Manage multiple Zunes with playlists

If you've got multiple Zunes in your home that connect to the same computer, you may have wondered if there's a good way to manage what portions of your music library get synced to each Zune.

For instance, my wife and I each have our own Zune, but we have radically different taste in music. If I want to make sure that her Morrissey doesn't end up on my Zune (or my Squarepusher on hers), then some tweaks need to be made in the Zune software.

To pull this off, you'll first want to make sure all of the household's Zunes are set to manually sync their music. You may have done this already when you first set up your Zune, but just to make sure, connect your Zune to your PC and look under the Device tab in the Settings menu. It's fine to leave your movies, podcasts, and photos to automatically sync, if you like, but if you want to retain control over what music gets copied to your Zune, then you need to set the music sync option to manual.

Of course, the downside to manually syncing your music is that any new music that you (or your fellow Zune-sters) may have added to your PC will not automatically copy to your Zune. There's a workaround, however: playlists.

Just because your Zune's music settings are manual, doesn't mean its playlist settings are. For instance, let's say you've made a playlist in the Zune software called "Classic Rock" and synced this playlist to your Zune. The next day, when discover another rock gem and add it to your playlist, your Zune will know to automatically sync the new song in an effort to keep your playlist up to date.

To take advantage of this playlist quirk, make a playlist for each of the Zunes in your home, and sync those playlists to each of their respective Zunes. In my case, I made a playlist for my wife and a playlist for me. Now, whenever I have a minute to rip a great CD or download a few albums from the Zune Marketplace, I take one extra step and add the new music to my playlist. The next time I sync my Zune to my PC, all my new music will automatically sync because my Zune wants to make sure it has all the songs required for my updated playlist.

This trick also works for sharing music recommendations with the fellow Zune-sters in your home. If you have some hot new music discovery you want to share, just drag it to your friend's playlist and it will automatically sync to their Zune the next time they connect.