I recently purchased a 30GB video iPod. Not long after I plugged it in, iTunes warned me that I didn’t have enough space for my music and that it would make a selection for me. Sounds good to start with but not an idea long term solution.
Extensive digging on the web finally turned up a solution used by Willo O’Brien which uses a selection of smart playlists to determine what gets copied to the iPod. Willo’s solution works by copying only those tunes which are checked. Anything not checked is not copied unless it is new music which is always copied (new music is defined by Willo as music added after a particular date).
I’ve taken Willo’s system one step further and integrated ratings. There are various rating schemes out there for iTunes music. Six values are possible. Zero star, 1-star, 2-star etc., through to 5-star.
I rate my music like this.1
- 2-star : Base rating—Everything starts with this. 2-stars says I want to listen to this.
- 1-star: Music I don’t like—Anything which I hear and don’t like gets dropped down to 1-star. My iPod—Yes smartlist only copies checked files with a rating of 2-stars or more. So on my next sync, all 1-star tunes get pulled off the iPod.
- 3-star: Good music—Usually one of the top three songs on any album.
- 4-star: Classic music—Something I’m always happy to listen to whatever my mood.
- 5-star: Songs of meaning—Those which mean something to me and have a strong emotional or memory connection.
- 0-star: Dud songs. Perhaps they didn’t rip properly from CD or there is some other error. A smart playlist identifies them for review, clean up or deletion.
Anything I don’t want to carry around i.e. my daughters’ children’s albums are unchecked and so not copied no matter what the rating.
Hope that all makes sense.
Anything I don’t want to carry around i.e. my daughters’ children’s albums are unchecked and so not copied no matter what the rating.
Hope that all makes sense.
Footnotes
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This rating systems differs from Quantum OS Ratings now. 2-star is a ‘meh’ rating in the new world. ↩