# I got the Ipod Shuffle - now what do I do? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 17, 2007, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-the-ipod-shuffle-now-what-do-i-do/392600 "2007-02-17T09:41:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tarragon918](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d26b3c/32.png) [@tarragon918](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tarragon918)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-the-ipod-shuffle-now-what-do-i-do/392600/1 "2007-02-17T09:41:06Z")
Okay, I admit up front that I’m all thumbs at this sort of thing. My son or daughter will probably be the one to put songs on it for me, but what all do we need to do? We’re still on dial-up right now although will soon be transitioning to DSL; my son tried to download itunes last night but it didn’t take. Think we’ll have to wait until we get the DSL installed and online to do that download. My play list will probably be mostly classical with some classic rock and jazz thrown in (and I mostly know what I like to hear; I do have a lot of CDs that I guess we could burn from the CD to the ipod). What’s the best way to go about getting songs on the shuffle? I don’t mind spending a bit of cash to download, but to be honest I think I’d rather be able to take from my already existing cds. Any help would be -greatly- appreciated! ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-the-ipod-shuffle-now-what-do-i-do/392600/2 "2007-02-17T09:49:47Z")
You’re not going to be able to do much of anything with it until you get iTunes. Set it up to download while you’re asleep or find someone with a fast connection and a CD burner. Once you do, you can import your CDs pretty easily, and it’s likely iTunes will even be able to find their names and tracks by itself, if you do that while you’re online. ---
**Author:** ![Tomcat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Tomcat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tomcat)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-the-ipod-shuffle-now-what-do-i-do/392600/3 "2007-02-17T12:07:25Z")
I don’t think you NEED iTunes to run the Shuffle. Do you have any music in MP3 format? Just throw it on the thing and see if it plays. There might be a folder on the thing that the music goes into…so throw Song A on the main and Song B in the folder, hit play and see what happens. then put the rest of your music in the appropriate space. -Tcat ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-the-ipod-shuffle-now-what-do-i-do/392600/4 "2007-02-17T13:57:31Z")
[QUOTE=Tomcat] I don’t think you NEED iTunes to run the Shuffle. Do you have any music in MP3 format? Just throw it on the thing and see if it plays. There might be a folder on the thing that the music goes into…so throw Song A on the main and Song B in the folder, hit play and see what happens. then put the rest of your music in the appropriate space. -Tcat [/QUOTE] iTunes is the only way i’ve found to put anything on the iPod. What it will do is look for every mp3 file on your computer and let you add them to your iPod. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-the-ipod-shuffle-now-what-do-i-do/392600/5 "2007-02-17T14:46:31Z")
I bought my Wife an iPod Nano for Christmas. I love the interface on the unit itself, but using iTunes is confusing. I guess it works for Mac people, but for me, it’s a head scratcher. I don’t think its intuitive AT ALL. I also bought a [Bose SoundDock.](http://www.bose.com/controller?event=DTC_LINKS_TARGET_EVENT&DTCLinkID=7475&src=SOUNDDOCK) A little expensive but nice sound. And it charges the iPod. ---
**Author:** ![Achren](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/898d66/32.png) [@Achren](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achren)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-the-ipod-shuffle-now-what-do-i-do/392600/6 "2007-02-17T14:58:01Z")
If you use Winamp, there are some plugins that work with the shuffle - I find the one I use to be very easy - the only thing I needed iTunes for was to tell the shuffle it was a disc drive as well - but maybe they’ve added that to the plugin. [some good general info](http://stevenharman.net/blog/archive/2005/04/30/iPod_Shuffle_Lessons_Learned.aspx) [plugin link](http://sourceforge.net/projects/mlipod/) and from what I can remember, at the time I set mine up, Winamp 5.24 (full) worked the best with the ml\_pod plugin using a shuffle. You can get that [here, at OldVersion](http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=winamp). ---
**Author:** ![Achren](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/898d66/32.png) [@Achren](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achren)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-the-ipod-shuffle-now-what-do-i-do/392600/7 "2007-02-17T15:04:45Z")
(because I couldn’t get my edit message done in time) And just in case you were also wondering about mp3s… I use [EAC](http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/), but I think it’s a bit more complex then you need/want. I’ve used [Audiograbber](http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/) in the past and it works well and is pretty easy to set up/use. (Although if you want to play with EAC, [this](http://users.pandora.be/satcp/eac-qs-en.htm) is a great tutorial for setting up the program.) ---
**Author:** ![tarragon918](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d26b3c/32.png) [@tarragon918](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tarragon918)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-the-ipod-shuffle-now-what-do-i-do/392600/8 "2007-02-17T17:10:59Z")
Thanks so much for all the help! It’s heartening to see that I’m not the only one who feels that the interface of some of these programs is bad (iow, someone didn’t beat me with the stupid stick …). Chocolate (or your own treat of choice) all around. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![threemae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f9b8f/32.png) [@threemae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/threemae)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-the-ipod-shuffle-now-what-do-i-do/392600/9 "2007-02-17T21:42:05Z")
If you don’t want to use iTunes (understandable), just put MP3’s onto the iPod like a flashdrive and then run this little guy from the root directory of the shuffle: [http://shuffle-db.sourceforge.net/](http://shuffle-db.sourceforge.net/) You do need to use (someone’s) iTunes to initialize the shuffle and tell it to act like a flash-drive like other posters have mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![Stillwell\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@Stillwell\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stillwell_Angel)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2007, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-got-the-ipod-shuffle-now-what-do-i-do/392600/10 "2007-02-18T15:25:22Z")
I just gave my son a Shuffle for his birthday yesterday. I tried in vain to put songs on without downloading ITunes but couldn’t find a way. So I caved and now have ITunes on my pc. Wish I had seen some of the suggestions above before I did. My cheap little Sandisk Mp3 was a breeze to figure out and didn’t need any special downloads, I just dumped everything from my windows media player in it and I was done.