Among many other improvements, SmartMusic 2010 speeds up the file retrieval process and makes files easier to manage. Today SmartMusic grabs content à la carte – as you pick each piece, rather than requiring you to slowly download one very large (+800MB) block of files as it did in the past. In addition to saving you disk space this also offers three additional benefits:

1. In most cases all parts are downloaded – switch from flute to oboe and it just loads the new part. In past versions, you’d be sitting at another download screen while SmartMusic dutifully grabbed the next part for you.
2. Downloaded files are stored locally. It works similarly to iTunes: If you look at the left navigation bar in Find Music, the “On This Computer” section lists all of your downloaded solos, method books, and band pieces. The list has a cool “as you type” search box, too, to quickly pare down the list to help you find something fast.

The third benefit is the whole point of today’s post. You can create a playlist of pretty much anything you want, then export it and open that same playlist on another computer, meanwhile SmartMusic will immediately start downloading all of those titles in the background!

Here’s an example:

Open up the Solo section in Find Music, then indicate English Horn – click a title, then “Download for Later,” and click the next title. Go through all of the English Horn solos in this fashion. Watch the little “Downloads…” indicator in the lower left, and when it’s done, jump into the “Solos” section on this computer and create a playlist of these files. Under Playlists, right-click your new list of English Horn solos and choose Export. You now have a file that you can put on any computer that runs SmartMusic 2010 where you only have to double-click the file and SmartMusic will launch and begin downloading all of the content in that playlist.

My example is a little extreme – most folks can benefit from this by making a playlist of a few pieces they’re currently working on. I’m sure you’ll come up with some more creative uses of this feature – please share them with us here by posting a comment.