being the in00b that I am, I am now sure if this is an easy fix.

Say I have a 'VA' (Various Artist) dir on my hard drive and bring it into itunes, itunes automagically appends the tracks to 'artist' and the respective 'ablum'

I want to be abble to whack in hottest 100 2006 and have it hold that dir, so when I upload ot my ipod its all in ONE folder and voila I have the hottest 100 to listen to.

This has pissed me off for a while, but I've never bothered to see if there as a fix for this. I am not getting more and more VA albums and it's starting to s*** me to tears, I like walking to work and hearing a few different artists rather then having to manually click into them, yes I am aware of the 'shuffle' functionality, but I don't want to shuffle my entire ipod, maybe half a dozen artists.... again people will probablly say use playlists etc etc, but that's alot of work - there is already the variety in the hottest 100 album!!

Thanks

Why are you against playlists and why are they a lot of work?

Playlists are a lot of work when you shouldn't need to do them in the first place.

iTunes has a few quirks that s***ted me off, so I canned it.

I'd be pissed if I had an iPod and had to use that. Speaking of.... can iPod's be used with other programs or simply drag and drop in windows explorer?

Select the tracks you want, then go File -> New Playlist From Selection. Done.

It may even work out the name for the playlist based on the selection too.

Basically you need to do at least one and maybe 2 things

1. Enable compilation support on your Ipod and in iTunes and when you are adding music make sure it is tagged as a compilation (JJJ top 100 for example)

2. Don't let Itunes organise your music, it's a setting in there and i can't believe anyone does, sif itunes knows better than me.

I don't have itunes orgainise my music, no fear in that!!

I'll look for compilation support, thanks denny

I'll also try your method cerb :)

Alternatively are there drag and drop apps for ipods, I had a creative and samsung mp3 players before the ipod and I like the windows explorer style of adding music :/

Ahh well, so long as I can get compilations on there :)

Err... stupid?!#?!?#! All you have to do is search for music by album on your ipod.

you can also just tag those files as part of a compilation in itunes/tag rename

err that's only if the id3 tags have that in them stick!

both within itunes and my ipod my jjj hottest 100 doesn't appear as it's own album *tears*

I am at work at the moment, so can't try the playlist options or compilation stuff

just add some id3 tags to the mp3's

You're welcome.

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ <--- awesome application that will help you add id3 tags easily. It can do it based on filename (eg, if you have a 'Hottest 100 - Wolfmother - Mind's Eye.mp3' you can get it to automatically generate an id3 tag by splitting it up).

It's very flexible and it's freeware. Unfortunately not open source, but you can't have everything!

Basically it let me make my ipod actually useful for browse by album; the vast majority of my albums I ripped yeaaaaaaars before I had an ipod and they didn't have id3 tags. So I sat down for a couple hours one day and went through it all with mp3tag and VOILA! Useful ipod.

Open iTunes, search out your files. Select them all, right-click "view info". Hooray, you're now editing multiple ID3 tags. Tick "Part of a compilation" and name the album "Hottest 100, whatever" and then it appears under iPod -> Music -> Compilations -> Hottest 100, whater

I second what trog said .... I use that along with Picard from http://musicbrainz.org to keep things nice and tidy. (I run everything through Picard first to rename and retag using a single stardised database, then use mp3tag to tidy up the stuff picard and music brainz couldn't find (usually classical stuff or ROIOs), and to remove the iTuneCompilation tag off some stuff picard calls a compilation that i don't agree with (ie. if a guest artist does 1 track on an album it flags the album as a compilation).

Also don't let iTunes manage your music folders.

Also only use ID3v2.3 for your tags (2.4 has multiple implementations ie. its a non standard standard).

Also use Lame and EAC to rip your music from your CDs, iTunes is nice and stuff, but Lame and EAC is still the shiznizzle ie. http://www.ubernet.org/?p=UberGuide .

Thats my 2c's worth.

The only thing I haven't done yet is standardize my Genre tags.

Writing an app atm that uses .net to talk to iTunes SDK, trying to build a database of Artist -> Genre or Artist & Release -> Genre ... Yes its not fool proof but there is simply toooooo (extra o's for effect) many genre tags in use in the FreeDB to be of any use (eg. Dark Side of the moon has about 15 different genre tags in FreeDB).

Cos i'd love to be able to say play "Heavy Rock" and have it rip off a bunch of AC/DC, Gunners etc or "Jazz" and have it fire up some Thelonius Monk at me. But atm they migth be blank (if they are very old), a number (if I ripped them back when ID3v1 was around) or some random tag from freedb if its more recent.

Actually ID3's concept of Genres is broken, it really needs to be a cascading genre tag, ie. Rock Should get soft rock, hard rock, Classical Rock, pop rock, rock n roll etc etc etc.

last edited by Obes at 11:43:39 27/Oct/06

don't most id3 re-tegger progs allow any info to be inserted into the genre field? foobar2000 masstagger does, so i put 'horra goth chop' in the genre field for all the mp3's i rip... coz i dont use the genre field for sorting :P

i sort all my music files the same way i sort all my user files... in explorer with directory structures :P player sorting is just for temporary playlists for me.

last edited by demon at 11:53:51 27/Oct/06

do people actually use the genre tag in their music?

seriously - i can't remember ever having browsed my music by genre

haha yeh genre field seems somewhat useless, I might label all my music as ASSKICKING AWESOME ROCKNROLL just for laughs

People don't use it becuase its broken... QED!

I second what trog said

I agree with obes

I second what trog said

I agree with obes

i agree with obes but disagree with trog

I actually laugh that people need to do so much just to get an app to do what it should due


maybe I am looking at it from the wrong point of view.... but f***en writing your own app to make sure it tags mp3s correctly seems a little over the top?


/hungover heardy

Heardy you are a noob ... we'd explain the problem to you but you simply wouldn't get it.

werd

anywho, back at work, got home waaaaaaay to late to attempt to do anything ipody, so will look at it tonight...

the irish sure can drink :D

It's threads like these that make me glad I didn't give in and buy an ipod. I almost did because I want to be able to listen to music at work so I need something small enough to fit in my shirt pocket (ipod nano etc).