "Trampled Underfoot". Okay, I'm starting to "Ramble On", must be because I'm "Dazed and Confused" which really is "Nobody's Fault but Mine".

"Hot Dog" Adrian, that was as smooth as "Kashmir".

Sorry if I'm not not making much sense. It all started when I came in through the out door. "I'm Gonna Crawl" back there now. After all, "That's the Way".

I don't use iTunes either. Sorry, no help here. "The Song Remains The Same", I suppose.

Ladies and gents, they'll be here all week. Tip the wait staff... prime rib, yadda, yadda, yadda...

Uh, haven't heard of any of those tunes Mark.

After reading "Tom Sawyer", I turned on MSNBC to watch "Countdown". When my watch read "21:12", I let my wife know I was "In the Mood". Soon we got to "The Main Monkey Business", but it was a 'Far Cry" from my best work. "That's 'The Way the Wind Blows'", she said, but still it was a wound to my "Malignant Narcissism."

Amen

That's pretty good for having typed it up in a Rush.

OK, let me do one for the Bay City Rollers!






Aaaah, never mind.

What a Rush!! "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" or get some "Help" unless you get "Another Girl" after your wife gives you a "Ticket to Ride" because of "The Night Before". "It Won't be Long", but "Tomorrow Never Knows" if you can "Get Back" to "Something" where she just let's you know "I Feel Fine" then you'll know "She Loves You".

"I Can't Remember" exactly, but in a "Nutshell" it happened like this. I asked my "Sunshine" if she'd like me to put my "Man In the Box" or "Down in a Hole". She called me a "Rotten Apple", told me to "Stay Away" and "Don't Follow", and now I'm living in a "Sea of Sorrow".

Mark, you might want to hold off posting that one until "Saturday Night".

LOL...

In older versions of iTunes, there was a 'Smart Shuffle' setting that let you tinker with the randomness of the shuffle. Its purpose was to avoid the problem you're facing. If your playlist contains a lot of X, then in a truly random shuffle it is entirely possible that X will come up all the time. It's random. That 'Smart Shuffle' feature would decrease the randomness and force iTunes to pick other artists/albums in a random setting.

But it looks like that as of iTunes 8, Apple removed it.

You could try the 'iTunes DJ' feature. You can select a playlist with that, and then one of the settings there is to play higher rated songs more often. That might help you.

Good luck!

Nick,
Well....this one got hijacked immediately following the first post....back to the original topic. The only way that I know to do it is to create duplicate playlist, then delete the songs you don't want coming up from the new playlist. Then you can random play just the new list. I hope that I am not talking down here - I had to ask my teenager for instrux.....the way to random play a single playlist is...start the playlist. After it starts, press the center button several times (3 times,I think) until a submenu comes up. It will have 3 selections "Off", "Songs" and "Album". Use the right arrow button to select "songs" and then hit the center button again. Now the playlist will be random instead of your entire music list. Beware that this will cause all playlists to operate in Random. To turn it off, press the center button the requisite number of times to bring up the menu and then use the left arrow button to select "off". After she taught me this little trick, I use it all the time.

I usually try to keep my iTunes playlists managed by putting in a filter about "not played in the last 2 weeks" or somesuch. That tends to cut down on that sort of problem, at least.

Peter,

Both comments were quite helpful. I was lucky enough not to update itunes since I started at 7.7.11, so I have both features that you are talking about. The "Party Shuffle" does exactly what I want. However, I just wish that this were an option to do with every playlist automatically so that I don't have to update these new playlists every couple of weeks this way.

argon,

I know that I can do this by just manually deleting some of the Led Zepplin songs, but it is too much work to do that all the time. I have a "Metal" playlist with a lot of Metallica where I have the same problem. I just don't want to spend all that time doing this and I would like it to be random removal of some of the Led Zepplin. The Party Shuffle is the closest option for me.

kcarlile,

I'm not sure what filtering you are talking about. Did you write a script for itunes or something?

- Nick

Peter is talking about using "smart playlists." You can either add a condition to the smart playlist like the one he mentioned and/or you can add a condition at the end of the list that chooses the songs in the list based off of either "least recently played" or "least often played" both of which would drop down the amount of LZ in your lists.

Try a google on smart playlists if you're not using them already and you should find a lot of options for using smart playlists to solve the problem.

Jason

Jason,

I didn't even realize that there was an option for smart playlists. Also, it didn't seem like the party shuffle was that useful until Peter mentioned it and I looked into it. Its too bad that you can't create a smart playlist by selecting part of it from the party shuffle so that the smart playlist is dynamic. Anyways, these two options have helped a lot.

- Nick

Can anyone explain to me whether there is a way to create an excel listing of your itunes albums from itunes?

Ok I did some web browsing and found a neat little macro that does it all without much work:
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:Sz_...6&hl=en&ct=clnk

You might try using the Genius for the playlist instead. It might choose fewer LZ songs.

I have to upgrade itunes to get the Genius playlist as an option. Then I lose the party shuffle and smart playlist options. Also, my ipod is the generation before genius playlists came out and so it probably isn't supported on the ipod.

- Nick