Archive for the 'iTunes' Category
TSF’s iTunes Top 25 Most Played
At the beginning of August I reset my Top 25 Most Played playlist on iTunes so I could give my readers a 
100% accurate representation of my listening habits. Your iTunes Top 25 Most Played doesn’t lie … you can’t deny playing “Mmmbop” to your friends anymore. In my case, my guilty pleasure over the last 6 weeks was Fergie’s infectious pop anthem “Glamorous”. I love live playlists and especially “most played” playlists (which is well documented in my “How To Create iTunes Smart Playlists” post).
I also enjoy looking at other people’s Top 25 list. It gives you an insight into what they actually listen to – not what they tell you they listen to. For example, people who wear Radiohead shirts because they think they’re cool when in actuality Coldplay occupies most of their Top 25 most played. But I enjoy seeing other people’s top 25 list because if I see a song I haven’t heard before – and it’s on their top 25 – it must be good … right?
Shane Alexander’s The Sky Below and ADELE’s 19 are the front-runners for best albums of 2008 (so far). They are in constant rotation on my iTunes.
Without further adieu, I give you an objective representation of the music I’ve been listening to for the past 6 weeks (click for larger image):
As you can tell, I am a firm believer that all music is created equal. For example, the genres represented here: Folk, Bluegrass, Pop Country, Jazz, Singer/Songwriter, 90s Alternative Rock, Rap, Pop, Classic Rock.
The .99 Cent Download & The Demise of The ‘Album’
It’s 2008 and you’ve got places to be and a schedule to keep. It’s all about your iPod and your playlist. With the unveiling of Apple’s iTunes 8 today, the single song download generation has digressed another step – as far as the ‘album’ or ‘LP’ is concerned. Apple has added a new feature to the highest selling music store on earth, Genius Playlists and The Genius Sidebar, in an effort to help you create “on the go” playlists. It’s a great idea and we give it the TSF seal of approval – but it’s another step towards the inevitable obsolescence of the ‘album’ and eventually the compact disc.
The Beach Boys had Pet Sounds, The Beatles had Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Pink Floyd had Dark 
Side of the Moon – 3 great concept albums that were meant to flow as one and be listened to linearly – in one sitting. Each song has a meaning and a purpose and the album wouldn’t be complete without it. Apple has single-handedly killed this ideal. Ironically, I am huge Apple fan and owner of 3 iPods – not to mention, I haven’t owned a PC since 2001. The iPod is the best thing to happen to the music fan and the worst thing to happen to the music business as we know it. It’s no coincidence that album sales began to plummit the moment Apple’s hand-held, hard-drive-based music player began to catch on. Here we are, roughly 7 years later, and album sales have taken a nose dive every year.
So, the question is, will this end? The answer is no. Young adults and teens born in the 80s and 90s are generally not purchasing albums. They burn CDs of “mixes” or listen to their favorite songs on their iPods. I’d put money down that if you could survey every single 13-21 year old in America today on how many albums they’ve purchased in the last year, the average would be somewhere around 0-1. “Why buy the entire album when you can just buy the best 3 songs on iTunes…?”
So let’s discuss the Genius Playlist iTunes released today. While you are listening to one of your favorite songs, you can click this Genius button in the bottom right hand corner of iTunes (as seen above), which will then instantly create a 25, 50, 75, or 100 song playlist of songs in your library similar to the song you selected. This is a pretty effective feature – much better than the dated “party shuffle” feature that frankly, I think is terrible.
For example, I chose “That’s All” by Genesis and here is the subsequent 25 song playlist:
It would be pretty cool for a party. If you don’t have someone to DJ and someone requests rap songs, pick your favorite rap song and let the Genius Playlist do the work.
How To Create iTunes Smart Playlists + My iTunes Top 25
iTunes is a great computer program. Not only is it cool having 7,000 songs at my fingertips, but it tracks every song I play down to the minute and stores how many times I have played each song. The top 25 songs I’ve played are put into a list. Maybe I am alone in this, but this list is a big deal to me. It is an unbiased, 100% correct analysis of your listening habits. Yes, you’ve played that Mandy Moore song 64 times in a week.
I’ve decided to reset my Top 25 Most Played once every month for the sake of this blog and your entertainment. For this post, I will show you my current most played list. It goes back about 6 or 7 months.
So here’s my iTunes Top 25 Most Played (as of July 2008) [click for larger]:
SMART PLAYLISTS AND WHY THEY KICK ASS
OK so there’s a hot blonde in your Physics class and you arrive 15 minutes early every day, but can’t think of what to talk to her about. So, like the pansy you are, you sit just close enough to smell her perfume, but not too close to incite an incidental conversation. Well, have I got the conversation piece for you: iTunes Smart Playlists. And hey, if she isn’t interested in this, then you know she’s boring and her favorite movie is most likely a two-way-tie between Varsity Blues and How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.
We all know how to make a normal playlist in iTunes. You simply click the plus sign in the bottom left corner of the application, make your playlist, and there you have it. It stays like that until you manually add more songs.
Well, a smart playlist is an automatically updated playlist that functions via your manually entered commands. Want to do this with me? OK do this:
- Open iTunes
- Hold down Alt (or Option on Macs)
- The plus sign to create a playlist has now turned into a circle similar to a socket, click that.
You now have opened the commands for a smart playlist.
For example, I have a smart playlist called “Most Played New Songs” … it’s an updated daily list of songs I’ve played the most over the last 6 months. Check it out:
You set “rules” for your playlist. Just mess around with it. You’ll figure it out.
I hope you learned something.
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