Track Attributes

To make great Smart Playlists it’s important that you understand the many track attributes that you can choose from. No matter where you get your music from, such as the iTunes Music Store or copied from your own CDs, attributes will always be looked at in the same way. There is, however, one attribute that will group CDs track together and that is the album name attribute. You can group your songs together in a variety of ways including year, genre, artist, and play count. The following list is some of the attributes that you should become familiar with if you want to make Smart Playlists:

*Album: This is the album on which a particular track was released.
*Artist: This is the artist who has recorded the track.
*BPM: Beats per minute (also known as "tempo"). This is number value that accurately describes the number of beats that there are in one minute of time. iTunes doesn’t calculate BPM but you can calculate it with a third-party application. The BPM is a great way that you can add criteria to your Smart Playlists based on tempo.
*Comment: This field is "user defined" which means that you can use it for whatever purposes you want. For example, you might want to include information here about certain tracks such as which ones you borrowed from a certain friend.
*Grouping: This attribute is used when you want to group more than one movement in a single classical piece.
*Kind: The kind attribute is an audio file format. Some of the current audio files that are supported include AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless, MPEG, and WAV.
*Last Played: Every time that you play a track, iTunes will recored the time and date when it was played. This way you can find out which songs you play more than any others and add them to your Smart Playlist.
*My Rating: You can rate your music by giving it anywhere from 0 to 5 stars in the iTunes library as well as on your iPod.
*Play Count: This attribute will keep track of how many times you play a specific song.
*Playlist: The playlist attribute will either exclude or include tracks that are found in other playlists. You can use this attribute for creating Smart Playlists that are quite complex.
*Size: The size attribute lists the size of each track in megabytes.
*Song Name: This one needs no explanation.
*Time: The time attribute keeps track of how long each track is.
*Track Number: Every track on an album will be assigned a certain track number. For example "6 of 10".
*Year: The year attribute lists the year the track was first released.

Making Smart Playlists is a one way that you can get the most out of your iPod. You will be able to listen to exactly the lists of songs that interest you the most. This is a great way that you can create a specific playlist for the gym or for you walk.

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