Easily play one song at a time in iTunes 9.2.1?

If I open a playlist in iTunes 9.2.1 and select any song and click the Play button, iTunes plays it and then the rest of the list; but what I'd like to do is hear that one song and stop and select another and play that one. Is there a simple "preference"-type of thing to enable a "single-play" mode?

I can only think of overworking the checkboxes in the playlist (constantly checking and unchecking them, with the help of a keyboard shortcut), or maybe making a large number of playlists with just one song in each list.

Further: It would be good to be able to burn several lists to a CD, so that groups of songs will play through but not play into the next group until "told" to do so with the CD-player remote,for example by my pressing the "Next" button.

If you Command-Click one of the checkboxes, it will toggle the checkboxes for an entire playlist, so a but less tedious than doing each track one at a time.

I don't know if it will prove any less cumbersome, but you might give Doug Adams's AppleScript Just Play This One v2.0 a try.

Thanks, Kevin. That's something like the keyboard shortcut I was hoping for.

Thanks for that link, dkmarsh! Adams's whole site looks like worth studying to this iTunes newbie.

FWIW, I'm on my first real iTunes project, having bought some material from the iTunes Store for the first time; previously I'd only used the application to catalog a few news clips from radio stations' websites, but now I have a little collection of tracks to savor one at a time, relaxing in the living room. I'm a little surprised that simple option isn't built into the application, but I've never thought I was typical...

you could always choose the "Repeat one song" option (third button from the left, on the bottom left; give it a couple of clicks), then at least it wouldn't always jump to the next song in your playlist.

Originally Posted By: roger

you could always choose the "Repeat one song" option

This used to work very nicely in a smart playlist I had where one of the conditions was that the play count was zero.

It would play the track once, then you'd hear it try to start from the beginning of the track for the fraction of a second that it took the smart list to drop the track. Then it would stop.

That doesn't work anymore. I'm not sure if it was an OS update or an iTunes update that killed it, but now it just goes on to the next track, as if the repeat option were "Repeat once" instead of "Repeat one song".

Originally Posted By: ganbustein

That doesn't work anymore. I'm not sure if it was an OS update or an iTunes update that killed it, but now it just goes on to the next track, as if the repeat option were "Repeat once" instead of "Repeat one song".

It works in iTunes 10 on my Macs but there is no requirement for the play count to be zero.

To be clear... What I can't get to work is "Play it once and stop". It still doesn't work on iTunes 10. (That was one of the first things I checked.)

"Play one track over and over" does work, as long as the track stays in the playlist, but that's not what I'm trying to do.

Specifically, I have a "New podcasts" smart playlist that lists all unplayed podcasts. Most of them will be moved to a manual playlist that syncs with an iPod, arranged in the order I want to listen to them on my hike, but there are a few short ones (of the "60-second" variety) that I'd just as soon listen to right now. It used to be that I could set "New podcasts" to repeat a single track. Any track I played would play once, and then stop, because iTunes won't repeat a track that's no longer in the playlist. It now instead ignores my repeat setting and continues on to the next unplayed podcast.

Where is the dope slap smiley when I need one?

I found a workable solution. iTunes exposes a "once" attribute to the AppleScript "play" command. I put this script in my Scripts menu:

Code:

tell application "iTunes"
	set sel to get the selection
	repeat with aTrack in sel
		play aTrack with once
		exit repeat
	end repeat
end tell

The "exit repeat" is there because it seems to me that a script designed to play a track once should play only one track. I haven't tested removing it. (If iTunes waits for the track to finish playing before returning to the script, it may time out. If it doesn't wait, the first track may not have time to finish before the second track stomps on it. A more complex script could address either concern, once I know which concern needs to be addressed, but at this point I don't care.)