My Smart Playlists and Marvis Pro

I have written a lot about Apple Music, weirdly.

I've been thinking about it more lately, so I figured I'd explain how I use one of my other favorite aspects of Apple Music / iTunes - Smart Playlists.

What Are Smart Playlists?

Probably the greatest aspect of Apple Music, Smart Playlists let you create a set of conditions for songs, which are then all pulled into a playlist. There are lot of conditions you can use, which I'll be going over with my playlists, that let you customize how you see fit. They take a bit of thought to get used to, but I really like them for a couple of use-cases that are important to me:

So here are some examples:

Sounds of the Future

This is a playlist that has every song I've collected that doesn't have a rating. When I find albums I'm interested in, I grab them and add them to my library. Then I listen to this playlist every couple of days. I then rate each one using Apple Music's 5-star rating system, moving it out of the library.

This is the most needless of the playlists, because rating can be very micromanage-y. But I do it because of a playlist I'll bring up in a bit.

Sounds of the Month

This particular Smart Playlist pulls in all of the songs I've collected in the past 30 days. I limit it to 250 items and sort them by album, because I'm a weirdo that can only listen to ablums from end to end - I simply cannot listen to individual songs in most contexts, unless they're singles.

Sounds of the Year

Same as the above, but by year. I also have it so that this one is still limited to 250 items, but refreshes regularly, so I get a new batch of fresh music every time.

Personal "Radio Station"

Remember when I said I rate all my songs? This is why. This playlist has all of the songs in my library rated at 4 stars or more, and that I haven't listened to or skipped in the last six months. This gives me a playlist where I can just set it and forget it, because I already know I like all the songs inside it, I just haven't heard them in a while.

Marvis Pro

So that's all great, but the reason I'm writing about this is the fact that I got an iPhone for work recently, and it reintroduced me to Marvis Pro. Marvis Pro is an App that you can use instead of the stock Apple Music app, and it's absolutely fantastic for people who take music way too seriously.[1]

It has ridiculous sorting and filtering options, lots of stats you can learn about a song like the playlists it's in, the last time I played it, when it was added to my library, etc. And an incredibly sick customizable home screen that lets you add whatever you want to it. For example, my home screen hs my primary playlist pinned, as one example. But the real final piece of the puzzle is the filter I made for recent albums.

I have a ridiculous library, so it's way too easy to just never see an album again. One of the (many) negatives of an all-digital collection is that it doesn't have that physicality of thumbing through CDs and the like.[2] But with Marvis, I can create a section that shows me a double-scrolling list of albums that I haven't listened to at all in the past six months. This really opens up the doors for me to find and listen to music I used to love, and treat my library as less of a growing mountain, and more of a...well, actually library.

Anyways if you use Apple Music check out Smart Playlists, and if you have an iPhone, get Marvis on top of that. It's great!

  1. It's me, I'm people. ↩︎

  2. Before you say, "so just get a physical collection Mint!" Please note that I live in a tiny apartment and this is impossible for me, lol. I barely have enough space for shit as is. ↩︎