iWant: Default Settings for New Playlists in iTunes

ITunes iconIf you create playlists in iTunes, you may find it annoying that every playlist you create starts with the same display settings. Unless you’re satisfied with those settings, you need to spend time, for each playlist, changing the settings to the way you want to see your content.

One thing I’d like to see in iTunes is default settings for new playlists. There are two types of settings that would be useful.

The first would let you select which columns display. By default, new playlists show columns, and use the ones that you have displayed in your Music library (with the exception of album artwork). This is partially good, but you may not always want all those columns displayed for playlists, or you may want them displayed in a different order in playlists.

The second would allow you to choose which view is used. By default, new playlists show a list of tracks. This makes sense, because many people will add music to a playlist, then change the track order, so the playlist needs to be in this view to be able to re-order songs. But not everyone uses playlists like that. It would be great if there were a setting that allowed you to choose from the many views: Song List, Albums, Artists, etc.

There’s a related problem with iTunes Match. If you’ve changed a playlist one one computer, when it syncs to another computer, the playlist reverts to Song List mode, rather than staying as you had set it up. iTunes needs a way to store these playlist settings, and not change them just because a computer has synced songs to the cloud.

Playlists are one of the ways many people organize their music. iTunes needs to improve the way they display to make it easier, and more efficient, to use them.