[QUOTE=TimeWinder]
I don’t know if you can do it without iTunes (I suspect you can), but in the Advanced preferences of iTunes is a preference labeled “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library.” Uncheck it, then import your music. It may or may not have any idea who the artist/album is, depending on your ripper’s metadata, but the full name as you’ve given it will appear on the iPod (since they’re long, they’ll scroll onscreen when the song is playing).
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Ok, thanks, I’ll check it out.
[QUOTE=TimeWinder]
You’ve also made the cannonical sin of descriptive filenames, and put the most variable part at the end. This may make scrolling through lists harder, since all you’ll see is a bunch of “JeffBuckley_Grace…” titles; finding the actual song you want will be a matter of trial and error.
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Ah, but thanks to you and thelurkinghorror’s “iTunes doesn’t care what format the filenames are in, it really looks at your ID3 tags” (thanks thelurkinghorror) I now know that all I have to do is change the ID3 tags (if necessary), and not the actual filename. That’s important to know.
It’s not a cannonical sin, what’s a sin is when filenames don’t have the artist’s name on it. To me, anyway.
[QUOTE=TimeWinder]
You’re probably already seeing the problem with your naming scheme:
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There’s no problem with my naming scheme, but if iTunes uses the ID3 info, and not the filename, then that’s ok.
[QUOTE=TimeWinder]
since the artist and album name is already in two other places (the folder structure and the metadata), and every program you’d use to access them has access to at least one and probably both of them, why repeat yourself? That’s what metadata is FOR, and once you go down this path, what else will you decide needs to be in there? Date of release? Rating? Bit rate?
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The important information is right there on the file itself: Name of artist, name of song and name of album. The track number isn’t that important, but it’s something I sometimes like to know at a glance. I can get that other info by hovering or Googling.
I use, and only use, Winamp to play my music, and it uses the ID3 information as well, so the filename doesn’t affect how it shows up in the playlist.
[QUOTE=TimeWinder]
It’s a filename, not a database. This way lies madness; plus, you’re deliberately making things harder on yourself by adding weird constraints that apply pretty much just to you – you can expect programs to honor those constraints, but you can’t reasonably expect it.
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It doesn’t just apply just to me, not if I’ve gotten the song from someone else, or I’m giving a song to someone else. I’m a big believer in checking out music before I buy it. I often go to artists’ web sites and take advantage of their “download these samples for free” type offers. Plus I used to use Indy quite a bit (a legal song-sampling program containing music that, with artists’ approval, downloads songs to your computer) and so have accumulated thousands of one-off songs which I put into a folder called “Misc Downloads.”
What’s madness is having a file folder full of songs from years’ worth of downloads with filenames like this (actual samples from the folder):
03 Tsintsqaro.wma
BeQuiet.mp3
Astronuts.mp3
BabyLulu.mp3
mc2005_09_16.mp3
brave_elephant.mp3
drizella.mp3
MarkieDiary.mp3
OhRegret.mp3 (ok, I now know that’s Mary Lorson and Saint Low)
trak01.wav
Except for Mary Lorson I haven’t the faintest freaking idea who those artists are, and because they didn’t care enough to make sure I remembered, I don’t care who they are. Add hundreds more to that list. Artists who take things directly from their iTunes ripping folder and offer them for download are very fucking egotistical to think that the person downloading will automatically either 1) buy their album immediately and then get to know that song very well or 2) rename the file themselves so they’ll know 2 weeks, 6 months, 3 years down the road who the hell sang a song called “Astronuts.” Sure, I could try to Google and be a song detective, but why should I? I don’t want to do that. I have better things to do and other music (that I know who it’s by) to listen to.
As soon as I see a download like that, unless I really REALLY REALLY like the artist, I just throw them into my Misc folder. The ones I really REALLY REALLY like I’ll take the time to re-name the stupid file, but I begrudge every second I have to spend doing so.
I have an entire web site full of authorized songs by Happy Rhodes for download. Once a person downloads one of those songs, they will never, ever get lost on that person’s computer. 10 years from now they could look at the filename and see that the song’s by Happy Rhodes.
Everything you say is perfectly valid for someone who rips their own, well-known to them, music to listen to themselves. But any file that in any way, shape or form that’s going to be given to anyone else, by any means, ought to have the Artist’s name on the file.
Anyway, I do thank you both for your tips. They were very helpful. I can load the songs I want to put on my iPod into Winamp first, to see at a glance how the ID3 fillename looks and change any if I need to.