Playback of non synced music in itunes

F

fpayne

Registered
Mac OSX 10.6.2
iTunes 9.0.3
MacBook Pro and iMac i7

I have a bizarre situation when I try to play back entire an entire music album from iTunes. The music is on an external drive with the library on the computer.

There is more music on the disc than will fit on my iPod so not all music is checked for syncing. When I select the first track from an album that has been checked, it will play the entire album and even go on to the next one.

If the track is not checked, it will play that track only and nothing I seem to do will play the tracks in succession.

Can anyone please tell me if this is normal behaviour or if it is a bug or what. And if there is anything I can do to change it so that unchecked files will play one after the other.

Thanks

PS. I am now going to update my signature details :-)
 
That's normal behavior. The checkboxes are not exclusively for the purpose of iPod syncing. They've been there since before the iPod was born and are for general music activation. You can force an unchecked song to play but songs won't play in succession unless they're checked.
 
Hi,

Thanks for the quick reply.

I had noticed it before but never given it much thought. It is only as the music collection has become larger I have given it more thought.

It is a real pain. Maybe it is time to start looking for a replacement for iTunes for playing back music and just leave that to sync the iPod and iPhone.

Regards

Frank
 
Alternatively, you could put the music you want to sync in a playlist and update that playlist as often as you like with the content you want. Tell your iPod to sync only selected playlists.
 
Thanks.

I had considered that one, but it is a pain having to create a new playlist every time I want to listen to an album and then having to delete it again afterwards. Otherwise I would end up with literally hundreds of palylists.

I still prefer to listen to a whole album rather than selected tracks (being the age I am) and I just want iTunes to play the tracks sequentially.

I downloaded Songbird, which while doing what I want in this instance is sadly lacking in other areas.

Thanks again for your help

Kind reagards

Frank
 
What I didn't clarify, Frank, was that you would create one playlist for all the music you want to sync and then when you want to listen to different music, remove the music you don't want from that playlist and add the new music to it. You don't need more than one playlist. This wouldn't be appropriate if you like to listen to music by playlist but it sounds like your album appreciation is compatible with this behavior.

You can show the Column Browser (for Artists) next to a playlist (View menu) to make album selection easier when you're removing music.
 
Hi,

Sorry about the delay in replying. I need to get my head round this one. Please bear with me and let me make sure I understand this. Sorry for being a bit slow.
1. I copy the whole music collection to the new playlist and then remove all the unchecked items.
2. It is this playlist and only this playlist that will then sync with the ipod.
3. I can then add and remove albums from this playlist as I wish.
4. I can then check all the music in the library and I will be able to play all tracks in an album sequentially.

Bearing in mind I have about 2.5GB of music and a 160GB iPod I do not want to start doing anything where I may lose data. It is all backed up but it would be very time consuming to repair the damage.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards

Frank
 
Now I'm confused. You said you had more music than fits on your iPod. Got your numbers right? What else are you using all the iPod space for?

That said, you've got the steps correct. Your iPod will still keep track of the music on it by all its metadata, including artist, album, and genre, so browsing for music to play will function the same and choosing not to shuffle will work the same as well.
 
Doh!

250GB of music. Sorry about that. Too early in the morning for me :-)

Thanks very much. I will give that a try later.

Kind reagards

Frank
 
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