Following up to an entry on NSLog, here’s a list of my smart playlists in iTunes.

• “Getting moldy” — My rating is in the range of 3 to 5 stars; last played is not in the last month; limit to 10 songs selected by random.
• “Recently played” — Last played is in the last month; limit to 100 songs selected by most recently played.
• “Top 25″ — Limit to 25 songs selected by most played; match only checked songs.
• “Top rated” — My rating is greater than 4 stars; play count is greater than zero.
• “Unrated” — My rating is zero stars; limited to 10 songs selected by random; match only checked songs.

Smart playlists in iTunes rocks my world. Before them (known as “the dark ages”), I tended to either listen to a random playlist with all my songs (though I still do that 70% of the time in iTunes) or listen to a subset of my favorite songs.

The ability to make a playlist of songs I haven’t played in a long while alone makes smart playlists worthwhile.

I currently have 2222 songs in iTunes (how’s that for symmetry?), and rating them all takes time. So I listen quite a lot to the Unrated list now and make a quick rating of the song. The ratings are always in a state of flux and may change on subsequent plays. Of course, smart playlists update themselves dynamically, so as soon as I rate a song on the Unrated list, it disappears and another unrated song is added.