Despite all the latest improvements in iTunes, the power of Smart Playlists remains the best way to navigate and get the most out of your ever-growing music collection.

iTunes comes with a few pre-installed Smart Playlists (such as Recently Added and Recently Played), but here's ten more you should consider adding.

To get the most out of your Smart Playlist function, you have to do a little preparatory work. First, it's a good idea to rate your songs and label them by genre. This can be easily done when you import songs into your iTunes. But if you have a bunch of untagged songs, a couple Smart Playlists can help rate them quickly.

Creating a "Not Rated" Smart Playlist

Open up a Smart Playlist window by choosing File>New Smart Playlists, or pressing Command+Option+N or Ctrl+Alt+N. When the Smart Playlist window opens, you're provided four categories in which to create your Smart Playlist. (If you're trying to make sense of the Smart Playlist parameters, you can look at this way. The first row is a set of rules about what you're looking for; the second row is buttons for how to look for the items in the first row and what to limit the items or selections to, e.g. number of songs, amount of time.)

To find your unrated songs, click the "Match the following rule"; select "My Rating" and 'is less than" from the drop down buttons in the first row. Click on the first highlighted star, which should in turn deselect all the other stars in the box. Leave the Limit box unchecked, and check the Match only and Live updating boxes if you want them to apply. The latter box is useful if you want any playlist to automatically update using the parameters you've set for it.

Notice also, that you can use the minus and plus buttons to add additional rules to your playlists.

After you click okay, you will be presented with a Smart Playlist of your unrated songs. Now got to Edit>Select All or Command+A to selection all your unrated songs. Next, press Command+I which will open the Multiple Song Information window. In the My Rating box, select the first two or three stars. As you listen to these songs, you can always rate them higher or lower.

If you want to find songs that you have not labeled with a genre, you can create a Smart Playlist with a set of rules that state "Genre is not..." in which you list each genre you have already used to label songs, for example "Genre is not rock," and so on. Use the plus button to add additional genre rules.

When you build Smart Playlists, you'll find that you may need to edit them for various reasons. The fastest way to do this, is to click on the title of the Smart Playlist and press Apple/Command+I. You can also Option–click the Smart Playlist or choose Get Info from the File menu.

Now that you've done preparatory work you're ready to make additional playlists.

See my next hub about suggested smart playlist for your iPod.