Limitless Pulse

I just discovered a feature in this latest 8.0.2 version of iTunes that makes using it much more pleasurable: It’s now possible to copy a selection from within a playlist and paste it back into that same playlist.

This might sound trivial to people, but what was originally most difficult about my switching to iTunes was that it was difficult to manage a “now playing” set of songs. In other players it was possible to select tracks from wherever they might be – other playlists, different machines, etc. – and by simply double clicking individual tracks, add them to the bottom of the “to be played” list. It was more similar to the way jukeboxes work: Selected tracks are thrown in line in the order at which they were selected.

Without a playlist, when typically browsing one’s library, tracks are played from the library in a descending order. This might work well for a person who filters for a specific album, but once that album’s been played, the music stops. The same might be true for an artist or whatever selection had been made through the iTunes Browser. It’s 2008…music hasn’t been required to stop in almost 40 years! At the same time, if there hasn’t been a selection (filter) made, tracks keep playing one after the next through the entirety of the remaining library, something that has very often made for the unnerving of my coworkers when the album someone queued up finishes and iTunes continues on to something much less desirable.

I got around this problem by creating a playlist, actually a series of playlists which grows every other week. From within a playlist, I can obviously add and sort tracks, allowing music, if I’m working all day, to continue to play uninterupted all day. Even podcasts – which when played through the podcast view, stop at the end of the playing file – will transition into the next track in the list.

The one thing that I was missing was the ability to easily duplicate a track and throw it back into the stream.

Some tracks I want to hear several times in a row. The easiest way for me to do that before tonight, was to let the track play to its end, then stop play at the beginning of the next track – something that sounded brutal – then start the previous track again. With what I discovered tonight, it’s possible to make an infinite number of instances of a track, allowing me to listen to the individual track as many times as I please. Other tracks I might want to play adjacent to several other tracks, appearing at different times with changed contexts. Again, this is finally relatively easy to accomplish. Now continues my quest for the track I want to hear an infinite number of times.