Comments on: Tips and How-To’s: iPhone Music Management

By: Roman

Roman — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:15:11 +0000

Good article and perfect procedures! Thank you!

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:48:06 +0000

If you use either 'Last played is not in X days' or check the 'limit to X songs by least recently played' box Songs will drop off smart playlists as you listen to them. When you sync your iPhone you will only need to add as many songs as you listened to from the last sync, not update the entire list.

I use a playlist for my podcasts with the rule 'playcount is less than 1', after I listen to them the re removed at the next sync. There was a bug that prevented playlists with the rule 'podcast = true' from live updating. I don't know if its been fixed since I have made my playlists to work around it.

Currently I keep all my 3 stars or more tracks on my iPhone and have a playlist 'Last played is not in the last month' and 'limit to 3gb by random' for my two star tracks. (I use 1 star for music I haven't rated yet).

Every time I plug in my iPhone listened to podcasts are removed, new podcasts are added, and 2 star songs that I have listened to are replaced with fresh ones. I always have my favorite 1500 songs and another 1000 or so that I like on my iPhone.

The only downside is I don't have access to every deep cut I own at all times. [Grandpa] Back when I was a kid if we wanted to carry 4000 songs we needed to haul a backpack full of CDs and something to play them on. [/grandpa]

By: John V. Keogh

John V. Keogh — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:34:30 +0000

duh - stars used for formatting eh, that should read

What I do is have my faves 4 and 5 star songs on the iPhone all the time and rotate a few least recently played 3 star, and least recently played 2 star songs (in smart playlists), which I will delete later if I rate them as 1 star while on the road. I also have a few unrated songs in a smart playlist so I can rate them on the phone.

By: John V. Keogh

John V. Keogh — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:30:03 +0000

The iPhone certainly can update play count and time and sync this to iTunes. I use iScrobbler to send this data to last.fm. So far 58502 tracks played – can you tell what it is I like yet? http://www.last.fm/user/jovike

What I do is have my faves * and *** songs on the iPhone all the time and rotate a few least recently played ** and least recently played ** songs (in smart playlists) which I will delete later if I rate them as * while on the road.

By: Seatown

Seatown — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:27:53 +0000

At first I thought this was a great idea, and set it up to synch a random playlist of 3 gb of music rated 3 stars and up. Then I realized that now it’s going to have to copy 3 gb worth of data each time I synch! And I thought it took a long time to synch before…!! Am I missing something here?

By: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:14:08 +0000

@steve

simplify media is great but it streaming direct from itunes. Aside from issues with playing over the net vs having physical file on your iphone, its a great way to access your entire library

By: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:54:10 +0000

@steve jobs

loving my Bold. my old iphone still working well for Tris, etc.

By: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:53:25 +0000

I still say this is useless.

I have to play or rate songs not on my iPhone so the smart playlist can pick up on it and some day move it to my iphone? Unless you are rating new songs all the time, its not going to give you 100 new songs that rotate. And if you are rating new songs, just move those into new playlists.

Here's an equally useless idea: have 10 playlists each with 16gb of music on it and sync a different one every day.

epic fail

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:37:02 +0000

@ethan:

Do these streaming apps, like Simplify Media and OrbLive require moving (or copying) your media into their desktop applications, or can just you keep everything in iTunes?

By: ethan

ethan — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:58:10 +0000

Use Simplify Media or Orb Live to stream all your music/media to your phone from your computer. It works great.

By: WatersWest

WatersWest — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:44:37 +0000

One of the great features of the iPod Shuffle is Auto-Fill. For those of you unfamiliar with this, iTunes basically can randomly re-fill your Shuffle whenever you tell it to, either from the whole library or from a playlist.

It's really too bad they don't make this feature available to both the Nano and the iPhone. I imagine it would be put to good use if if it was.

By: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:11:23 +0000

@Steve Jobs: shouldn’t you be in your basement enjoying yr Bold?

By: frog

frog — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:11:17 +0000

My iPhone updtes the playcount.

Nice tips !

By: Ed

Ed — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:54:42 +0000

i guess the issue being that isn't this of limited utility because smart playlists don't essentially change unless you change the parameters of the list? it's not like you can make one composed of 300 random songs of the rock genre and get a new 300 every time you sync. you need to either change the playlist or delete and make a new smart playlist to actually get a new selection of random songs.

what we really need is the random fill like itunes does with ipod shuffles.

By: Jose

Jose — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:49:52 +0000

Well I highly recommend Simplify Media, for those of you who don’t know what it is, its an application you download on your iPhone and your computer. Than you can stream all your music library right to your phone, even add other people with this service and stream their music as well. Streams over Edge, 3G, and WiFi. The service is free but the iPhone app is only 3.99. I use it and I love it! (Just streams music, Video not supported) Hope this helps some peoples dilemma.

By: Wyatt

Wyatt — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:48:37 +0000

To those who feel this is a useless post. Dont post you're useless comments. If you have nothing worthwhile to say then say nothing.

Now in to what I do with playlists. I use a star rating of 5 for my most favorite songs I don't get tired of and make a playlist if that. I also use a separate playlist for my holiday music which is only on my iPhone only during the holiday season at the end of the year.

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:02:15 +0000

I don’t use the iPod. I’m tired of old music, and I hate new music.

By: coolbell

coolbell — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 21:32:52 +0000

okay so if its pointles.. dont read it and dont flame. i dont think the author of this post done it a) for fun and b) to annoy you! just let it go.

nice ideas. i just currently use only a few playlists and also include recently added. use my touch 16gb to make up for lack of space!

By: Taylor

Taylor — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 21:22:15 +0000

I really wish for more posts like this....

I'm running out of room on my 8gb iPhone (ionly have like 1 gb of music.) most is movies.

I need more room!

Thanks!

By: Jhauser3

Jhauser3 — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:59:55 +0000

Wow…Rough crowd around here… I like the randomness of this, so I will have to give it a shot.

By: mikey

mikey — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:51:32 +0000

I agree, what a useless post…

By: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:09:12 +0000

useless post. no offense

By: Perceval

Perceval — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:01:57 +0000

For the Smart Playlist with podcasts, why not just use the rule "Podcast: is true?"

@Johnny: My iPhone updates the play count, I don't see why it wouldn't...

By: johaen8

johaen8 — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:00:34 +0000

I simply just use the “Sync only checked songs and videos” option, and then just check off the songs I want to have on my iPhone. Although I only have about 3 GBs of music, 2GBs of which I keep on my phone.

By: Johnny

Johnny — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:58:12 +0000

I read about this in an iPhone book a year ago and thought it was a great idea. One problem, it currently doesn’t work. The iPhone doesn’t update your play count. So this great feature is made almost useless by an iPhone bug. When you listen to a song on your iPhone it should sync this information in itunes when you next sync it but it doesn’t. So you end up hearing the same song over an over again unless you listen to your music all the time in your itunes library. Hopefully Apple fixes this bug soon.