iPod Folders + Smart Playlists = Amazing!!

[dotdotdot]

After discovering that my 20 gig iPod would not be able to fit my entire library in a few weeks/months, I decided to take action:

Get those damn free songs off my iPod!

I always download the free songs, because, heck, they're free! But, they... erm... suck so bad its a discrase to music. And those crappy songs take up exactly: 862 MB of MY space! On MY iPod!

So, I went on a mission...

I looked for every free song, and created a few "smart playlists"

The default, Purchased, which iTunes makes, which has all my purchased media from iTunes with my own digital money.

Then, protected, which contains all the songs with a .m4p extention, EXCEPT for the songs in the Free Songs folder

and finally, Free Songs, for all that crap music I got for free.

I put it in a folder, and I love it!

My library is much better, and more organized! Finally, I can use the "Shuffle" mode!

 

[Whyren]

Glad to see you found something that works! The playlists have saved me. I had to set up a complicated system of Smart Playlists for my 10 GB iPod (since I was sick and tired of manually paring down 1/3 of my library).

•One playlist selects 9040 MB of music that's either been played more than 4 times, added in the last 12 months, or meets a few other artist/genre/album criteria selected by most recently played.
•Another playlist selects 200 MB of the most recently added stuff that hasn't been played once (to give new stuff a chance).
•A third playlist selects songs that have been played at least once, but have no last played available (thank you, iPod Shuffle...).
•The iPod playlist itself simply incorporates all three playlists, so when I connect the iPod, I just check only the songs in there and it updates everything right.

Not perfect, but it works.

 

[EGT]

They're great but I'd like to see them implemented on the iPod.

 

[Whyren]

They're great but I'd like to see them implemented on the iPod.

I think they are to an extent. For example, on both iPod and iTunes I have a playlist of the top 25 most played and added in the last 3 months. These two playlists are not the same in both, despite the fact that I just updated the iPod. It appears that a couple songs that appear in the iTunes playlist did not meet criteria for my iPod so they weren't transferred. But these songs are not just "left out," the iPod playlist still has 25 songs, but two of them are not found in the iTunes playlist, so I can only assume that the iPod kept the playlist criteria and filled it out with the songs available on its library.