ITunes Smart Playlists: Songs not played in the last 6 hours

itunesmusicplaylistsmart-playlist

I'm hosting a barbecue on Saturday that is likely to go on well into the night, so I have compiled a playlist of approximately 10 hours of music. I want to make sure that if I need to stop the playback and start it again, I don't want to hear the same tracks already played recently.

In conclusion, I'd like to create a Smart Playlist that will only show songs that haven't been played in the last 6 hours. Unfortunately, the "Last Played not in the last" shortest option is 1 day. I considered the "Limit to XX items selected by least recently played" option, however that will mean the music will be skewed towards music I haven't listened to for the longest, which is not what I want, because that ends up grouping lots of a similar artist together and it won't feel very random. I tried entering a fraction for number of days, but it doesn't allow that.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I could get this to work?

Best Answer

I do this all the time.

Create a smart playlist, Last6Hours. Limit the size of the playlist to 6 hours; the drop down box for this setting has items, minutes, hours, Mb, etc. Make sure Live Updating is checked.

Create another smart playlist, PlayME. Add two items: "Playlist IS 10HourCompilation" and "Playlist IS NOT Last6Hours." The setting for PlayME should be "all" and not "any". Make sure Live Updating is checked.

Play the PlayME playlist and you're all set.