I use iTunes for one reason and one reason only: the iTunes store accepts gift cards I can buy at Target so I don’t have to give them my credit card number. If Napster did that*, I doubt I would use iTunes at all. That being said, you may recognize that I have a small chip on my shoulder about this application, which I acknowledge. I find it tedious to use and I find that the iTunes store lies with their samples.
Question 1. When I create a playlist for burning a CD, how can I arrange the tracks other than sorting by one of the defined fields? I cannot figure out for the life of me how to put tracks in any order I want to, and I feel like I’m missing something obvious.
Question 2. What the hell are the check boxes for? At first I thought that was how iTunes selected multiple tracks for copying, etc., but no, that’s just highlighting like in a regular Windows Explorer list. Then I thought, well, that’s how you tell it which songs to play, but then I thought, no, that’s what playlists are for. Then I realized that I was too confused to figure it out on my own.
They may well do that by now. I started downloading music this way a year and a half ago and bothered to look and see if Napster’s payment methods have changed since then. All I know is, I don’t see Napster gift cards at the places I see iTunes gift cards.
Create a playlist with some songs in it, then at the top choose to sorrt them by the song number, which is the leftmost column. Then you can drag-and-drop songs into place.
Check boxes tell iTunes which songs to play or not play. They are universal, so if you uncheck a song in playlist A, it will b unchecked in playlist B and in the library. It’s useful (I suppose) for people who like to listen to their entire library on shuffle but don’t like all of the tracks they own.
Sorry, I thought I had tried drag-and-drop, and I just double-checked to be sure, and yes, I have tried that. Even following Mayo Speaks!'s more detailed instructions, it doesn’t work.
Both of the provided explanations work for me. Thanks.
Strange. You’ve definitely got them sorted by the left-most column? If sorted by another, it gives the impression of letting you drag them, but they’ll remain unchanged.
It’s an option, somewhere in the settings for the iPod.
Yep. The little arrow is in the leftmost column with the track numbers. Funny thing is, when I click on that to change it from ascending to descending, it will resort the tracks, but then it reassigns the numbers so they are always ascending. Now I have something else to not like about iTunes.
But no, it still won’t let me drag and drop. It does something weird that makes it look like it’s going to, though. Say I grab track number 15 and try to drag it to a new location. Nothing happens when I let go. But now say I grab track 3 and try to drag it: a little vertical bar appears next to track 15 as if to say “did you want to put that here?” Now if I go try to drag track 25, the little vertical bar appears next to track 3. This f&cking thing is taunting me now.
Beats me what the problem is. I just opened iTunes and created a new playlist with songs from three different artists.
Drag and drop changed the order every time.
Do you have the latest version of iTunes? (7.4+)
I’ve never experienced this, and find it fascinating.
For reference, when you drag and drop a song into a new location, it should look like this screenshot. In this screenshot, I have drug “Badlands” into the 7th position in the playlist and am about to release it. Specifically, I can tell by the horizontal black line that iTunes is going to let me drop the song there. If I didn’t have a black horizontal bar, I’d know that iTunes wouldn’t let me drop it there.
Possible problems:
[ol]
[li]You may be in shuffle mode.[/li][li]You may not actually be in a playlist. If you’re in the library, you can’t rearrange tracks.[/li][li]Hi Opal![/li][li]There may be a bug in your version of iTunes. I’d update to the latest version, which I believe is 7.3.2.6.[/li][/ol]
Just for fun, I just went into “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and unchecked the box next to that annoying Harrison tune “Within You Without You” that I always skip over.
Now when I play that album, it neatly skips over the unwanted song.
