Less Than Ten
[Moozik: Jesus Jones - Blissed]
I just had a mini cleanup of my iTunes library, got rid of some duplicates, songs I didn't even know I had, and albums I'll never listen to. Brought the song count down to 12,475 songs.
Now, some of those songs I've listened to a lot, and listen to all the time...
...and some songs I haven't even listened to once.
So I've decided that it's high time that I at least attempt to listen to those songs that I think I want to keep but for some reason haven't really gotten around to it. Enter iTunes Smart Playlists.
You can create some incredibly powerful playlists this way but sometimes the simplest are the best. Just give me the songs that have a playcount of less than ten.
So that's narrowed it down to 9142 songs. Which I suspect are going to be on heavy rotation for quite some time.
My most listened to tracks are all from the high School Musical Soundtrack.
The perils of being a parent.
Hey Kevin!
Great idea. I should do a cleanup too.
I love this idea... and those smart lists are awesome.
Art of Noise eh?
dan... ha, all the Hannah Montana stuff is on my better half's laptop/iPhone. So while it gets played all the time, it never gets recorded in my iTunes.
göran... I dunno, if you're anything like me, you collect music at the drop of a hat. Which means you end up with loads of stuff that you have no idea what you were thinking when you bought it ;-) It was quite liberating to remove albums that I just knew I wasn't going to ever listen to again.
nat... oh yes, I couldn't live without my smart playlists. Art Of Noise rock. (Who's Afraid Of) The Art Of Noise was one of the first albums I ever bought when I was a wee nipper.
What does it say about my music taste if I've never even heard of any of your top five most listened to bands?
jake... er, that your taste in music is crap? I kid, I kid. You know that ;-)
This might be before your time, but the vinyl version of the sound track is on my turntable right now (yes, get off my lawn). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urgh!_A_Music_War
tony... ooohhh, no not before my time. Good lord there are some bloody good songs on that soundtrack. Would love to watch that film actually.
I did this iTunes cleanup about 6 months ago, but instead of removing songs from my library (was over 6,000 at that time), I created smart playlists, like you did.
Then I based my cleanup on what the songs were that it found, the last time I played them, etc. So now my library is under 5,000 songs. Plus now I can just add playlists to my iPods (i have 3: 30gb, 16gb iPod nano and a 1gb shuffle) and manage my library a lot easier.
I like that you blogged this before you provided steps to actually doing it.
Love Urgh! - that was one of my favs for a while. The band X is still one of my favs from the 80's punk era.
marty... my cleanup was done to prolong my 80gb iPod which is alas now rather full. I love to have all my music with me as I never know what I'll be in the mood for at any given time. To continue that though, I know I'll have to pony up for the 120gb iPod sooner rather than later. Hmm, maybe having the shuffle would be a good idea. You plug it in and iTunes randomly picks 1gb from your master library?
kevin... the 1gb shuffle has a button on the iTunes song list screen (once it's plugged in) where you can have it fill from either your entire library or you can pick a playlist for it to fill from. Or you can manually drop songs onto the shuffle. It's pretty flexible. I use my shuffle for mowing the lawn or just to make sure I have at least some of my tunes with me in the size of half a pack of gum.
As for your upgrade to a 120gb iPod, i wonder if they are going to release a new Classic this fall with a 250gb drive in it? May be worth the wait.
marty... sweet. You know, the shuffle does actually sound like a great idea. I'd initially poo-pooed the idea as I didn't want to have to fart around with the clicky-draggy every morning to load up the iPod. Having iTunes randomly fill it would be way cool. Good point about waiting to see if they announce a larger Classic.