Topic: Adding songs to iPods, wherever there's a PC

[Cobra951]

As anyone with an iPod sadly knows, adding music to an iPod is a royal bitch unless the PC it normally syncs to is handy.  For many, I imagine it's flatly impossible, because they don't understand what's happening behind the scenes.  Apple perversely requires that the entire contents of the iPod be present on the computer at one time, or you're SOL.  While trying to tackle adding Christmas music to Sandy's iPod with only the wrong laptop available, I discovered these steps, which I want to capture while still fresh in my mind:

(1) Enable hard-drive functionality on iPod via iTunes, if needed.  Dump the iPod_Control\Music folder from the iPod to somewhere on the PC.

(2) Download MP3tag, a free program.  Launch it and navigate to the created folder.  Let it find and organize all the music.  Select everything, then change the genre and album artist from "<Keep>" to something like "My iPod".  Write the changes to the tracks.

(3) Add the edited folder to iTunes.  The album-artist change will not affect what you see on the iPod, but it will keep the music separate from its original incarnation, should it already be present in the iTunes library.

(4) Create a new playlist.  "My iPod" works as a name.  Select grid view in iTunes and click on the Genres tab.  Right-click on the new genre you created in MP3tag (such as "My iPod") and add it to the new playlist.

(5) And finally, add whatever new music you want on the iPod to this playlist, or to a separate playlist.  Sync the iPod to selected playlists.  Check the new playlist (plus any others wanted).

Viola!

[scottws]

Winamp has an iPod plugin.  Does this not work?

[Cobra951]

Don't know.  Never tried it.  Can it add stuff without needing to resync everything?  If so, it might be just the thing.  This is going off the reservation, though.  Don't know about potential ill effects, compatibility down the road, etc.

[scottws]

I don't know about going off the reservation.  I mean, sure, Apple could change something that breaks compatibility.  But the plugin has been around at least a couple of years now.

I don't know what would change.  My iPod Nano 2nd generation hasn't had a firmware update in years.

[Cobra951]

Yeah, I guess if you use Winamp to sync, it might be a lot more flexible.  (I can't imagine it could be any less flexible than iTunes.)  And you're right; compatibility is not likely to break all of a sudden.  I do think from an iTunes perspective now, though, sad as that may be.  Using Winamp for an iPod is something I'd have to learn from scratch.  Winamp 2 has a shitty library function too.  I've never even seen the newer versions.

[W7RE]

When I tried using Winamp for my iPod it I found that whatever I added to the iPod first was what appeared first on it. (I have a shuffle, so there's no interface or playlists. You just play straight through, or shuffle.)

[gpw11]

Holy shit, that is an unbelievable amount of work.

[Cobra951]

Up front, yeah.  Once done, you can mix and match at will, which was the goal.  After Christmas, unchecking the Christmas playlist makes the seasonal stuff go away.  As cumbersome as it seems, it went quickly once the lightbulb went on in my head.  And believe me, it's much, much quicker than doing it all manually (by cherrypicking music from the library and the iPod itself).  I've done that too.  Ugh!

I don't know.  I realize that it may be easier with a plugin for something like Winamp, where the philosophy is not overbearingly restrictive (as it is with Apple).  But the practical fact is that everything is already organized under iTunes, and going off the reservation, as I called it, brings in the unknown *and* a good bit of work too, reinventing the wheel (i.e., piling up the music to be sent to the device).  As the man said, you pays your money, and you takes your choice.

[ren]

I don't understand this. I've had plenty of friends hook their iPods up to my computer and drag music from my iTunes onto their iPods. They just have their iPods set to manually manage music and then use something like Sharepod to export from the ipod back into Windows.

[Cobra951]

I'm all ears.  Enlighten me.

[ren]

When you're at the iPod page in iTunes there should be a checkbox that lets you manually manage your music. Check that box. After that the iPod will only sync when you tell it to instead of automatically. At this point you should be able to plug your iPod into any computer with iTunes and just drag music to the iPod. Then if you want to take music from the iPod to another computer, use SharePod.

Apparently Apple has a guide on how to do this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1202

They leave out the SharePod step and instead say to use your laptop as an external hard drive but other than that it's the exact same.

[Cobra951]

That's all well and good, but it doesn't solve the problem.  I know how to sync music manually from the PC to the iPod.  But regardless of what I choose to send to the device, the first thing iTunes does is erase everything already on the iPod.  Then it copies over the new content.  It even warns you that your iPod is synched to the library on another computer, and that synching it with this one will replace what's on it.

The goal is to keep everything already on the iPod, even if it's nowhere to be found on the PC, plus get more music from the PC into the iPod.  The only way to do that with iTunes is to copy the music from the iPod to the PC, add it to the iTunes library, select it all somehow for synching back to the iPod, then add more content wanted on the iPod.

I don't know what all Sharepod does.  I can copy music from the iPod to the PC easily enough.  I like to use MP3tag to rename the files to sane names automagically.  (iTunes renames all the music files on the iPod to cryptic 4-character names, and places them into a puzzling folder structure, also cryptically named.)  If Sharepod does all this, plus get the files back into proper directories, properly named, I'm all for it.  I'll check it out.

[ren]

The erases everything on the iPod part is what confuses me. I know for a fact these people are syncing with multiple computers and not having issues. I guess they're copying the music from the iPod to the computer or just letting it delete.

I haven't used SharePod in several years but if it still does what it did back then, it'll copy music from the iPod to the computer letting you choose the directories, the naming schemes and the ID3 info.

[Cobra951]

Sounds like a great time saver.  I'll look into it when I get the chance.  Thanks.

I should add that if you're copying music from the iPod to the PC only so that it can be sent back to the iPod, then renaming the music and reorganizing it into a sane folder structure doesn't matter.  iTunes will figure it out once you add the master folder with all the copied iPod music to it.