How to exclude holiday tracks from genius playlists
A reader who wishes to remain anonymous has some difficulty maintaing a holiday spirit throughout the year. He writes:
It’s the time of year when we like to play the holiday music that’s in my iTunes library. The difficulty is that at other times of the year I use iTunes’ genius feature to create mixes. Although that music is clearly labeled “holiday,” it still creeps into these mixes. Is the genius feature not clever enough to know to exclude such music at other times of the year?
The term “genius” shouldn’t be taken literally in this case. If the feature really had that kind of intellectual power it would automatically delete the copy of Perry Como’s Greatest Christmas Songs (that you’ve retitled “Krunkin’ Krismiss” so as to not be embarrassed when someone spies the album title via home sharing) and revoke your iTunes purchasing privileges until well after the holiday season concludes.
In the case of genius playlists you must indicate to iTunes where you don’t want the genius feature to tread. And you do that by simply switching off the tracks.
To do so I’d suggest that you choose File > New > Smart Playlist and configure the rule to read Genre Contains Holiday. This will create a Holiday playlist that appears in iTunes’ sidebar (which, in iTunes 11, you can expose by choosing View > Show Sidebar).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
http://www.macworld.com/article/2017845/how-to-exclude-holiday-tracks-from-genius-playlists.html
