looking for MP3 playing software with a unique feature

[QueBert]

I know this probably doesn't exist but I'm going to ask because I've been wrong before. I have a ton of playlists, and am after something that can do this

Let's say I have 3 playlists with 20 songs in each, I'd like to be able to play X numbers of songs from the 1st, then have it automatically go to the 2nd for X number of songs, and hit the 3rd and do the same. If this doesn't make any sense (probably doesn't) I recently started to work out and have set up 3 playlists, 1st with slow mellow songs to listen to while I stretch, 2nd with something a bit more up tempo but not full blown for when I'm just getting into it. And the 3rd has the loud songs that get me amped. Right now I have to manually go between the 3, not a huge deal but it does break up my workout a bit. There's no way I can figure to automate this in iTunes. I could have a single playlist wit a slow song -> faster -> faster. But I would like to be able to hit a randomize button so I don't hear the same songs every day. I could re-make the list before I work out every day but automated would be awesome.

Does such a beast exist?

 

[Kmax82]

Ok... kind of a round about way of doing this in iTunes.. but you could try this.

Keep your playlist of slow, fast, faster.. then have the following Smart Playlists

Smart Playlist #1:
- Playlist is Slow Workout
- Limit to 3 items selected by Random
- Live Updating

Smart Playlist #2:
- Playlist is Fast Workout
- Limit to 3 items selected by Random
- Live Updating

Smart Playlist #3:
- Playlist is Faster Workout
- Limit to 3 items selected by Random
- Live Updating

Smart Playlist #4:
- Playlist is #1
- Playlist is #2
- Playlist is #3

Then you'd just sync Playlist #4 before you go to the gym.

 

[QueBert]

GENUIS! Thank you thank you I totally didn't think about Smart Playlists, but to be honest I didn't know you could specify a certain number of songs. This is wonderful, gonna go work on it now. You saved me here.

 

[TheStu]

GENUIS! Thank you thank you I totally didn't think about Smart Playlists, but to be honest I didn't know you could specify a certain number of songs. This is wonderful, gonna go work on it now. You saved me here.

Actually, you can specify an amount of time or data with smart playlists. I do that with my iPhone and Nano before that. I have 20-30GB of music, and obviously cannot fit that onto a 16GB iPhone. So I have a live updating 8GB playlist of my most commonly played songs, and another 2GB of just randomly chosen songs.

So in this case you can do a 15 minute playlists and it will put songs in there that will get closest to that value (I cannot recall if it will go over that amount or not)

 

[QueBert]

Actually, you can specify an amount of time or data with smart playlists. I do that with my iPhone and Nano before that. I have 20-30GB of music, and obviously cannot fit that onto a 16GB iPhone. So I have a live updating 8GB playlist of my most commonly played songs, and another 2GB of just randomly chosen songs.

So in this case you can do a 15 minute playlists and it will put songs in there that will get closest to that value (I cannot recall if it will go over that amount or not)

I also didn't know this, perfect because I'm trying to up my workout 5 minutes a day and using this I can know exactly when to stop. I really need to read up on smart playlists, the stuff I knew about them before this thread I liked them, now I love them.

 

[QueBert]

Ok I'm confused, can you not play smart playlists directly on iTunes? I work out at home and use my Hackintosh to play my music. I made 4 smart playlists, one for each set of music and one that plays the first 3. In iTunes the first 3 have songs in them. But when I click on the "workout" smart playlist I made that links to the other 3 it opens a new iTunes window and does nothing. Googling this I can't figure out if these playlists only work on an iPod or iPhone?

Also, when I click on one of the actual 3 smart playlists that's linked to a regular playlist, it opens in a new windows and doesn't start until I press play. Also, it only actually randomized it when I first checked the option in the Smart playlist to randomize it. To get it to randomize again, I have to uncheck it, press ok. And go back and re-check the random feature again to get it to change up the order of songs.

 

[Kmax82]

Hmm.. I'm not experiencing that behavior. :/

What version of iTunes are you on?

 

[QueBert]

Latest, on Snow Leopard. I just re-did them. 3 Smart Lists that are pointed to normal lists. They all 3 have songs in them, and the main smart list is pointing to the 3 others. When I double click on it, a new itunes window pops up and has nothing in it, I can't even press play. I guess I'll keep messing with it, it can't be that hard.

 

[Kmax82]

As far as the last smart playlist.. I forgot to include that you need to set the top checkbox to Match ANY of the following rules, instead of Match ALL...

But, I created all the playlists as I had detailed above and it gave me a smart playlist of 9 songs at the end.. and I could just double click on the first one and it played through.. hmm...

 

[QueBert]

thanks for the reply, I should have picked up on that, but even with it changed to any it's still not auto starting, which is fine. But it's not doing them in order. The playlist it's outputting has one song from the first 2 and then 10 from the final. But, it's not putting them in playlist order, my tried the last smart list as 1,2,3 for lists and it was putting songs from the first and 2nd in the middle, so I tried 3,2,1 and same thing. I guess I need to do some hard reading up because this isn't doing what I'm asking lol.

 

[QueBert]

Ok, I've been tinkering with this Smart Playlist, maybe somebody else here could do a quick reproduction of what I'm trying to do? I'm still not getting it to do what I want, I just cannot get it to put the playlists in the right order. I was thinking if I had the first entry in my last smart list that points to the other 3 I made, it would put a song from the first list first. but it's randomly picking songs from the 3 lists, which is really throwing things off

 

[QueBert]

I guess I'll try bumping this one final time, tried it with my new Nano 5g and same thing. I totally deleted and re-created the smart playlists last night and started the whole thing from scratch, same thing, it doesn't put them in order. Can anyone think of a way for me to accomplish what I'm after here? I'll even buy a program if I need to. Also, is there a way to have a Smart list dynamically update itself every time you sync, even if you didn't add/remove songs from your library. The live update feature doesn't do that, looking for a way I can get a new workout playlist every time I sync my iPod.

 

[Kmax82]

Sorry this didn't work out. Hopefully someone has another solution.

 

[QueBert]

Well if nobody has a solution I guess I just have to manually make a playlist every morning, will sort of kill the nice effect of not knowing what song's are on it. But, it wouldn't take more than a few minutes. With all the time I've spent working on this I could have make 100 by hand bahaha, thanks for your help. You at least got me on the right track.