tunequest

This is a fun little playlist. In my last Smart Playlist example, I showed how to create a list of the most recently added songs that had not reached a certain play count. Today's list takes the opposite tack: what are the oldest songs in the library that haven't been played a certain number of times. I call it "Eldest Tunes" and it is a great way to give ...

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I've mentioned before that one of my standard procedures is to back-date the "Date Added" field for all the songs in my iTunes library. That is, if I originally got a album for my birthday in 1999, I make sure the Date Added field in my library is my birthday, 1999. Unfortunately, Apple for whatever reason, has decided that the Date Added field should not be user-modifiable. And honestly, I'm ...

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With more than 16,000 songs to manage, there is no more essential a tool in my library than iTunes' Smart Playlists. From building simple playlists for listening to creating complex queries for examination, Smart Playlists turn what would be a tedious burden into a trivial task. At the moment, I have more than 50 of them slicing, organizing and corralling my expansive collection of tunes into an easily navigable, ...

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For nearly as long as there's been an Internet, fans have been contributing to the nine inch nails experience. There's something about the music that seems to inspire a devotional following (probably has to do with expressions of angst, contempt and alienation wrapped appealing pop sensibilities). Youthful rebelliousness and antiestablishmentism runs deep through both camps. Indeed, the rise of nin and the net seems to have coincided perfectly with ...

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Thinking of an iPod Shuffle? Find one on Amazon. Birthday season is in effect around the tunequest compound and themodernista kicked off the festivities by presenting me with my long-desired orange iPod Shuffle (2G) (which I have dubbed "Shuffleupagus"). I had been struck by the orange model since they were announced this past January, but despite its relative inexpensiveness, I could never justify purchasing one; I'm a fairly austere guy ...

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The iPod is supposed to be "iTunes to go" but as the little music player has advanced over the years, it still lags behind in some relatively basic features, features that have been a part of the desktop program for some time. iTunes' capabilities seem to be constantly improved and refined; its portable counterpart's behavior has remained relative unchanged, even as it has gained photo and video support. Forget touchscreens ...

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This instructional is nearly two months late. Sorry folks. I know you've been dying to find out the quick and dirty way to add acceleration to your podcast listening. Onward, then. A note before we begin, these instructions are for Mac users only, as they require the use of an AppleScript to modify audio files from within iTunes. Windows folks, however, can try a variation on this method. So without further ...

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Update: The revised sorting feature/problem in iTunes 7.3 and later renders portions of this advice useless. Some of it still applies for Smart Playlist building, but the segregated sorting no longer works. If you're using a version prior to 7.3, go nuts. If you're using 7.3 or later, be warned. In striving for zen-like simplicity while maintaining and extending the usability of iTunes, please follow me as I introduce you ...

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Anyone who has been reading the tunequest for a while knows that statistics, numbers, figures and graphs have played a large part in its progress. In fact, it was the discovery that 10% of my songs were responsible for 49% of my total play counts that prompted me to set out on this endeavor in the first place. To this day, I'm still surprised by the lack of sophisticated options ...

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