I have too many songs on my iPod

Archers of Loaf, "You and Me"
Bob Mould, "Art Crisis"
Circus Lupus, "Pop Man"
Descendents, "Suburban Home"
Electric Eels, "Agitated"
French Kicks, "Young Lawyer"
Grant Hart, "Seka Knows"
Half Japanese, "Mississippi"
Ice Cube, "It Was A Good Day"
Jonathan Richman, "Egyptian Reggae"
Karp, "Propane Activist"
Link Wray, "Stingray"
Mekons, "Where Were You"
Neu!, "Super"
Oneida, "All Arounder"
Public Image Ltd, "Poptones"
Queen & Bowie, "Under Pressure"
Replacements, "Alex Chilton"
Silkworm, "The City Glows"
Television Personalities, "The Glittering Prizes"
U.S. Maple, "Go To Bruises"
Vaz, "Static Electrik"
Will Oldham, "Antagonism"
X, "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts"
Young MC, "Bust a Move"
ZZ Top, "Cheap Sunglasses"

And yes, I meant fewer lame playlists.

Maybe I should ask for 20-minute playlists. I could make a hundred of them, and be set for the next six months. My short-term memory would eventually fail, and I'd still get that surprise you get from the shuffle feature.

I know it sounds like I'm making a big deal about this. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that it is a big deal.

(i haven't tested it)

not whole albums

I can probabaly modify this.

I used to do the thing of saying 'update checked songs only' but it's not very flexible and it also means that unchecked songs don't get played on random iTunes shuffle either, which I didn't want.

I need to sort out my own iPod management. At the moment I've resorted to just having it keep a manual playlist of my CDR-700 challenge tracks, another of recent stuff I want to hear and everything else from a once all-inclusive 'iPod stuff' playlist that I've just been hacking at to make space in a very crude way (ie. deleting all A-D artists' tracks, thereby leaving only those that fall under one of the other mini-playlists).

• Random Albums to iPod deletes any songs and playlists on your iPod, selects albums at random from the iTunes Library and adds every song on those albums to your iPod until it is full.

• Random Artist to iPod deletes any songs and playlists on your iPod, selects artists at random from the iTunes Library and adds every song by those artists to your iPod until it is full.

• Random iPod deletes any songs and playlists on your iPod, selects tracks at random from the iTunes Library and adds then to your iPod until it is full.

• Random Playlist Tracks to iPod deletes any songs and playlists on your iPod, selects tracks at random from the a playlist you've selected and adds songs to your iPod until it is full.

• Clean iPod deletes all songs and playlists from the iPod.

ie. year=1995-2000 AND genre=(R&B OR Hip-Hop) rather than

(year=1995-2000 AND genre=R&B) OR Hip-Hop,

which is how it interprets the query if the conditions are chosen in that order, leading to all Hip-Hop, regardless of year, being added.

Since I originally posted this thread, I've really dug deep into the Super Playlist feature. I mean, it's so obvious now, but you can make playlists that specifically forbid artists like CCR or the Beatles if you have too much in there. It's also helpful to exclude the iTrip radio stations and The Conet Project too, if you're so inclined.

I have an "Unplayed" playlist that I spend most of my time on. Any song that I've downloaded, but haven't played on the iPod belongs on this list. From this Super list, I make hour long manual playlists for my walks. I even have fifteen second song I wrote a few years ago that I stick in halfway, so when I hear it, I know to turn around and head back for home.

In the second example, just make a smart playlist of all tracks with a playcount of zero and then just drag whatever tracks you want from that to the hour long manual one.

So what I have done is created an Unplayed Super Playlist. My only requirement on it is that the song has played less than one time on my iPod. Needless to say, there's over a thousand songs on there since I've got nothing better to do all day than to download songs. In addition to that, I have a regular playlist called "Walk On". It's not a super playlist, just a place to put my hour long sets on. What I do is highlight the "Unplayed" list and then drag songs over to the "Walk On" until I have an hour used up. Once I've listened to the the "Walk On" playlist, those songs disappear (in theory) from the Unplayed list, and I start all over again the next time.

So I'm creating a Super Playlist and then picking and choosing songs from that list to fill a "regular" playlist. I hope this makes sense. It's just my little way of managing a really huge Super Playlist.

(and alba just said for me in two sentences what took me three paragraphs to say. ALBA!)

PP is calling smart playlists 'Super playlists', which might be the root of the confusion. Have they changed their name in the latest iTunes release?

Two possible issues that I know of. First, iTunes' criterion for whether you've heard a tune is whether it's run right to the end. It doesn't matter if you start it five seconds from the end - if it is allowed to finish then the playcount goes up.

Second, are you talking about iPod plays? Some generations of the iPod (earlier ones, I think) apparently synch iPod playcounts with iTunes, and others don't. Maybe they found that writing that data was using valuable battery life - I don't know.

My genres are pretty simple too -almost everything goes under Pop, Rock, R&B, Electronic, Dance, Hip Hop, Country, Folk or Avant Garde. I'm thinking of introducing a 'Funk' one though.

Year is the only tag I'm really careful about.

Me too