Hi Andrew,
The way to randomize your playlist is to use a smart playlist. Just after the
rules section there's a checkbox with limit conditions. So, for example, if I
wanted to create a random playlist of as many of my purchased iTunes tracks as
would fit onto a CD, I might have a rule like "Playlist" "is" "New Purchases"
and then check the box after the rules section and specify "Limit to 700 MB
selected by random". The limit lets you set a menu popup to specify time
(minutes or hours), size (MB or GB), or items for the quantity you type in the
text box. Then there's a selection popup menu for your criteria, which can be
"random" or tag fields like "album", "artist", "genre", or "name", or your
rating ("highest" or "lowest"), or according to how recently or frequently you
play the tracks or whether you want the most recently added tracks.
The size limit specification is good for playlists that you easy burn to CDs or
DVDs or that you want to transfer to an iOS device. The time limit is
convenient if you want to make a playlist to fill up the time for your commute
or to make a workout playlist for time in a gym. You can get very elaborate
about ways to construct your playlists, by using smart playlists that apply
conditional selections to other regular or smart playlists, especially if these
are used on iPods or iOS devices that support live updating. So if you
decided to make a smart playlist to listen to items in your music library that
you hadn't played in the last three months, and had the live updating box
checked, your iPod, iPhone, or iPad would also keep track of items you listened
to on that device, and not repeat any of those tracks when you play from your
smart playlist. Further, if you sync your smart playlist and device, the
iTunes library on your Mac would also update with the information of which
tracks you had played on your device, and not include them when you played from
the same smart playlist on your computer.
And the easiest example of using live updating when playing from a smart
playlist on an iPod or iOS device is to construct one for listening to an
audiobook consisting of multiple mp3 tracks. Add a rule like "Plays is 0", and
play your book from the smart playlist. As soon as you finish listening to a
track, the play counter increments, and it drops off of your smart playlist.
So the currently playing track in your smart playlist is always to latest track
that you haven't finished listening to, because your device updates the
information on whether or not that track was played. By contrast, a regular
playlist for that audiobook or a smart playlist that did not "live update" when
played on your device, away from iTunes on your computer, would always start at
the first track in the playlist.
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
On Aug 7, 2012, at 11:40 PM, Andrew Lamanche wrote:
> Hello Listers,
>
> I've created an mp3 playlist of over 100 tracks to be burnt to a CD. Is there
> a way of randomly arranging these tracks so that they do not appear as
> albums? What I'm after is something akin to a shuffle situation where when
> you listen to your cd the songs do not play according to where they are in a
> respective album but play somewhat randomly. My cd player does not have
> shuffle facility.
>
> Many thanks for your tips.-
>
> Andrew
>
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