Absolute Beginner's Guide to iPod and iTunes

I've saved one of the best features of iTunes for nearly last playlists. Playlists enable you to create custom collections of music from the songs in your iTunes Library. (If you think of a playlist as a custom CD without the disc itself or size limitation of a disc, you will be very close.)

When you create playlists, you can mix and match music to your heart's content. For example, you can build your own "greatest hits" collections that include multiple artists, music genres, and so on. You can repeat the same song multiple times in the same playlist, and you can get rid of songs you don't like by not including them in the playlists you listen to. What's more, you can create a playlist to include a specific amount of music from a single CD or endlessly repeat all the music in your Library.

Basically, you can use playlists to organize a collection of songs in any way you choose. You can then listen to your playlists, put them on a CD, or move them to an iPod.

You'll learn all you need to know about playlists in Chapter 18, "Creating, Configuring, and Using Playlists."