iPod: The Missing Manual, 11th Edition

Chapter 12. The Power of Playlists

You’ll learn to:

• Create and edit playlists in iTunes or on your iPod

• Make Genius playlists

• Let iTunes auto-create all kinds of playlists for you

• Beam your tunes to speakers with AirPlay

• Burn custom music mixes to CD

A PLAYLIST IS A group of songs that you think go well together. You create a playlist by dragging songs from your iTunes library into the list. You can include pretty much any set of tunes arranged in any order. For example, if you’re having a party, you can make playlists out of dance tracks. If you’re in a 1960s Brit-girl pop mood, you can whip together the hits of Dusty Springfield, Lulu, and Petula Clark. Some people may question your taste if you, say, mix tracks from La Bohème with Queen’s A Night at the Opera, but hey—it’s your playlist.

Creating playlists has become something of an art form since the iPod arrived in 2001. You can find books filled with sample playlists. Academics around the world write papers about group dynamics and cultural identity after studying how people create playlists—and which ones they choose to share with others. Some nightclubs even invite people to hook up their iPods so they can share their playlists with the dance-floor audience.

If you don’t have time to make your own playlists, Apple lends you an expert hand. Its Genius feature lets you create one-click mixes of songs that sound as though they were actually ...