Creating and Using Playlists

Playlists are the modern equivalent of the mix tape—that group of songs you just want to hear together and be able to pull out when you get in that mood.

The easiest way to create a playlist is to start where we are right now,just listening to a song. There are other ways,but because we just walked through how to play music,we might as well start here.

While a song is playing,press the Menu button and tap Add to Playlist.Because you haven’t created a playlist yet,you’re going to see an Add to Playlist screen.

There are two options here for you to choose from,each of which needs a little explaining.

First is the Current Playlist option,which can be a little confusing.You haven’t set up a playlist; you simply picked some music to listen to.Your phone made a list of music based on the song you picked.If you picked a song off an album,it adds the whole album to your playlist.For example,if you picked a song from Great Big Sea,it adds all of Great Big Sea’s songs from that album to the list.If you picked a Great Big Sea song off the master list of all of Great Big Sea’s songs,it will actually add all Great Big Sea’s songs to the list.

Finally,if you picked a song off the master list of all the songs,it adds all the songs to your playlist.

But really,if you’re playing a song,you don’t want to add it to your current playlist because it’s already on the playlist—you’re listening to it.The Current Playlist option is far more useful when you’ve already built a playlist and want to add songs,which we’ll talk about in a few pages.For now,select New.

You can tap the Save button to create a playlist with the very unique name New Playlist 1,or you can actually open up the keyboard and create something a little more intelligently named.

After you’ve created the playlist,you probably want to add more songs to your list.To do so, go to your music library and tap and hold on whatever songs you’d like to add,and select Add to Playlist.

You can create a new playlist from here as well.This is just another way to create a new playlist or add to any playlist you have already created.

Want to see what your list looks like? Go back to the player by pressing the Menu button,tapping Playback,and tapping Current Playlist in the upper right.

Press the Menu button to see what you can do here.

• Library: This brings you back to your library.

• Playback: This brings you back to the media player.

• Shuffle all: Why listen in whatever order is there now? This button mixes up the order of the songs.

• Save as playlist: This is the big one.You spend a bunch of time building a playlist;this is where you actually get to save it for future use.

• Clear playlist: This clears a current playlist that hasn’t been saved.It does not remove items from a saved playlist.

Accessing Saved Playlists

To access your saved playlists,just open the Music application and tap Playlists. Tap the playlist you want to play,and it immediately starts playing.

Modifying Saved Playlists

After you’ve created a playlist,it isn’t set in stone.If you get a new album or song and you want to add it to an existing playlist,or you’ve played that one Gourds song repeatedly and you’re tired of it,you can modify a saved playlist to add,remove,or reorganize the songs.

To modify a saved playlist,tap and hold the playlist name and choose Edit.Unfortunately,you can’t do much to the playlist other than tapping and holding a song and either deleting it from your phone or removing it from the playlist.You can’t reorganize the playlist,because all playlists store the songs in alphabetical order.

Deleting Playlists

It happens.Your tastes change,or you start running rather than cycling,and you need to delete a playlist because it just doesn’t work for you anymore.To delete an existing playlist,tap and hold the playlist and select Delete.

Party Shuffle

Although you probably won’t use your Android phone to DJ the next party you go to,Party shuffle is a must for anyone who has a large media library.It takes every song in your library and throws them randomly into a list and starts playing.

How great is that?

To access Party shuffle,just press the Menu button from the main music screen or the play- back screen,and tap Party shuffle.