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Getting Chummy With The iTunes DJ

When iTunes first rolled out their iTunes DJ feature, I was unimpressed. I thought that the "DJ" part was a misnomer; implying that you could play music for a party in the same way that a DJ would off other laptop software. It was really just a glorified shuffle, I thought. I hid it from my leftnav.

Over the last couple of years, I've been making increasingly complex smart playlists based on ratings and tags (which I put in the "Grouping" field), and would shuffle those depending on mood and situation. But the standard shuffle has it's flaws. If I change the rating while a song's playing (which I frequently do), the song immediately falls off the playlist. Plus, if a song comes up that I'm not in the mood for (which happens often when I'm playing my playlist of songs rated 3-5 stars), I have just hit the forward button, which is kind of a mood killer in and of itself.

Lately, I've discovered that the iTunes DJ software that I'd dismissed was exactly what I needed. I can see what songs are coming up and remove them if I'm not in the mood. I can change the rating of a song while it's playing and still listen to it from the end. Perhaps best of all, I can drop in a song that's not on the source playlist. It's exactly what I wanted, and while I would still never use the iTunes DJ to actually DJ, it's come in damn handy for my home life.
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