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c-Row

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 10, 2006
1,193
1
Germany
Is there any way to exclude tracks in an intelligent playlist that are from albums which are marked "gapless" in my library? It doesn't show up in the dropdown menu.

:confused:
 

ToneMonkey

macrumors member
Oct 5, 2007
54
0
You can also set up custom genres to accomplish what you want

The default genre tags are almost completely worthless to me. So many of the artists I like deliberately cross genres or create fusions of several genres.

For that reason, I've devised a custom multi-attribute genre tagging system, sort of like a dewey decimal system for iTunes.

First, every track gets a decade designation (00s, 90s, 80s, etc.), then one or more genre attributes (blues, r&b/soul, jazz, country, bluegrass, gospel). Artists that cross genres simply get more than one attribute tag assigned to their tracks (this also allows nice track level granularity).

The decade is when that track was first heard, not released - they can be vastly different. I add the remaining tags in alphabetical order.

For example:
Diana Krall = 90s.Jazz.Vocal
Grateful Dead = 70s.Americana.Psychedelic

The point is, one of my custom tags is "PG-13," which I use to exclude tracks with questionable language or cover art from certain playlists (for example, certain Frank Zappa tracks just won't do in certain social situations). You could do the same with a custom "Gapless" tag.

The advantage of genres vs. the comment field is that you can readily see the genres in the default view and re-use them (with auto complete); Comments will always be just free text.
 

ToneMonkey

macrumors member
Oct 5, 2007
54
0
around 10K (give or take a 100 or so)

^ Good God! How many songs do you have?

All with cover art too!

The genre tagging thing doesn't take very long. Just pull up the info for a bunch of tracks that all get the same tags and do them in bulk. Takes a few hours tops.

I admit... it's a sickness.
 

ntrigue

macrumors 68040
Jul 30, 2007
3,805
4
All with cover art too!

The genre tagging thing doesn't take very long. Just pull up the info for a bunch of tracks that all get the same tags and do them in bulk. Takes a few hours tops.

I admit... it's a sickness.

If I'm ever in your neck of the woods maybe you could open up sharing and I will lurk outside your house for a couple days. LOL
 

c-Row

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 10, 2006
1,193
1
Germany
The default genre tags are almost completely worthless to me. So many of the artists I like deliberately cross genres or create fusions of several genres.

For that reason, I've devised a custom multi-attribute genre tagging system, sort of like a dewey decimal system for iTunes.

Guess that's the closest to what I am looking for. I already suggested a keyword system for iTunes like it is already used in iPhoto, but I guess that won't be included in iTunes in the near future.

Isn't there some kind of mail account at Apple one can send suggestions to? :)
 

ToneMonkey

macrumors member
Oct 5, 2007
54
0
Support for custom genre tags is pretty good

I'm guessing the reason Apple might not (ever) change the current system is because so many song files are encoded with simple genre tags like rock, disco, etc.

The most annoying thing for me is that I can't nuke the default genres. BTW, don't try it. If you delete the default genres from the library file, iTunes will get really confused and nuke (!) existing genre tags each time it plays a song file. I did have some success just specifying null values for default genres, but it's hardly worth the trouble.

My kingdom for a persistent customizable genre schema. In the meantime, the current capabilities are more than sufficient.

Guess that's the closest to what I am looking for. I already suggested a keyword system for iTunes like it is already used in iPhoto, but I guess that won't be included in iTunes in the near future.

Isn't there some kind of mail account at Apple one can send suggestions to? :)
 
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