Ipod Song Order

T

tunesmith

Registered
I noticed a question from November 2003 which seemed to seek the same information - I hope there was a good answer...

I am able to customize the song order of any iTunes folder I have created, but not that of the library itself. I update my iPod using only one folder I've created, thus allowing me to avoid having all of the songs available imported to the iPod. When I've created a customized order for a particular album, the song order that ends up on the iPod is a match to the library order, not that of the folder I've supposedly used to update it. How can I get the iPod song order to follow that of the iTunes folder and not that of the library??

I'm not technically advanced where computers are concerned, but I have access to a guy who's extremely competent with Macs. He has no idea how to deal with this problem.

Thank you for your help.
 
It sounds like you may be using folders, iTunes and your iPod together counter-intuitively.

The "Library" in iTunes should always contain every single song you have. It's the complete library of songs, and is generally not used for navigating songs if you have a lot of songs. It's always ordered the way it's ordered -- you can sort by Name, Time, Artist, Album, etc., but you cannot drag and drop songs to a different order.

The same with the iPod -- under the "Music" menu, all options other than "Playlists" are always sorted in alphabetical order. Only "Playlists" appear in the order you arranged them.

When you say "Folder," do you mean "Playlist" in iTunes? Playlists can be reordered manually or sorted by different criteria. To sort, just click the bar labeled "Name," or "Artist," or "Album" or whatever at the top of the list -- click again for reverse-sort. To manually order songs, instead click the blank space above the song number and then you can rearrange the order of songs.

The iPod will always sync to the order of the Playlist that shows in iTunes -- if you sort by name, the songs will appear by name on the iPod. Sort manually, and they'll appear in your order.
 
You appear to have a similar problem as me regarding song order on an iPod.
Mac OS X 10.4.2/iTunes 4.9/iPod s/w 1.2 on a iPod 60gb.
I am transferring several albums from iTunes and am finding that the song order is reversed in the iPods Albums. Additionally, I have transferred two albums and 5 out of 6 songs are in correct order in the named album, with the 6th song in an album on its own.
One of the playlists was Jackie McLeans "Bluesnik" and because the first track was also named Bluesnik, either iTunes or iPod seemed to think it was a separate album!

It may be that Diablo has hit upon the answer that we should raise Playlists on iTunes and transfer the playlists - rather than just copy the album across?
Being someone who wants to transfer a whole collection of Jazz albums to my iPod, it may make for frustrating searching when they are all across.
However, it still doesn't answer my problems regarding reverse order, or does it?

Regards
peterde
 
It may also be that your ID3 tags are incorrect -- make sure that all the tracks from an individual album all have the same track count, and that the tracks themselves are numbered correctly in the ID3 tags. Also, "Bluesnik" and "Bluesnik " (note the space) are two, completely different things to the computer -- if you happen to mistype one letter or miscapitalize one character or add even one extra space, then "BlueSnik " might as well be a U2 album for all the iPod cares.

Be very careful and meticulous when editing the ID3 tags -- when I first got my iPod, I was amazed at how many of my artists appeared to be the same in iTunes, but when I actually edited the tags, they had extra spaces and capitalization errors everywhere, making "Pink Floyd" appear multiple times in the "Artist" category on my iPod (there was "Pink Floyd " and " Pink Floyd" and "pink floyd" and so on... all completely different artists to the computer).

Short answer: check your tags and make sure they're exactly, 100% identical for the Artist and Album, and correctly fill in the "Track __ of __" correctly. That way, the songs should show up in album order on the iPod when navigating via the "Album" or "Artist" menus.
 
Diablo
Thanks for the steer - can see what you mean - will check out all the ID tags and try again.
Cheers from UK
peterde
 
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