MetaChat - Large iPod. Larger music collection.

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22 August 2005

Large iPod. Larger music collection. Suggestions? (and other iTunes/iPod Qs inside) →[More:]So how do people with iPods smaller than their music collections keep things straight.

Far as I can tell you can either uncheck all the boxes of music you don't want transferred or you can build playlists of things you do want transferred. However, they're both painfully long processes (250 gigs of music/60 gig iPod).

Am I missing something? Is there an easier way to do this?

And:

1. And, am I dumb or are Smart Playlists not so smart? For instance, how can I tell choose 100 random albums but take all the tracks on an album? Say I want it to choose 50 jazz albums randomly but I want full albums. I can't for the life of me figure out how to do this. I'll even take X gigs of such and such genre as long as it doesn't just choose tracks.

2. the Podcast menu item in iTunes... wtf? It's blank. I click it, the right side of the screen is empty of options. I check "settings" but none of the settings seem to address this. What gives?

3. I've occasionally had to move all of my collection to a bigger HD. Whenever I do this all of my playlists become blank which is a royal pain. Presumably this is because the selections are now pointing to an empty drive. Is there a way around this?

I'm on OS X if that matters. Anything besides iTunes that I should consider instead?

post by: dobbs at: 23:35 | 12 comments

I use the manual update, not automatic, and only bring over playlists of stuff to my ipod, never albums. I keep different stuff on my ipod than my itunes.

i think you have to bring in a podcast thing, or click on a weblink for one to show up in itunes.

I always use the option to copy the music over, so i always have it on the hard drive. and i keep backups of what i put in on another drive, along with general backup of the whole library.

posted by amberglow 22 August | 23:46

So, amberglow, your podcasts thing is blank too? The help section for it seems to imply there would be selections there (recommended podcasts).

posted by dobbs 22 August | 23:54

If you hit the Ctrl-key (windows) on the keyboard while you're checking the checkbox, it checks/unchecks all checkboxes in whatever view you're in.

posted by matildaben 22 August | 23:59

actually, my itunes is older--it doesn't show podcasts in the library window (and i've also set it not to show the store), altho i've imported them before. i think you just download one and drag it in, if i remember correctly--i've always deleted them after listening once (they're dull, usually)

posted by amberglow 23 August | 00:12

maybe it'll show it if you have radio selected? that shows recommended stations.

posted by amberglow 23 August | 00:13

I tried the podcast thing - nothing showed up in iTunes until I went to the Apple site and downloaded one, then it seemed to appear in iTunes automagically or something. If not for the fact that the couple of podcasts I tried were deathly boring (which is dangerous, because I mostly listen to my iPod while driving), I might have more info for you, but I got tired of the whole concept pretty quickly.

I also manually transfer files to the iPod, which annoys me, because I hate having to decide in advance what to listen to, but I just bit the bullet and went through checking what I wanted (mostly whole albums) and left it at that. Of course, I only had to leave off about 10% of my files, which is slightly less than you will have to leave off ;-)

posted by dg 23 August | 01:17

If your music is categorized (and most cds are pre-categorized by the label) you can create a new smart playlist by category (e.g., "jazz") and import that.

posted by cali 23 August | 02:11

This MeFi comment really opened my eyes to the possibilities. You can have smart playlists of other smart playlists.

I now feed my Party Shuffle with a playlist that checks one of: songs rated 4-5; songs rated 4-5 not listened to recently; songs rated 3-5 added recently; unrated songs added very recently; and a couple of other static playlists based around mixes etc. I've received. I used to have to switch between those regularly to hear all my music (or all that I cared to hear).

Albums, though -- iTunes doesn't handle albums well, unless you go to the trouble of building (smart?) playlists around them.

posted by stilicho 23 August | 03:08

1. And, am I dumb or are Smart Playlists not so smart? For instance, how can I tell choose 100 random albums but take all the tracks on an album? Say I want it to choose 50 jazz albums randomly but I want full albums. I can't for the life of me figure out how to do this. I'll even take X gigs of such and such genre as long as it doesn't just choose tracks.

I'm not positive about this, but I think you go to the name of the album and hold down the middle circle until you see a flash on the screen. The album is then included on your current playlist, and you can go and keep doing this until you've selected all your albums. Can anyone back me up on this? My iPod's out in my car so I can't test it out.

posted by iconomy 23 August | 08:29

Thanks all.

iconomy, you're talking about "playlists on the go" and yes, that works, but isn't exactly what I'm looking for because it only works with music that's already on the iPod.

stillicho, yeah, the smart lists seem smart at some things and really dumb at others. I can't believe there's no way to just tell iTunes to "give me 50 random jazz ALBUMS".

cali, yeah, that works but only for getting absolutely all albums tagged as jazz or a max number of songs/mbs of jazz... but not whole albums. So, it'll give me three songs from this album and two from that or whatever. I listen to albums pretty much exclusively so that doesn't do the trick for me.

Indeed, the podcast thing was connected to the iTunes store, which I had hidden. Once I unhid it, I saw the podcast page.

posted by dobbs 23 August | 14:02

ahhh (they are really dull tho, dobbs)

posted by amberglow 23 August | 20:33

if Joanna Newsom would do one or some insane person with a mesmerizing/incredibly weird voice, i might like podcasts more.

posted by amberglow 23 August | 20:34

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