iTunes and iPod questions

[4X4]

So I downloaded itunes and decided to start using my ipod. I'm successfully listening to a podcast I subscribe to, but I also (obviously) want to use this thing for music.

I'm having trouble organizing this stuff. I had all my mp3s organized into a few different headings but when I moved everything into itunes, I just highlighted my overall music folder and imported it. For some reason, itunes decided to put 3,000 of my mp3s into 90s music and the other 11,000 into 'recently added'. Now it's a total mess. I have two long lists of music.

Any suggestions as to how I can organize this? Any chance that itunes somehow remembers the folders it ganked this music from and can re-create them?

And a quick ipod question... Is it ok to plug it in every evening to get the latest podcasts so I can listen to them the next day? Essentially what I'm asking is whether I'm screwing the battery. I basically want to come home, plug in the ipod and let it do its syncing thing and then grab it the next morning. I only listen to it for a couple hours over the course of the day while I'm driving.
FTR, I asked this question to a friend and he asked what I was using to play it in my truck. No, it's not one of those fm transmitters that charges it. I have an aux jack in my truck, so I just plug a double male cord in from the ipod to the truck stereo.

[Barnes]

what your probably refering to are the default playlists that comes with iTunes. If you look near the lower right, you'll see a icon that looks like an eye. If you click it, it will bring down the browse pane. That's probably what you are looking for. Depending on how well your music is tagged will effect how well the browse pane is set up.

You can leave your iPod plugged in no problem.

[photon]

Sounds like your MP3's aren't fully tagged... Basically for an iPod or any current music player to display your MP3's properly you have to have them tagged (all the proper info in Album Name, Track Name, Track #, Genre, etc etc).

I use MediaMonkey to do this, you can do it in iTunes but it'd be painful since you'd have to type everything in manually. Or do a search for mp3 tagging here i'm pretty sure some people have listed other MP3 tagging utilites.

[4X4]

You mean the genius button? It wants me to register. I don't want to bother if it's the wrong button.

[photon]

Originally Posted by 4X4

You mean the genius button? It wants me to register. I don't want to bother if it's the wrong button.

No, they must have moved it since I don't see the eye either in iTunes.

Just go to View menu and choose Show Browser

[photon]

And on the left you're probably viewing under Playlists, you can click at the top left Library > Music to see all your music that iTunes knows about.

[4X4]

Is it also no problem to plug it in just for a minute to get the newest podcasts?

And pho, that is a huge step in the right direction. At least it's broken down by artist now.

[photon]

Yeah basically you have to abandon the idea of directories of music and think of it as a big blob of music that you can view in different ways.. by album, title, genre, whatever.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by photon

Yeah basically you have to abandon the idea of directories of music and think of it as a big blob of music that you can view in different ways.. by album, title, genre, whatever.

That's going to be difficult. It's an enormous library that is very poorly organized to begin with. It started out as a few songs and grew bigger and bigger because friends would download stuff while hanging out at my place and they'd also bring over cds. My place has always been the hang out and the computer has always been the jukebox. Now I have this weird system of filing that only me and my friends understand.

Man, I think it may be time to spend a couple hours every night and organize this bitch once and for all. At least your 'show browser' trick will make it alot easier.

Kinda pathetic that I just started using this thing and I'm 5 gigs away from needing an upgrade. 160, here I come.

[photon]

Yeah, it took me forever to get mine organized, but I've got all the album art in place and everything.

The alternative is to just create playlists that emulate your previous structure.

[Barnes]

Don't forget you can multi select (shift or ctrl click) songs and edit them all at once. Start of with Genre to get it narrowed down.

Someone could probably give you suggestions on finding an app that uses the Music Brainz service. The one I use is Mac only. It will preview songs and give you sugestions on what it is. You select the right one and the important tags are done for you. Once you have all the album names filled in, sign up for a iTunes account and you can go to the advanced menu > get album artwork and it will download the correct album art.

Also, double check where your old directories of music were. Chances are, your iTunes Library is in a different location and iTunes has doubled up the space it's taking up. Delete the old location when you are VERY SURE that it imported everything.

[flip]

Originally Posted by Barnes

Don't forget you can multi select (shift or ctrl click) songs and edit them all at once. Start of with Genre to get it narrowed down.

Someone could probably give you suggestions on finding an app that uses the Music Brainz service. The one I use is Mac only. It will preview songs and give you sugestions on what it is. You select the right one and the important tags are done for you. Once you have all the album names filled in, sign up for a iTunes account and you can go to the advanced menu > get album artwork and it will download the correct album art.

Also, double check where your old directories of music were. Chances are, your iTunes Library is in a different location and iTunes has doubled up the space it's taking up. Delete the old location when you are VERY SURE that it imported everything.

Holy crap. If I'd have know this existed I'd have saved myself about 6 hours in editing my files.

Of the 3000 songs or so I put on my computer a year ago or so only about 2/3 of them had tags. I did the other thousand or so by myself. I must have spent an entire night organizing.

[Ro]

Use Tag & Rename (my favorite) or something similar and tag them outside of iTunes, then import them back there when you're done. Tagging in iTunes takes forever.

Originally Posted by 4X4

Any suggestions as to how I can organize this? Any chance that itunes somehow remembers the folders it ganked this music from and can re-create them?

If you still have those folders all sorted out on your hard drive, when you start tagging them with an external program, you could highlight all the songs in one of those particular folders, let's pretend it's "music I listened to in college," and in the "comments" section of the tag, you could put "college." Then in iTunes you can create a smart playlist that will recognize the "college" in the comments box of each of those songs, and ban, you have a "music I listened to in college" playlist.

But as far as having everything come up neat and tidy in the menus and cover flow, it's all about proper tagging. Takes forever, but if you do it right you only have to do it once.

[4X4]

Tagging. Like gmail. I'm understanding. I'm liking more and more.

I've run out of thanks' for today but thanks to everyone for this useful shiz. Any more tips are greatly appreciated.

[photon]

Life flip said look for musicbrainz there are windows clients for it out there, I've used it and it's pretty good.

If all your music is ripped directly from CD's, something like Media Monkey will work well because it uses Amazon and such for its data. If your music is from more varied sources musicbrainz works better since it fingerprints each MP3 looking for others that have tagged that exact MP3 before.

[fredr123]

Can anyone recommend an OS X alternative to Media Monkey, Musicbrainz or Tag & Rename? My library is so messed up and it's been a pain trying to find Mac equivalents, that I'm almost tempted to dump it all on a portable HD and use a different Windows box to fix things up.

[Russic]

I really have nothing new to add to the conversation other than manually tagging all your music is a hellish task. Definitely try and find a program that'll do the hard stuff for you.

Once you get things properly tagged there are a lot of programs out there that will give you lyrics to your songs as well. I find that very handy as I'm one of those people that used to sit down with the cd booklets and read the lyrics. That was lost for me when I entered the mp3 ring, but it's nice to see it's relatively easy to load them up. I use GimmeSomeTune on my mac.

[photon]

Originally Posted by fredr123

Can anyone recommend an OS X alternative to Media Monkey, Musicbrainz or Tag & Rename? My library is so messed up and it's been a pain trying to find Mac equivalents, that I'm almost tempted to dump it all on a portable HD and use a different Windows box to fix things up.

There's several Musicbrainz OSX clients, iEatBrainz is one, Max is another, and the Java client Jaikoz should work fine on a Mac.

[Barnes]

I use Ieatberainz because it works witin your iTunes library.

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by photon

There's several Musicbrainz OSX clients, iEatBrainz is one, Max is another, and the Java client Jaikoz should work fine on a Mac.

Thanks for the tips. Having a hard time finding iEatBrainz, even on sourceforge. Jaikoz requires payment for a non-gimped version. Looks like there is an OS X beta of picard now. Think I'll give that a try...