How to Make the Ultimate iTunes Playlist

So you’ve got thousands of songs in your iTunes library. How many would you say you actually listen to? If you are like many people, you probably only listen to a small percentage of your music library the majority of your time. It’s a shame that so many people have literally thousands of songs going to waste. There’s a better way. In this guide we’ll show you how to build an iTunes playlist perfectly suited for you. In fact, it may be the only iTunes playlist you’ll ever need.

Follow these steps and you’ll get to hear music you love more often without hearing the same songs over and over again.

In order for this playlist to work, you’ll need to tell iTunes which music you like. To do this, we’ll be using the rating system. If you haven’t already rated your music, we’ll help you create a playlist to do just that. It can be a bit daunting to rate your entire library, but you don’t need to rate your entire library right now. You can do it over time, and the ultimate playlist that we’re going to build will update automatically to include songs as you rate them.

  1. Rate Your Library (if you’ve already rated a good portion of songs in your library, you can skip this step) The easiest way to quickly rate songs is to create a smart playlist of unrated music. In iTunes, go to File > New Smart Playlist. Drop down the list that currently has Artist” selected, change it to Rating”. Then go over to the stars, and click on the stars and drag to the left until there are none. Your window should look like the following:

    no ratings playlist

    Once you click OK”, you’ll be prompted to name the playlist. Now when you click on this playlist, it’ll automatically show you songs that don’t have ratings. Start listening and using the Rating” column to mark your like or dislike of each song. I generally put 5 stars for songs I know I love, 4 stars for songs I enjoy, and 3 stars for songs I don’t really listen to. If there is a song that I really hate for some reason, I’ll generally give it just one star.

  2. Begin Creating the Ultimate Playlist In iTunes, go to File > New Smart Playlist. Set the first row to Playlist | is | My Top Rated. Then click the + button to add a new condition row. Make this row Last Played | is not in the last | 3 | weeks. Ensure that Live updating” is checked. Your window should look exactly as below:Image 11

    Click OK” and name your playlist.

Now you’ve got a playlist of songs that you know you love, but you’ll get only songs that you haven’t heard in the last three weeks, which ensures a supply a fresh and awesome music. Once you listen to a song, it’ll store it away until it’s been three weeks since you’ve heard it. You may need to play with the Week value, depending upon how much music you have and how often you listen. Based on the settings above, my Ultimate” playlist has as solid 250 songs (17.6 hours) at the time of writing. I promise, as long as you rated your music appropriately, this playlist will play awesome songs that you want to hear, all day long.

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