iTunes has some really advanced features for organising your music but seems to ignore the fact that a lot of people may have music libraries larger than their iPod. Its solutions of only adding manually chosen playlists or randomly selecting music itself to go onto the iPod aren’t very helpful for people who still want the majority of their library accessible on the go or want more control over the music on their iPod.

My solution is to create a master live updating ‘smart playlist’ for the iPod which ignores songs that have been tagged with iTunes Only in the Grouping field, unless they have a rating of higher than one star. The reason for the second condition is that it allows me to tag entire albums as iTunes Only but still have single songs off them show up on the iPod if I rate them.

The advantage of doing it this way is that new content you put into iTunes will still automatically get added to the iPod unless you tell it not to.

Create an iPod Master Playlist

1. In iTunes go to File –> New Smart Playlist…
2. Add the rule ‘Grouping does not contain iTunes Only’
3. Optionally add another rule ‘Rating is greater than one star’ and change the Match rule at the top to ‘any’
4. Make sure Live updating is checked, and the Limit and Match only… options are unchecked
5. Click OK and name your playlist ‘iPod’

Tag Selected Songs with ‘iTunes Only’

1. In your iTunes library, select the song(s) you don’t want on your iPod.
2. Right-click and select Get Info
3. On the Info tab, go down to the Grouping field and enter ‘iTunes Only’

Instruct your iPod to Sync with the iPod Playlist

1. Connect your iPod to your PC
2. Select your iPod under Devices on the left
3. From the iPod Summary screen, select the Music tab
4. Make sure Sync Music is checked then click the Selected Playlists radio button
5. Select your iPod playlist in the list and any others you decide you want on your iPod, click Apply in the bottom right then click Sync

Now you can easily select what songs you do or don’t want on your iPod.