In the future, everything will be themed

You may have noticed that there's a lot of blogs out there that have themes. Music blogs, sports blogs, political blogs, blogs devoted solely to discussions of hangnails and tooth enamel. And in reading these specialized blogs, you may have wondered why Are Seven isn't specialized, why I haven't taken a theme and run with it.

Oh, but I have, and the observant reader would have picked up on this. I have done nothing but stick to one single topic for the two and a half years I've been writing here, and I've never strayed once. That single topic? Things That Only I, Initial Reid Lastname, Would Find At All Interesting. My target demographic is the Bored. And the Drunk. I would recommend being both before you attempt to read anything here, or the inanity may injure you.

To stay on topic, today I'd like to talk about a recent breakthrough I've had with a playlist I'd been trying to create for a while.

So one of the problems with the digital music world that I've chosen to move into is that it's far too easy to ignore songs. When you have everything you want to hear at the tip of your fingers, it's hard to resist the temptation to go back to old favorites instead of giving new music a chance. Back in the days when I was driving with a 10 CD changer or walking with the mini-disc player that only held about 5 or 6 albums, I would find myself listening to albums that I hadn't liked the first few times only because they were there, and I didn't get around to changing the discs and I was tired of the other albums, and would end up loving these initially ignored records.

Not so when I went all iPod. If I didn't like a band's new album...well, the old favorites were just a few clicks away. So I tried to figure out a way that I could combine a big digital library with the forced familiarity of limited options. And I have it.

Last year, I started a playlist that included only albums that came out that year (Year=2005). By the end of the year, though, that playlist had started to get pretty crowded, and the chances of me hearing some song I'd only listened to once were pretty slim, and also, I could play the same playlist twice and get the same song.

So this year, I decided to make my smart playlist a little smarter (please now picture the smart playlist going to school). I created a playlist called "2006 Radio", added in "Last Played>Not in the last week" so that I would only hear the stuff I hadn't been listening to as much and "Date Added>In the Last 3 months" to let things expire once their time is done. And so I've been enjoying a 2006 of fresh new music and when I haul off and listen to the Belle and Sebastian record again, I know that I won't hear it on this recent list, which creates that way of giving a chance to the new albums that I don't listen to repeatedly.

All fine and simple and believable, but there was something wrong. See, I rate songs, which I know some people think is overly critical, but it's great for organization. And I have this playlist that has everything from that year that has more than three stars (called "2006 HOF"), and by the end of the year, it's a great listen it is own right. So if I was listening to the Radio playlist, I still wanted to be able to hear these songs even after the 3 month expiration date. But the iTunes playlists don't allow for "and" and "or" equations in the same list, so I had to send my smart playlist off to grad school to figure out how to get this done (that is, I had to search message boards).

It's a sloppy solution, but it works: add in a "Last played>Not in the last 4 days" to the 2006 HOF playlist (because I want to hear this stuff more often, but I still don't want to hear it every time I fire up the Radio playlist), and then create another playlist that combines the 2006 HOF with the previous 2006 radio. Presto! So every morning, when I'm too bleary to think of something specific to listen to, I fire up this playlist, which gives me all the new stuff I've gotten in the last three months, and forces me to listen to the stuff that I picked up on a whim and don't think of very often.

Are you still reading this? Dude, you must be wasted.