My tunes saga

[Dee Ashley]

Well since only 866 of my 1988 songs (not year) were actually somewhere maybe in Itunes from my ipod and then it wasn't complete albums that could be transfered to the Ipad. And after eliminating duplicates and triplicates, the field was narrowed to about 16 albums out of my collection of about 500 albums, I pulled the plug and wiped my computers (laptop and desktop) completely clean of all music. Seems despite the fact that all music on my ipod was from purchased cds copy protection or Apple prohibits them from being easily moved without re-ripping the cd or the tunes.

So here's my question: on some of the albums there are multiple artists and Itunes is separating as though they are different artists, different albums and there doesn't appear to be a way to merge this back to one album the way it is in reality. Also, how do I get to put each album in my defined playlists. It does not let me drag and drop into the play list categories.

Thank you so much. Got some really nice headphones--I'm ready to report on using the ipad as as an ipod.

 

[twerppoet]

I'm not going to try and address the first part of the post. There are a variety of ways to set up iTunes, and some of them can present difficulties when you try to move songs. Besides, you said you erased them all, so it's past helping, if it could have been helped.

For the rest:

Before you actually import the CDs, go into iTunes preferences, the General tab, and make sure you've checked 'Automatically import track names from the internet'. This will at least attempt to keep CD tracks and albums straight.

If you've already imported CDs and they aren't looking good, select all the songs on the CD, and check out the Advanced menu. You can import tracks and Album work here.

And if all else fails:

If you right click on a song in iTunes, you can choose Get Info and edit the album, artist and other info. If you select multiple songs you can edit some of this information on all of them at the same time. When you enter some info, a checkmark appears next to that text field letting you chose whether it will be changed on all selected songs.

So, if you were to sort your songs by artist, select all the songs in an album, go to Get Info and change the Album Name, it should now recognize them as being the same album.

You can't really add albums as such to play lists. You need to drag each song or songs.

The exception to this is Smart Playlists. If you go to the Files menu you can choose New Smart Playlist. You can create the playlist by selecting any characteristic, including Album or Artist. If you click on the plus button you can add additional rules. By changing the Match type you can make the playlist more selective (Artist contains Fleetwood {Match = and} Genre contains Blues), or more inclusive (Genre contains blues {Match = any} Genre contains Jazz).

Experiment with it. You can create some playlists easily, and the best part is that they update automaticaly when you add new music to iTunes.

 

[Dee Ashley]

Thank you for your answering. Should the ipad be connected when I am ripping the cds? Itunes isn't recognizing the ipad as a device when I rip the album and then connect the ipad. So do I need to start again from scratch??

 

[twerppoet]

Thank you for your answering. Should the ipad be connected when I am ripping the cds? Itunes isn't recognizing the ipad as a device when I rip the album and then connect the ipad. So do I need to start again from scratch??

It should not matter one way or the other when ripping CDs.

You need to solve the iPad not showing up in iTunes first though. That should happen wheteher there is any music in the library or not.

Does it fail both on the laptop and the upstairs computer? You should only use one computer to sync with, and if it works on one but not the other that might make the choise for you, both for syncing and what machine to rip the CDs with.

 

[ipfuser55]

If you have "Orphaned" tracks as I did, it's because in many compilations the songs are not alway's written by the performing artist on the CD. When Itunes interrogates Gracenote (The database it uses to get album art and track information) It will recognise this and place the track on it's own. You will get this again when you rip the cd's.

Only work around I know of is to go to File, info and then fill in the album name (the one by which you want it known) then tick the box that say's "Part of a compilation" It's a hassle, but you only need do it once, and snce you are starting from scratch you can keep tabs on it as you go. Hope this helps, although you have the resident expert on all things Itunes helping you out here too!

 

[Dee Ashley]

Well I did turn off my ipad when I charged it last night and when I connected into the upstairs computer this morning, it synced with Itunes and all my music transferred over. So I will rip away today.

Thank you all and I printed off the suggestions on clearing up the loose tunes.

 

[twerppoet]

Hurray!

Just think of it as an adventure. You're going to get to re-explore your music collection and discover old favorites that were hidden in the far corners of iTunes.

 

[Dee Ashley]

Yep and now I am wishing I had gotten the Ipad2 w/64G. Well maybe next year when 3 comes out......hmmmmm but only if I don't have to start from scratch on my tunes again.

Did I tell you I found a $50 gift card from a friend in Germany and was able to get it activated. And so far I only have found 3 empty jewel cases, and hubby says "not me". Do you all have one of those at your homes???

 

[twerppoet]

Empty jewel cases? Lots, and sometimes they are missing some really good movies (I occasionally re-case my movies to save space).

The only 'Not Me' in my house is me, or maybe the dog, but it's kind of hard to blame her for missing CDs.