Your Itunes Tells You What You Love

[lost highway]

Here's a way to make an instant mix of songs you really love and learn about your listening habits:

 

Make a 'Smart Playlist' in Itunes on whatever device you listen to the most music on (for me it's my 120gig Ipod).

When you make the playlist click on the dropdown menu that says "selected by: genre" change genre to 'most often played'.

Uncheck the box next to 'Match the Following Rule' at the top.

 

You should have a new Smart Playlist that is composed of your Top 25 most played tracks (you can make it your top 50 or whatever).  The cool part is since it's a smart playlist if you listen to something more it can find its way onto the list.

 

The interesting thing is sometimes you really like to listen to something often that's not what you consider your favorite.  Right now my top artists on this list are: Wilco, Jim O'Rourke, Nick Drake, Harry Nilsson, Bottomless Pit, Neko Case, Radiohead, Fairport Convention, Andrew Bird and Charles Wright.

 

The highest playcount (other than one song I use as a transition song at work which is artificially inflated) goes to Nick Drake's 'Pink Moon' (34 plays!), with some tracks from 'The Whole Love' up there (makes sense, I've listened to the 'classic' Wilco albums on cassettes, vinyl, and CD as much as Ipod given the years they came out).

 

What are your top play count songs/ artists?

[Magnetized]

I just did this and boy, what a surprise. I wonder how far in time this reaches back, because Wilco doesn't even make the list, and I feel like I listen to an inordinate amount of Wilco now.

 

But this list is full of Bright Eyes (I'm Wide Awake it's Morning, mainly), Green Day (American Idiot) and a Townes Van Zandt tribute album called "Poet" with various artist singing Townes's songs. I do remember listening A LOT to all 3 of these albums when I first got them, but not so much recently. Also, I tend to listen to albums all the way through rather than shuffling songs, so there's not too much variety in this playlist. It'll be interesting to see how it evolves over time, though.