No, I’m not being effusive, for a change: I’m noodling about the rules which generate smart playlists in iTunes.
So, when you create a smart playlist, you get to choose a set of criteria which the library matches against - for example, “Artist contains X” or “Rated Y stars” or “Genre is Z” “BPM is N”. SO far, so straightforward.
I’ve found a bunch of sites which allow people to share their playlists, which is nice and everything, but I’ve got in mind something else - what if you could allow people to share their rules, but not the titles which it generates. In other words, a person could create a set of rules which apply to their itunes library, but which someone else could apply to their own library. When people have big and extensive music libraries, the playlists generated would be both personal and surprising.
So, for example, I could create a set of rules like this: genre is INDIE, title contains LOVE, artist is not JAMES or OASIS or BLUR, rating is more than 3*, my created playlist might contain a bunch of Smiths songs and something by The Feeling, but the same rules, applied to your library, might yield something a bit different, because it’s drawing from your collections. So, your taste, my rules.
Would be great if there was a site or service in which people could publish their rules. Could be interesting, I thought - though there’s got to be a name for the concept of sharing rules rather than actual results…
Forgive the half-thought-out idea: I’m still on holiday. But is there any service that does what I’m thinking about?
Have you seen smart playlists. Not exactly what you are suggesting, and you have to create the playlist yourself. But along those lines.
Not really sure why you’d ever want to see applied someone else’s rules to your own list (the deadly inspection of the shelves during quiet moments in someone else’s space) - surely you’d want to go a step further, and filter out those things you already had /knew… although I guess there would be some interest in seeing the results of your rule on someone else’s library (ie what will N like in Y’s collection)
Sharing interesting tags on last.fm or wherever, yes, but otherwise it makes more sense simply to go for recommendations doesn’t it? (Which of course in last.fm’s case are rules).
_More_ interesting (in my opinion) would be ‘create this rule in music, apply it in literature, or film, or graphic novels…’. Or food, I don’t know. Travel… if I like Trainspotting how likely am I to enjoy Tallinn? Etc.
On a more serious note - I simply don’t listen to music in that way. Even on my own music, I hate the shuffle function. I always like to choose what comes next, or know from a defined pattern (ie album listing).
Anyhoo. Apols. Cava is always on special offer after Christmas. Oo Ra. Or something.
I was starting from the assumption that setting up one’s playlists can be something of a faff, so other people’s rule hacks (like in the link Adrian provided) can be useful.
I see. I guess one thing that might be fun would be a ‘roll your own NOW XX’ - fill a playlist with tunes from my library from year XX.
Perhaps if there was a way to filter iMixes over your Library, that would achieve the same goal? iMixes are sort of what you’re after, aren’t they?
“The Feeling”?
Meg, I despair of you.
Fear not, my trusty comedic stooge - I don’t actually have any The Feeling (I was going to say “I don’t actually have any Feeling” but that sounds wrong, somehow), but they popped into my head while I was writing. Not sure why - they haven’t registered musically or otherwise in my brain up until now. Obviously they’re buried in my subconscious (a subconscious Feeling?).
Having said that, I did hear a lot of their latest (”Never be lonely”) on the radio driving up to Shropshire at Christmas - and thought it sounded quite a lot like Cliff Richard or Supertramp, actually.
Bread. They sound like Bread.
Alongside Barry Manilow, Bread were the bland, wood-chipped aural wallpaper of my childhood.
You mean waurallpaper, surely?
My childhood waurallpaper was Flanders and Swann, Hard Day’s Night-era Beatles, various odd Geordie folk singers, and Radio 4.