Hi Missy and others, There is an easy way to manage your christmas music in iTunes without creating a separate music library.
I recently imported all of my christmas music at once so I could manage the files as a huge block in the Recently Added playlist that comes with iTunes. From there, you can do one of two things: 1. Create a new playlist and call it "Christmas Music." Select your files and choose Add to Playlist from the contextual menu. (VO-Shift-M.) Choose the christmas Music playlist you just created. This method works if you can quickly grab a bunch of songs at once and throw them into the playlist. There is another way that is a little more efficient and requires a few more steps. You can do this with a smart playlist. Find the songs you want to add to your smart playlist. Choose Get Info (command-I) on the song or songs. You are going to navigate to the "Grouping" field. There, type in a descriptive term like "Christmas". If you need to hunt for your Christmas music among all of your music, set a VO hot spot so you can quickly get back to the Grouping field. Repeat this with all of your Christmas music. When you've finished your 200 tracks, create a new smart playlist from the File menu, or use command-option-N. You'll be presented with a dialog box that will let you set rules for the playlist. Set it up like this: Match the following rule: Grouping contains "Christmas". Uncheck the "Limit to X items" checkbox. Uncheck the "Match only checked items" checkbox. Check the "Live Updating" checkbox. Hit OK. You'll be asked to name your new smart playlist. Name it and hit enter. Voila! You'll have a smart playlist containing all of your Christmas music. Once you're in this playlist, you can check and uncheck these items in bulk by selecting all and choosing check or uncheck al in the context menu. I've done this for my christmas music and it's a really good way of sorting the good stuff into a playlist. It also lets you customize other smart playlists by genre or other terms you stick in the grouping field. i.e. Christmas instrumentals, christmas jazz, Christmas cocktail party and so on. the benefit of using the grouping field is that you are able to customize the genre specifically to the music without using a catch all term like christmas. Email me off list if you get stuck. Kevin On 2011-12-19, at 10:36 PM, Ricardo Walker wrote: > Hi, > > What you ask is not possible. For a song to be in a playlist, it need to be > in the main music playlist. But, there is a way you can have all the > christmas music skipped if your just letting the music in your music playlist > play. After you've moved your christmas songs to a playlist, just uncheck > them. This is as close as you can get to what your trying to achieve in > iTunes. Well, now that I think about it a little more, I don't see why you > couldn't make a brand new music library and just put your christmas music in > it. Actually, thats probably the best way to go here. > > hth > > Ricardo Walker > rwalker...@gmail.com > Twitter & Skype: rwalker296 > www.mobileaccess.org > > On Dec 19, 2011, at 10:21 PM, Missy Hoppe wrote: > >> Hello, all. I don't even know if what I'm wantting to do is possible, but I >> figured I'd ask on here to find out. I know how >> to buy music on Itunes, but so far, that's about all I've learned. What I'd >> ideally like to do is find a way to make a >> playlist containing all of my Christmas music, but have it be completely >> separate from the main music list. That way, if I'm >> navigating my list of songs during the rest of the year, I don't keep >> encountering my 200 or so Christmas songs. Is there >> even a way to do what I want, or even if I make a playlist for the Christmas >> stuff, will it be permanently in the master >> music list. Is there a way I can cheat and accomplish what I want using cut >> and paste in finder? >> Any assistance you could provide would be extremely appreciated, even if >> there's no way to do precicely what I want, any tips >> on building a playlist would be extremely appreciated. Thank you all very >> much for your time, and I hope that this message >> makes at least a little sense. >> Missy >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "MacVisionaries" group. >> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. 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