Seventeen

Day Seventeen:  Now you’re just somebody that I used to know.

On the Difficulties of Creating a Playlist…

I shouldn’t begin on my troubles with itunes, I have only just started using an ipod three years ago, so you can’t blame me for being relatively entrenched in a basic, simple, Windows Media Player ideal world where playlists are made easily, transferred even easier, and there’s no confusion.  Things are straightforward, and you can argue with me until the cowboys come home I will stick by what I stick:  itunes playlists are tricky, and this is how I tried to make one once.

I sort of found the playlists tab, which on itself is an adventure and a half, a journey to Mordor in itself just trying to locate, and after that I have to think of a name.  This is infinite amounts of pressure on such short notice…  I can make a blog name in two seconds flat, but something that’s going on my good old ipod Classic?  It needs to be important sounding, enticing, exciting, lovely, classy, it needs to be well-rounded but concise, and this damn itunes needed it NOW.  So I have to pick a name, which always ends up being some generic “Good Stuff” because that’s just what it is.  Good stuff.  My creativity escapes me when it comes to playlists, they’re too mainstream for me, I’d rather challenge my patience and use shuffle all of the time instead (through the 9000 plus songs on my ipod at the moment).

So once the name is chosen, I move on to figuring out how to actually put songs into this list.  Once I get that all sorted (which takes approximately twenty minutes, that usually is a strenuous journey as well, itunes is a confusing place) I start thinking frantically of songs that would fit into the category of “Good Stuff,” and immediately regret that playlist name.  I should’ve called it “Songs to Fall Asleep To,” or, “Songs that I Enjoy Walking Places To,” but no, I’m always stuck with “Good Stuff,” or something of that sort, and start scrolling.  I look for songs that I enjoy, and sometimes I find the really good ones, and other times I just pass by a song or two and think those would be great on a playlist!.  Needless to say I am usually very, very wrong about these songs.

It seems to be an inevitable playlist flaw when it comes to choosing songs I never, ever pick the ones that I’d actually want in “Good Stuff.”

So this poses a stupid problem, why make a playlist at all?  I would love to just have a playlist that plays the songs that I like the most.  Well, my friends,  I discovered (while trying to locate “Good Stuff” on my ipod, which I still have yet to find) that there is a handy playlist that my handy itunes makes all on it’s own called “25 most played,” and boy, boy oh boy oh boy do I love that playlist.  That is the playlist of champions, because it incorporates the songs I listen to on my itunes on the computer too, which means it just know.  It just knows.  So not only do I love technology again but I don’t feel so bad for not understanding how to properly create a playlist because the computer does it on its own!

Problem solved!

I won’t usually write about my itunes, the nine thousand songs and more, as well as my musical taste much here, because that is one thing that I keep to myself most of the time.  I don’t know why, but those songs make up my mind space, and I don’t really like people coming into that mindspace without really understanding it.  Maybe this will be my first venture in attempting to fully explain my relationship to my itunes.  It’s rocky, we fight a lot, but most of the time it supports me and I pay it lots of money for albums.

So I wish you good luck, although you probably don’t need it, since everyone else in the world understands itunes more than I do.  But good luck anyway!

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