I have to admit: When I first heard about the Genius function in iTunes 8 I thought “…when would I ever use that?”.
Today I listen to music at work, and 90% of the time I use the “Genius” to select the songs for me. There is just one problem – after a while it feels as if iTunes selects the same songs over and over again, even when seeded with different songs. So I tried to find a way to create a Genius playlist with songs that I’m not listening to all the time. Here is my solution:
Create a Smart Playlist to contain only the Genius songs that I have listened to a limited amount of time. This is how the conditions for this smart playlist could look like:
The number of play counts would obviously depend on your own iTunes library. For my library, with a playlist count of eight the smart playlist will contain approx. 75% of the songs in my Genius list, and only the once I have listened to less than eight times. Another approach would be to filter by “Last Played”, so the list has only songs that you haven’t listened to in a month or so.
Now all I need to do is listen to this Smart Playlist instead of the Genius (maybe on shuffle or through iTunes DJ). There you have it – seed Genius with a song of choice and only listen to the songs you haven’t listened to in a while.
September 20th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Yeah! Super, you’ve saved my music! I was growing so tired of always listening to the same songs recommended by Genius, your solution is truly ingenious. Many thanks!
October 21st, 2009 at 12:43 am
Thanks a lot, with this trick my genius is not playing all the time the same songs
October 21st, 2009 at 12:59 am
What do you think about filtering songs on last played date instead than on play count?
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
RE: Mario – yes, I’m actually now filtering by both. So my list only plays songs I haven’t listened to in the last three month as well as not within the last three months.