Does iTunes remember what I listened to and when?

Question

iTunes has a field named "Last Played" that tells me when I last played a track; is there any way of finding out all the songs I listened to on a particular date? I'm using iTunes 11 under OS X 10.6.8.

Answer 1

Nope.

Unfortunately, iTunes does not save an exact history of when you played certain songs, only the order in which you heard them.
There is no way you can know which song you hear, say, 3 hours and 10 minutes ago (totally random figures).

Answer 2

To be able to do this you need your listening history, and as the field name "Last Played" implies, iTunes only stores the most recent play date & time.

One of the many reasons I scrobble all my plays to last.fm from where I then get a lot of stats re top artists & tracks I listen to, etc. Last.fm stats are all based on a detailed history it stores (including date stamp of course) of all the songs you played.

Also, if you want to do more with your listening history than the functionality provided by the last.fm web interface, you can always export your data with publicly available Python scripts.

Answer 3

Not sure if this is what you want, but you can utilise Smart Playlists for this and the Last Played field. I use it to randomise songs I haven't listen to in a Month etc. and also to get a list of all songs I listened to in the last 30 days.

iTunes only remembers the actual Last Played date and not every time you play the file, however for quick searching it is useful.

• Select File and New -> Smart Playlist
• Select Last Played and then select Range

Answer 4

You can export your library as xml file. Open this file and search for any date you want...