Thinking of playing music at your next party? How about making a mix for the gym? Tired of searching through your entire music library for your favorite songs? Most digital media software such as iTunes, Media Monkey, Windows Media Player, and other 3rd party programs allow users to create playlists. Playlists are a collection of tracks that can be played in your media player or PMP that allow you to quickly and easily select the music you want to hear. Playlists are also a great way to gather and listen to music that suits a particular mood or occasion. But before crafting your next 80s throwback mix, it's important to understand the two types of playlists: manual and auto.
Note: The following is an excerpt from The Love Your Music eBook -- guaranteed to contain “everything you ever wanted to know about digital music” or your money back.
Manual playlists can be created in your media player software by dragging and dropping your tracks from your library into a playlist. This works fine if you know exactly which tracks you want to listen to. Unfortunately, you have to tediously find each track among the thousands you may have in your library when you create a manual playlist.
Auto playlists remove the tedium of creating playlists by using metadata criteria to filter the tracks in your library. As auto playlists, large playlists can be created in seconds rather than minutes or hours as manual playlists. However, auto playlists have flaws of their own. With auto playlists you sacrifice the minute control you have over the list of songs as compared to manual playlists. This can be rectified by spending time and effort to get good metadata onto your tracks. Overtime this will increase an auto playlists’ ability to get the right music for the right situation.
Manual vs. auto playlists
Manual and auto playlists both have their uses and I regularly create both types of playlists.
Some media players only have "normal" or "manual" playlists. Others have "auto" or "smart" playlists.
So, what's the difference between manual playlists and auto playlists?
Manual playlists…
- ...are an ordered list of tracks
- ...have a set order (set by you), but you can randomize the order in which tracks are played.
- ...can have any tracks from your collection.
- ...offer the most ability to customize a playlist.
- ...are not criteria driven and do not have tracks automatically added and removed from them based on criteria.
- ...are created by gathering individual tracks and putting them into a list, typically by dragging and dropping them from the library onto a playlist.
Auto playlists…
- ...are criteria-driven. The contents of an auto playlist are based on the metadata filters that you apply while creating the playlist. The only tracks that appear in the auto playlist meet all of the criteria that you provide. No exceptions.
- ...are defined by their criteria. What you see on the screen when you look at an auto playlist are the results of filtering your collection by the auto playlist‘s criteria. The software only stores the criteria and generates the result when the auto playlist is viewed.
- ...automatically update their contents when tracks' metadata change. For example, if you have a playlist that is all of your four-star-and-up tracks, this playlist will automatically add new tracks that are rated four stars and up when you add a new track or change an existing track‘s metadata.
- ...cannot have arbitrary tracks removed from them. For example, if my auto playlist contains a song that I don‘t want, there is no way to just delete that song from this auto playlist like I can in a manual playlist. I would have to change the auto playlist‘s criteria to exclude the song instead.
- ...have no set order and cannot be ordered as exactly as manual playlists.
- ...are created by specifying the playlist‘s criteria to the media player and then having the media player show the results as a playlist.
How to use auto and manual playlists
I use auto playlists for certain categories of music that I expect to change and evolve. For example, I have playlists for:
- Favorite rock
- Genre = rock, rock & roll, etc
- Rated four stars and up
- Favorite indie and alternative
- Genre = alternative, alternative rock, indie pop, indie rock, etc,
- Rated four stars and up
- Favorite new music
- Acquired in last six months
- Rated four stars and up
- Favorite 80s
- Release year = 1980 – 1989
- Rated four stars and up
- Favorite background
- Occasion = background
- Rated four stars and up
- Need to rate
The "favorite rock" and "favorite indie and alternative" auto playlists will continue to change and evolve as I acquire more rock, indie and alternative music. The "favorite new music" will always contain my newest, highly-rated music, ensuring that I can always be able to listen to my favorite new music. The "need to rate" list will always show me the tracks that are unrated and, thus, need to be rated. If I had made manual playlists of these tracks, they would not change and evolve and would not be nearly as useful.
On the other hand, I mostly use manual playlists for one time events like birthdays, New Year's Eve parties and other special events. I often start with an auto playlist, copy its tracks to a new manual playlist and then edit that playlist. I work on the playlist's order. I add and remove tracks until I get it right. For example, I often start with my favorite dance playlist (occasion = dance, rated four stars and up) and then tweak it for the particular occasion. For family parties I'll have more music from the 50s, 60s and 70s so that all generations feel included. For parties with friends I'll throw in some of our groups' favorites. Then I save the playlist with a descriptive name like "New Year's Eve 2010."
In summary, manual playlists are best for situations where you want exact control over the content and order of a playlist and never want it to change. Auto playlists are best for situations where you want a playlist to grow and evolve over time and the order doesn't matter. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages and provide great ways for you to get the most from your music collection.
