How to create and tailor a Smart playlist in ITUNES

When I do want to listen to old stuff or tunes from a certain era I use a smart playlist, and here’s how you can create and tailor them for particular decades in ITUNES.

I listen to a lot of music, but I mostly like to keep songlist rotation to newer tunes. I think this keeps me young, forward-looking, and out of a deep nostalgia rut that can become a sucking morass that steals your soul and all of that. e.g. I know some folks who listen to nothing but old songs that are sad paeans to the joys of their lost youth, and get this: they started listening to that yearning for lost childhood song list way back while they were still young believe it or not. Their song list is about 75 tunes of total melancholic bore on endless repeat and I sure don’t want to become like that. (No! I am not talking about you my friend!) Enough of the rambling, and to the point.

I do get in a rare moods where I do want to think back, and I still have all of those old tunes on my IPOD; I just don’t listen to them as much as most people because I played the heck out of them while DJ’ing. When I do want to listen to old stuff I use a smart playlist, and here’s how you can create and tailor them for particular decades in ITUNES.

First under “File” menu Select >NEW then >Smart Playlist — once the window pops up click the Plus sign a few times to create a few programmable lines, when you finish it will look something like this but the lines will be mostly blank & the same:

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The first window says “artist” but it’s a drop selection window with a ton of choices — Select “YEAR” and then move right to the next window on that line for the operator. You want to select the year prior to the year you actually want the list to start with so if you were making a playlist of Rock, Pop, and other music from 2000 – 2010 then after you select Year, next to it the operator drop down that has “is greater than” and then in the last selection window type in “1999”.
Next in the bottom line of your playlist you close your program bracket by doing the same but use “YEAR” “is less than” and put in “2011”. That brackets your decade but you aren’t done yet, you should always put in a line in that excludes “holiday” so you don’t get that Christmas tune playing in June at minimum…” To do that Select “Genre” to exclude “Holiday” by using “is not”, on those other lines you can also exclude any other genres or things you don’t like, look at those drop downs and be creative in narrowing the playlist – you can always add more lines in the script by hitting the “+”, and once you are all done you use the “-” sign to eliminate any extra lines. Click on “Live Updating” so it grabs any new songs you add that might fit the criteria and then hit save, and name it something specific like 2000-2010 or “the lost decade” or whatever. Bam! you done..