You could select a playlist or smart playlist to draw from, and it would show you both the tracks it had recently played and the tracks it was about to play, and you could customize how much of each; you could also do what are now standard queue operations like delete, reordering, and refreshing the queue. What made Party Shuffle the absolute GOAT, though, was that you could change the input playlist without disturbing the queue or history; only when it was adding tracks would it pull from the input source. So you could be adjusting the playlist on the fly without affecting planned playback.
This combined with a tree of “smart” playlists that drew from other “smart” playlists allowed for a great degree of automation. By itself it allowed by a great degree of adjustment based on mood without having to micromanage the queue in way that contemporary music library apps just don’t have.
But does it have Party Shuffle? That is what set iTunes apart.
Oh, I never used Party Shuffle. How did that work?
You could select a playlist or smart playlist to draw from, and it would show you both the tracks it had recently played and the tracks it was about to play, and you could customize how much of each; you could also do what are now standard queue operations like delete, reordering, and refreshing the queue. What made Party Shuffle the absolute GOAT, though, was that you could change the input playlist without disturbing the queue or history; only when it was adding tracks would it pull from the input source. So you could be adjusting the playlist on the fly without affecting planned playback.
This combined with a tree of “smart” playlists that drew from other “smart” playlists allowed for a great degree of automation. By itself it allowed by a great degree of adjustment based on mood without having to micromanage the queue in way that contemporary music library apps just don’t have.