Apple’s iTunes News feed offers some helpful advice on Play Count for Smart Playlist users, especially those with iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads:

In addition to the Internet and your local network, iTunes is also alert to a different kind of network — the one made up of the iPhones, iPods (and soon iPads) that it runs on, as well as the computer you sync them with. Whether tracks have been played since the last sync is part of the information that gets updated when you sync. As a result, smart playlists using criteria such as “most often played” and “least recently played” update based on your overall experience and not just what you’ve done on any one particular device. By the way, if the play count for tracks ever gets out of whack, it’s easy to reset it. Just select the track(s) in list view in your library, right click (or control-click on a Mac), and choose Reset Play Count.

I stopped using smart playlists because, the way I had them set up, they’d often remove a podcast I was only part of the way through listening too. If anyone has tried this method and gotten better results, let me know in the comments!

The secret to making your iPhone feel like a 160GB iPod Classic juggernaut is just a few mouse clicks away on your iTunes. Just click on “File” in iTunes, then New Smart Playlist. See where this is going? When you select New Smart Playlist, you can customize a playlist and instruct your iTunes about what music to look for and then keep your iPhone updated with a constant flow of fresh material. It’s a bit like rotating your entire music collection through your iPhone a 100 songs (or whatever you want) at a time.

You can get quite specific with your selection of music. You can instruct iTunes to seek out and load music that has been most recently played or least recently played. You can set the rules for iTunes to follow – like using the rating system in iTunes to select only music that you have given a 1 – 5 star rating. What, you mean you haven’t rated your music?

Well, if you’re like me, you haven’t paid much attention to the rating system or even cared to know why it’s there. If you take the time, though, and rate your favorite music, then your Smart Playlist can become much more meaningful as iTunes searches your music library for songs that you have rated. To rate your music, just click in the Rating column next to the songs you want to rate and then give them a rating, anywhere from one to five stars. In the Smart Playlist, if you set the range to include only your most favorite songs, then you can expect your Smart Playlist (and thus your iPhone) to always rotate your favorite songs each time you sync.

Smart Playlists aren’t just limited to songs. You can instruct iTunes to select all kinds of media, like podcasts, to be added to your Smart Playlist and then synced with your iPhone for your enjoyment. In this manner, you can rotate your media from the vast reservoirs of storage on your desktop or laptop to the limited space on your iPhone, always keeping it fresh. If you haven’t played around with your Smart Playlist, give it a try today and post your feedback in Comments. You might find a way to use this feature that works well for you and then feel free to share it with the rest of us!