Charles on… anything that comes along

I’m presently trying to listen to all of the music in my collection, which comprises 7,096 items which, iTunes tells me, would take 21 days, 9 hours, 45 minutes and 45 seconds to play the whole lot of. Typically, of course, you only listen to about 10 per cent of those (and also, a whole chunk of those are Harry Potter, for the kids to listen to at some stage).

But I thought I’d even it up by creating a smart playlist of songs which haven’t been played in the past 366 days. It’s quite a big number - 21GB, 5,161 items, about 16 days of listening (including the HPs). So I put a randomly-chosen 1GB subsection of that on the iPod and just play it. Next time you sync, those songs you’ve listened to will have a “Last Played” in the last year, so they’ll disappear from your smart list.

Right?

Some tracks, though, you discover you just can’t bear to listen to. (I find some of Eminem’s early stuff just too teeth-grinding). So naturally you hit the fast-forward button, and go on to the next song.

But what I’ve discovered is that if you skip past the end of a song like that, the iPod doesn’t think you’ve played it - and it doesn’t have a Play Count. Strikes me as a bit weird: what’s the sense in that? Why does it only record a song as having been “played” if you’ve reached the end of it?

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• You know, I'd listen to Radio 1 in the morning, except.. (16 March 2005; score: 66.32%)
• My iPo nan is annoyin me (25 February 2006; score: 66.08%)
• One last thing from the Expo: music store divisions (2 September 2004; score: 56.42%)