On Computers and The Internet
As music storage and playback using personal computers became common, the term playlist was adopted by various media player software programs intended to organize and control music on a PC. Such playlists may be defined, stored, and selected to run either in sequence or, if a random playlist function is selected, in a random order. Playlists' uses include allowing a particular desired musical atmosphere to be created and maintained without constant user interaction, or to allow a variety of different styles of music be played, again without maintenance.
Some websites allow categorization, editing, and listening of playlists online, such as Project Playlist, 8tracks, Plurn, imeem and Webjay. Other sites such as Musicmobs focus on playlist creation aided by personalized song recommendations, ratings and reviews. On certain sites, users create and share annotated playlists, giving visitors the option to read contextual information or reviewer comments about each song while listening. Some sites only allow the sharing of the playlist data with the actual music being delivered by other channels e.g. plurn, others provide a closed catalog of content from which the playlists can be generated while sites like imeem allow users to upload the music to central servers to be shared and accessed by any user of the site.
iPods can also be used to build playlists. The iPod software, "iWorkOut Muse", uses playlists to help people work out to music.
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