# Just got an iPod and need help **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 3, 2007, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377 "2007-10-03T13:48:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dog80](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@Dog80](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dog80)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/1 "2007-10-03T13:48:01Z")
I bought a 8GB Nano yesterday and right now I feel like I threw 220 euros out of the window ☹ The problem is that although my mp3 collection is neatly organised into folders (band name\album name\song name), iTunes uses the ID3 tags to organise its internal library. Not all of my mp3s have tags so now the iTunes library is a mess. And the only way to move songs from the computer to the ipod is through iTunes :mad: So, my options so far are: 1. Return the iPod and buy an MP3 player that works by simply dragging-and-dropping the files (like all my previous MP3 players) 2. Find a way to fix the tags on 6000 songs :smack: What the heck do I do now? ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/2 "2007-10-03T13:51:18Z")
[QUOTE=Dog80] What the heck do I do now? [/QUOTE] Put the ear buds in your ears and hit the shuffle button. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/3 "2007-10-03T13:53:32Z")
[QUOTE=Dog80] I bought a 8GB Nano yesterday and right now I feel like I threw 220 euros out of the window ☹ The problem is that although my mp3 collection is neatly organised into folders (band name\album name\song name), iTunes uses the ID3 tags to organise its internal library. Not all of my mp3s have tags so now the iTunes library is a mess. And the only way to move songs from the computer to the ipod is through iTunes :mad: [/QUOTE] I don’t understand, fully, but can’t you just sync the iPod and the iTunes? All the songs should dump. I don’t sync, so I am not 100% sure, but I think that’s how it works. ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/4 "2007-10-03T14:06:15Z")
[QUOTE=Anaamika] I don’t understand, fully, but can’t you just sync the iPod and the iTunes? All the songs should dump. I don’t sync, so I am not 100% sure, but I think that’s how it works. [/QUOTE] I think the problem is that, since his mp3s aren’t tagged, what he sees in iTunes is 6000 songs entitled, ```auto 1. Untitled 1 2. Untiled 2 . . . 6000. Untitled 6000 ``` None of them with associated title, album or artist info. **Dog80** , you may be able to have iTunes look up some of the songs from the online database. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/5 "2007-10-03T14:09:00Z")
Wow. Ok, yes, if you have an Internet connection, usually iTunes will try to look it up on the Internet on its own. It doesn’t do that for you? The ones it won’t do it for me are for foreign-language songs, but mostly English songs it can find. Otherwise dump them all and and hit shuffle as Uncle says. ---
**Author:** ![MeanJoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanjoe/32/5693_2.png) [@MeanJoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanJoe)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/6 "2007-10-03T14:18:57Z")
I thought you could set iTunes to allow you to manually manage your music. When doing so, it will use your folder structure and naming convention instead of iTunes attempting to build its own folder structure and use the ID3 tags. Yes? I would look it up in iTunes for you but my external drive took a poop and that is where all my music was located and where iTunes stored my libraries. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/7 "2007-10-03T14:27:51Z")
[QUOTE=MeanJoe] I thought you could set iTunes to allow you to manually manage your music. [/QUOTE] It does but I don’t think that this is going to help **Dog** out very much. [http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61148](http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61148) Good luck. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/8 "2007-10-03T14:50:35Z")
I think the following will help Select Edit -\> preferences On the General tab uncheck the Keep iTunes folder organized. Click OK Select advanced -\>Get CD track names should import most if not all of the info about your music library. If that doesn’t work, then just drink the kool-aid and don’t worry about it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/9 "2007-10-03T15:15:24Z")
I’m afraid that maintaining good ID3 tags is really kind of key to the iPod – and to most other MP3 players, really, if’n you want to keep things organized in ways that are convenient and easy to manage. Part of the coolness of the iPod is creating smart playlists that, in the long run, save you a hell of a lot of work in organizing your own playlists. You need well-groomed ID3 tags to take full advantage of them, though. Bottom line is that there’s really not much you can do but either get an MP3 player that gets its information from the filename instead of the ID3 tag, or bite the bullet and start updating your tags. If it’s any consolation, iTunes will let you edit whole blocks of songs at once so you can input tag information common to all selected songs at once. That does ease the pain a bit. I had to do that myself when I first got my iPod. Took me a few hours a day over the course of about a week to do it all properly, but once it was done I had a nicely groomed MP3 collection with full tags (at least for the most important tags) and managed to create smart playlists so that I never have to tell my iPod what songs go in what playlists – it already knows. ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/10 "2007-10-03T21:50:45Z")
There’s a shareware utility called [mp3tagtools](http://massid3lib.sourceforge.net/) (or just mtt) that lets you edit id3 tags, in bulk, according to a particular scheme. So if your music is already well organised, you can install this, select everything, and basically map the folder names to the id3 tag fields en masse. It’ll take a while to run, but it’s much better than doing it manually. ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/11 "2007-10-04T04:20:12Z")
You can edit multiple MP3 files in iTunes. For example, select all the Beatles songs, “Get Info” on them and then you can enter “The Beatles” in the artist tag and it will change all the files at once. ---
**Author:** ![Atrael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Atrael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atrael)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/12 "2007-10-04T18:39:06Z")
I have the same problem. I think what some people are overlooking is that the names of the files don’t appear in the Itunes view pane (that I can find) so there is no way to select everything that was in one folder and edit the tags. If the name of the song also isn’t right in the tag, then you’re basically screwed. I just started a thread over [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=438958) asking for advice about mass updating tags. Another way you can sort of get around is is by deleting the whole library from Itunes. Then only add one folder at a time. This way you’ll have different time stamps on the songs. You can then sort by “date added” and update an entire group. Hope that makes sense. Oh, and Itunes also looks up data based on the tags. So if **none** of your tags are right, then it won’t find anything. Some of the software in the thread I linked to is supposed to use technology that looks at the song itself and tries to match it up with known patterns of songs in it’s database. So that helps find data for songs with totally screwed tags. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/13 "2007-10-04T19:16:41Z")
If you want to browse by artist/album I think you’re basically screwed unless you find a program to tag your files for you. There are some pretty intelligent ones that MAY be able to tag your files based on your directory structure and file names, like [this one](http://www.mp3tag.de/en/). That is IF your directories and songs are consistently named. Otherwise you’re probably better off with another player, the iPods strength/weakness is that it compiles a list for you based on the tags, not the file names or locations. ---
**Author:** ![ForumBot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ee59a6/32.png) [@ForumBot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ForumBot)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-got-an-ipod-and-need-help/421377/14 "2007-10-04T19:21:56Z")
Bite the bullet and update those tags!