Now that you have a base radio smart playlist that adds and subtracts music based upon its rating and when it was last played, let’s filter (or parse) out some additional stuff.
There are two ways to do this, really. I think of them as the things I deliberately want to filter out, and then there’s the stuff that I indiscriminately want to filter out.
Deliberately filtering. I’ve got a family — and they all have their fingers in the iTunes pie. I’ve got a non-smart playlist that is called Kids Stuff. I drag songs into there if it’s stuff that they listen to that, really, under any circumstances, I just don’t want to hear. It’s not all kids stuff — I can handle the occasional Fozzy Bear commentary. So, it’s not a blanket all-kids-stuff filter, just the stuff that really belongs to my kids.
I have another non-smart playlist called We’re On a Break (reference). I drag songs into there if I’m ready to go without them for a while, but know that they’ll come back into fashion sometime soon. Not worth deleting and having to reload again in a few weeks.
Indiscriminate filtering. There’s just some stuff that I almost never want to hear. Jazz and blues, for example. I have a smart playlist called Dinner Music, and it’s only jazz and blue; other than some dinners, though, I don’t want to hear either. So, things called Jazz or Blues or any derivative there of, I can pretty much filter out. Audio Books and Podcasts, too.
Time for a new Smart Playlist.
Match all of the following rules.
- Playlist is BaseRadio.
- Playlist is not Kids Stuff.
- Playlist is not We’re On a Break.
- Genre does not contain Jazz.
- Genre does not contain Blues.
- Genre does not contain Audio.
- Genre does not contain Christmas.
- Genre does not contain Holiday.
- Podcast is false.
Click OK and call it BaseRadioFilterOut or something like that. We’re not done yet — we have stuff to filter in.
