I-Pod frustrations...

[Karshe]

Alright, so we're five years behind the times and my wife and I finally got I-Pods over the weekend. I'm sure whatever I'm missing is completely stupid, and I'm ready to be shamed. That being said, I couldn't find an appropriate thread to bump, so here's my question.

I-Tunes (or myself) is being retarded about importing all of our CD's. Obviously I want every disc to be an "Album," but that is not how it is importing, and I haven't found a way to create my own albums which seems like it should be something extremely easy and something I'm overlooking.

For example, the last CD I just imported, The Lonely Island, imported to nine different albums. Album one is "The Lonely Island" which has 11 songs, Album two is "The Lonely Island feat. Chris Parnell," Album three is "The Lonely Island feat. E-40," etc. The last CD I imported was a mixed CD I made and it imported into 24 different albums, each with one song in them.

The only way I've been able to consolidate all songs is into a Playlist, but I want them in an Album. I've only seen options to Create Playlist, not Album. I can't drag and drop albums. What the fuck am I missing?

[Fistandantilus]

iTunes sucks


Someone had to do it :/

To be honest though, I don't know I use Winamp as a music player/iPod sync program and albums all seem to work perfectly.

[Karshe]

Yeah, sigh... maybe that's more helpful advice than anything.

[Teorem]

You should be able to select multiple items and edit their properties--including the files' album name--by right-clicking and choosing "Get Info." Key information about the tracks is located on the Info tab, all of which are in editable fields.

If you have just installed iTunes 9 on a PC, it is easier to do this by changing the view setup:

View as list: View > as List
Turn on the Column Browser: View > Show Column Browser
Move the Column Browser to the top: View > Column Browser > On Top

If you have "All" selected in the Genre/Artists/Albums columns (which should be the visible columns by default), you can see all of the files in your Library, as long as you have selected "Music" from the Library pane on the left sidebar.

Once you edit the album name in the Get Info window, the album name(s) will be created/deleted in the Album list appropriately. The underlying file structure will be another issue, but you can resolve that later by manually changing directory names and reimporting the files into your Library once you have more familiarity with the program.

iTunes is configured by default to search for track names from online sources, which is the cause of your multiple albums. If you intend to import more CDs, you may want to turn this off in the General preferences: Edit > Preferences... > General > Automatically retrieve CD track names from Internet.

[Karshe]

Thanks Teo, very helpful.

It still seems odd to me, though, that a CD won't just default into being its own album. I've got 20-30 mixed CD's and while the way you've described it works, I'm going to have to put the Album name in for every single one of these tracks... =\

[Rockstaru]

When you insert the CD, right click on the CD in the left pane and rename the album, and it'll apply that name to everything on the album. It gets the ID3 tag information from the Gracenote CDDB, so sometimes there are inconsistencies.

[MaachaQ]

You can also select all the tracks after you imported them and right click, choose "Get Info" and then the "Options" tab. Change "Group as compilation" to Yes and You won't have to change any other file details, they will now group together as a single album.

It still seems odd to me, though, that a CD won't just default into being its own album. I've got 20-30 mixed CD's and while the way you've described it works, I'm going to have to put the Album name in for every single one of these tracks... =\

iTunes likes to separate your library into artist first, then album. So if there are multiple artists on a CD, the tracks are sorted into different folders. If you tell it to group them as a compilation, they are all stored in the same folder in your library instead of being separated by which artist sings/performs it.

[The Stig]

You can also select all the tracks after you imported them and right click, choose "Get Info" and then the "Options" tab. Change "Group as compilation" to Yes and You won't have to change any other file details, they will now group together as a single album.

As MacchaaQ said, do this. This is the ONLY thing you have to learn. Ever since I learnt this, I don't mind iTunes so much.