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Today I was browsing the web for some Apple news, and found a great article on TUAW entitled Stars and Smart Playlists. Basically, the article boils down to a quick guide on how to organize a huge library of music into a condensed playlist of great songs using ratings. It got me wanting to share how I organize my music and sync my various iPods.

In the beginning of 2008, I actually forced myself to painstakingly go through my entire library of music and rate each and every song I own. It took me quite a while, but I’m thankful I did. That said, you don’t have to rate your entire library if you don’t want to.

The idea is simple. Rate your absolute favorite songs as five star songs, with the scale proceeding downward with song quality. Depending on how extensively you rate your library, you can now sort it with smart playlists.

After creating a smart playlist, just select the first parameter as Rating, then choose whether you want to sort as just one rating (ex., five star songs only) or greater than (ex., three and above).  Be sure to enable Live Updating and you’re done.

Here’s my rating scheme. Five is awesome, I’ll listen to it almost every time it comes up in a shuffle. Four is great, but I skip it from time to time. Three is a good song that I still want to have on my iPhone or iPod. Two is a bad song I don’t want to hear, but it’s not so bad that it receives a one, which is basically garbage. The play count never exceeds 1.

So, even if you only go through and find five star songs, you at least have some songs rated, and you can make a smart playlist that can update in the future automatically when you rate new songs five stars.

This is how I manage music on my iPhone and iPods. I created a smart playlist to include songs with a rating of three and above. Instead of syncing my iPhone to my entire library, which wouldn’t fit, I sync it to that playlist. An added bonus of being picky about your five star songs will help out those of you with iPod shuffles. I sync my iPod shuffle to my five star smart playlist, and my runs have been more about running and less about skipping…songs, that is.

Now every time I buy a new CD, after importing it, I rate each song. I have a full library of rated songs, and I can sort them effectively.

One last tip. If you’d like to have your entire library rated, it could be quite an undertaking if it’s large. It took me over a few months, because you can only rate so many songs in one sitting. A great way to keep them coming is a smart playlist for unrated songs. Then, you always know how many you have left to go.

Via [ TUAW ]