A while ago I read a tip somewhere about how to make a few smart playlists work with each other to make a mix of music for a smaller iPod. After thinking for a short time I realized I could make a perfect little ever-changing radio station out of iTunes with a similar methodology. Start by considering what makes a good radio station (I know, it’s been a while…):

• Your favorite music.
• A balance of new and old music.
• A moderate variety. You want to hear some songs repeatedly, but not at close intervals.
• New old music. Don’t just play the same old songs, cycle them in and out.

• Old new music. If a newer song is really good, keep it in rotation as an old song.

iTunes has a way to handle all of this. The core here is that you’re going to have to rate all of your music for this to work. Unrated music will not make it into rotation. It doesn’t have to be accurate right now. You can go find a favorite artist and mark all the tracks as fives or find all your audio books and mark them twos or something. Just get some ratings in. As your ratings change, so will the station.

The station consists of four main playlists:

• Core – The complete list of music that is available to the station.
• Infuser – New music that doesn’t suck.
• Sprinkler – Old music that is rated highly.

• The Station – Infuser + Sprinkler = The Station

Core

In Core you set criteria for what music you want on the station at all. Generally, I create an inclusive list of genres. For instance, the first five rules of my Core list are:

• Genre contains Pop
• Genre contains Rock
• Genre contains Punk
• Genre contains Alt

• Genre contains Metal

Don’t forget that this is a substring match. Putting in “Alt” matches “Alternative” as well as “AltRock” and similar. Use the genre browser to see which groups will get matched.

Infuser

The Infuser playlist takes music from the Core playlist and picks unplayed music and brings it to the forefront. This does not mean it’s actually new music, just “new to you” music because you haven’t played it before. As this is a cyclical playlist due to it’s constraints, it will eventually play all the music in your Core playlist. At that point you will need to edit the criteria to open it up more.

• Match all of the following conditions:
• Play Count is less than 5
• My Rating is greater than 2

• Playlist is Core

• Limit to 300 songs selected by random

Sprinkler

Infuser will give us new music and Sprinkler will sprinkle in some old classics for us. Sprinkler goes through the Core list and finds old music that we’ve played a lot, rated highly, and haven’t heard in a while.

• Match all of the following conditions:
• Last Played is not in the last 1 weeks
• My Rating is greater than 3
• Play Count is greater than 3

• Playlist is Core

• Limit to 200 songs selected by least recently played

The Station

• Match any of the following conditions:
• Playlist is Infuser

• Playlist is Sprinkler

What Happens

Song A is a new song you just bought. It matches the list for Core, so it lands in there. Eventually, Infuser picks it and adds it to the list. It gets played five times, during which time you rate it five stars. It goes away after five plays. A week later Sprinkler sees that you haven’t played it in a while and adds it back in. You hear it once and then it goes away for a while. The cycle repeats for all of your music. Hear it a lot, it goes away and finds its way back to your ears every once in a while if it’s something you liked. If it wasn’t something you really liked then it gets rolled off the list for good. You might make a playlist to watch for unplayed music to catch those and delete them after a while.

Things to Tinker With

Now that you know how it works, obviously you’re thinking on how to improve it. What I listed is what I arrived at as a good solution for 60GB of music that I like to hear, but never get around to adding to playlists. For other situations…

• Sprinkler: Adjust the Last Played criterion to a lower number for smaller collections. If you’re using this to fill an iPod (5-10GB), iPod mini, or iPod shuffle, then you might want to go as low as one day. (iPods will only update this on sync, by the way.)
• Infuser: Tweaking the Play Count will keep a song around longer. You can also make it not choose songs by random but by some other criterion. This would make the list more predictable and more stable, if that’s what you’re after.

• Limit: Bring the song counts down to 20-50 or so to make it sound more like a radio station you might actually hear rather than my dream station that never repeats.

Have any other suggestions?