As an update on my will-I/won't-I thread from a few weeks ago, I finally bought an iPod this morning, and imported all my iTunes library. Only thing is, in iTunes I created all sorts of folders, within which I put playlists. So, for example, I created a folder for "Prince", with various sub-folders and playlists. On the iPod, though, it only shows the playlists - no folders - so now I have hundreds of 'loose' playlists, many of which share names, like 'non-album' (each artist has non-album tracks). So how do I group them like in iTunes?

And how do I do random play within a playlist?

dude, can you please come over and clean my room?

That wasn't helpful, but sure, why not?

booyah said:

i really cant help but dude i'm such a slob and i need help

If you click on the help tab at iTunes you should find all the answers.

The iPod only has the Playlists you have on iTunes. It doesn't create on its own.

You can manually edit the songs info in iTunes
What I do is add the non album songs to their closest album.

For example I highlight all the b-sides from Musicology. Right click. Get info.
And write Musicology as album title. Then I give them number 13, 14,...18.
So everytime I play Musicology I'll listen to all those tracks.

Still not quite what I meant. I figured I'd be able to have various playlists within a folder, but that's not the case (I've now looked into it, and iPods don't currently have the capacity to do that!!!)

What's with the folders? I don't understand why they're necessary

Maybe if you recreate your playlists (which would be super easy & put them where everyone elses playlists are, not in folders you've created that your Pod may not understand) it might work....

Go into ITunes, hit the "new playlist/create playlist" button. Go into whatever playlist you're recreating, select all, drag them to the new playlist, name it, kill the old one (or don't, whatever) & see if your Pod understands the new playlist.

God, I'm not even sure I understand your question

To play songs randomly in a playlist simply hit menu until you're @ the first screen, go to "settings", "shuffle", "songs" - it will shuffle by song whether you're in a playlist or not...

Also any "grouping" you want to do has to happen in ITunes FIRST - you cannot group anything in the Pod, it only understands what you've already set up. Simply make a new playlist that groups all the songs you're talking about & give it a name - BOOM...

Here's what I do: one of my playlists is "easy" but I don't want ALL those songs in my Pod. So I have "easy" & "easy home" - of the two "easy" is the one that's uploaded to the pod, not the other. You can choose which songs/playlists get uploaded by going into your preferences for your IPod & do it by setlist...

Well, for example, I wanted a folder for all Paisley Park artists, so I could listen to the PP tracks in a variety of forms without having multiple playlists. I've just discovered, though, that creating a genre called "Paisley Park" basically acts the same way - I can listen to all songs which have the genre Paisley Park, even while the artists and albums are different.

That's what Playlists are for
You create a Playlist named Paisley Park and drag there all the songs you want.
Then hit Random play et voila

But I don't want to end up with hundreds of playlists that take forever to search through - I don't know, maybe I'm making things harder than they need to be...

booyah said:

Yea, you really are You won't need HUNDREDS of playlists, you'll just need the ones that are particular to your SONG needs & not according to album & artist - the Pod will already sort things by song, album, artist or playlist so the only UNIQUE thing you really need to create are certain playlists. Does that make sense?

Give me an example of your playlists (besides PP artists, which is a good one - may have to create that one myself )...

I have 32 playlists that I've created (Princey Old Stuff, Somber, Sexy, Inspired) etc... Will you really need "hundreds"?

Alright, hundreds might be an exaggeration.

I like to label tracks with the correct artists (even "featuring X"), but this then creates a new artist.

I also like to label tracks' sources correctly - How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore, for example, has the 'album' "1999 [single]", so it doesn't get lumped with the album. I have so many non-album tracks for all my artists, that I then need to create playlists for all their non-album stuff if I don't want to listen to only one song at a time.

I also don't want remixes mixed in with new songs, and so on.

I would, however, like "Prince", "Prince & The Revolution", "Prince & The NPG" and "" to all show up together, rather than as separate artists, but I guess this just becomes another playlist.

Calhoun, I'll just try using it for a few days - it's probably not nearly as big a deal as I'm thinking, I just had an expectation going in that this would be simpler, so I set up iTunes one way as I was ripping hundreds of albums prior to buying an iPod, only to find out the interface isn't the same.

I also thought the transfer worked both ways, so I could move songs back onto my computer, but I guess not. I guess I should keep back-ups of anything I don't have on CD, just in case anything happens...

How about compilation albums (say, for example, The Hits) - most of these songs are on other albums, so I won't rip the whole CD onto my iPod - I'd rather save space. But to use tracks from other albums, I'd have to make my own playlist - do this with several artists, and it gets unwieldy. At least if there were folders, I can hide them away and only see them when I want to get to them.

booyah said:

Well I don't put EVERYTHING that's in my ITunes on my Pod b/c I just don't see the point - if I only listen to a few songs on the album then that's all I want on my Pod however I rip albums whole to ITunes just to have it complete & to have the option of selling the cd when I'm done (at least the album remains intact on my computer). Plus by ripping the album as a whole I never have to figure out what's missing & what's not - who cares if songs appear on multiple albums? I've got loads of space in ITunes but limited space on the Pod, which is why I only upload certain essential playlists on the Pod.

So for me I would either have the Hits album on my Pod as a whole or make a playlist from whatever you have ripped containing those same songs & call the playlist "the Hits". But you've kind of made it difficult for yourself by ripping them the way you have




.
[Edited 6/22/06 15:31pm]

CalhounSq said:

A-ha! Herein lies the problem. My iPod actually has more memory than my (old) laptop computer, which is why I don't keep everything on my computer - I was hoping I could put everything on my iPod and move it back-and-forth to the computer when I need it, but I didn't realize I couldn't copy back.

Ok, let me see if I'm understanding you. To organize your music for iTunes, you went and made a bunch of folders and subfolders (say, artist, and inside that, a folder for each album) and put them in iTunes music library folder. You want your iPod to have the same organizational structure.

If that's correct, then I have some good news and some bad news for you. The bad news is that you didn't need to spend all of that time organizing, because iTunes does it for you. You can just drag-and-drop files onto iTunes, and if they are labeled properly or if it can recognize the album from the database, it will take care of all of that.

The good news is, the iPod does the same thing.

"Playlists" are not the same as subfolders. On the left hand side of the screen is a list of playlists. If you did all of this album/artist stuff with folders WITHIN iTunes, you reaaaaallly wasted your time. You can basically delete all of that and make new playlists if you like (something that iTunes WON'T do for you, like, say, "songs for sunny happy super awesome days"). But if you just want them organized by artist/album, it's done for you.

You can actually creat playlists on your iPod. They're called On-The-Go playlists. You go to each song you want on the playlist, and press the select button (whatever that is for your generation of iPod. . . dunno. . . I have an old one) and hold it down until the song title blinks a couple of times. Then you go back to the "playlists" menu, and select On-the-Go.

I hope that's helpful.

But how do I play an album without it continuing into whatever is next on the iPod? Sometimes I only want to listen to that album...

booyah said:

If you go to menu-music-albums and then select the album you want, it will stop when it finishes

Check the iPod screen when it starts playing an album that it says, for example, 1 of 12 and so on until 12 of 12 and then it stops.


[Edited 6/23/06 8:36am]

PANDURITO said:

Thanks! I know these questions may sound dumb, but the interface is different than I'm used to, and different than iTunes itself, which really surprises me considering they're meant to go together.

Now how do I do the same thing as above in iTunes without creating a playlist?

What do you mean? Play an album?

Don't you have the browser in iTunes active?

PANDURITO said:

Yeah - I know, basic question, but that's why I created playlists - so it would play an album without going on to whatever was next in the library. Quick example - I had an album playing last night beginning with "G", and my wife was on the computer - I started to worry when it got to the end of the album that "Gold Nigga" was going to start playing next, which would have killed the whole relaxed evening we were having - Prince songs, especially from that era, are things I'd like on my iPod, but that don't go down well at home.

PANDURITO said:

NO I DIDN'T!!! Didn't even know that was there!!! THANK YOU!!! Just found it - that's a huge help!!!

If your browser isn't showing click the eye on the left top
You go to the artist column and select one and then go to the album column (only the albums bu the artist you selected will show) and select the one you want

And then just play

You'll be deleting lots of Playlists now