Help with iPhone

[Azazel]

So we got iPhones today, since our old mobiles are pieces of shit, and falling apart/out of plan/warranty, etc.

I'm trying to put music on it, and it's a fucking nightmare. iTunes, playlists, syncs, and all that shit.

I just want to manually manage my folders, so I can decide exactly which albums and tracks I want to have on the fucking thing. I don't want to have to circle jerk around with their bullshit. Get off my fucking lawn.

Any ideas? Is there any way to simply have a folder-drag-and-drop kind of interface?

[Viin]

Ahahahahahahaha.

Welcome to AppHell.

[Prospero]

One way:
Attach your phone
In iTunes, select your iPhone and click the checkbox "Manually manage my music"
Drag stuff onto iPhone icon

My preferred way:
Attach phone
Create a playlist called iPhone playlist
Click the iPhone on the left, then click the music tab
Tell it to only sync the iPhone playlist( I also like the recently added playlist )
Drag stuff to the iPhone playlist

This use the itunes stuff, but it's pretty damn painless.

[Viin]

You might look at a 3rd party app:

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/managing_your_ipod_without_itunes
http://lifehacker.com/237986/hack-attack-add-music-and-movies-to-your-ipod-from-any-computer-without-itunes

Or you can do what I did, and create 2-3 playlists and move your music into those playlists. I then tell my iPhone to sync two of my 5 playlists. (Or create one playlist for your IPhone and one for your lady's - each one syncs to their own). Pain in the ass but manageable once it's setup.

[Azazel]

I'm trying to transfer music from my 40gb iRiver to a 32gb iPhone. That's a lot of music, so fuck playlists in their arse.

I also don't know how to use playlists, aside from .m3u files, and quite frankly I'm not interested in learning. I've always happily just doubleclicked/dragged and dropped my music in winamp, and selected the album folder I want to play on my iRiver. Not interested in Apple's (un)"userfriendly" bullshit.

[Fabricated]

I just got an iPod Touch after taking back a non-functional ZuneHD. I found a program called mediamonkey that still requires doing it playlist-style but it's a bit more intuitive and faster than iTunes.

[Ookii]

I'm trying to transfer music from my 40gb iRiver to a 32gb iPhone. That's a lot of music, so fuck playlists in their arse.

I also don't know how to use playlists, aside from .m3u files, and quite frankly I'm not interested in learning. I've always happily just doubleclicked/dragged and dropped my music in winamp, and selected the album folder I want to play on my iRiver. Not interested in Apple's (un)"userfriendly" bullshit.

It's really not that hard, just get used to it.  I'll give you a protip though, drag and drop is your friend.

[Azazel]

if Only drag and drop would work.  - update, I figured out one way to drag and drop, and it sometimes works for some albums - see more details below.

As for playlists, I have to turn every fucking album I have into it's own playlist?

This is why I've avoided owning an iPod.


Basically, it's like this - see if it makes sense:

I have a lot of music. (I worked in music wholesaling for several years, so while some has come from the net, many gigabytes are from my own CDs, mainly ripped about 4-5 years ago.)
I have it stored in various places across 3 physical Hard Drives on my main PC. I know where everything is though.
I have it stored logically, in folders.
Example: Industrial>Rammstein>Volkerball>Links 234
or: Classics>Beatles>Sgt Pepper>Come Together

Some of these folders are their own comps, for example, the album, then the b-sides from the singles to that album - this breaks iTunes.
When I want to play something on a non-apple mp3 player, I drag and drop and listen.

I'd like to keep my current organisation of tracks, ideally in a drag-and-drop situation, without fucking around a whole lot trying to create new shitty playlists.
Interestingly, at least one CD that was ripped in the past appears to be split into three albums on iTunes.
I don't want to have to rip my entire CD collection again, nor do I want to figure out a new massive storage situation for iTunes to store my re-ripped tracks in. Besides, about 70% of my collection is in storage at my Parents' place, and not reasily accessable there either.

[Samwise]

The iPod will already sort stuff into album/etc automatically for you.  I think what you want to do is make one big giant playlist of "stuff I want to put into my iPod" and drag stuff into that if you want to put it into your iPod.

Or if you don't otherwise use iTunes, just import the stuff you want in your iPod into iTunes.  That's probably easier.  If it's not in iTunes, it won't go onto the iPod.

[Azazel]

I'll try to delete most of my stuff out of iTunes and start again.

The album issue is explained above.

Even worse: I drag the Natural Born Killers Soundtrack in there, and it creates, oh, 25 albums called "Natural Born Killers" - one for each artist in the compilation. Each of their albums, however, shows the whole thing. Except for the fact that I have 24 of it.

Instead of, you know.

Natural Born Killers
Various Artists

[Venkman]

You'll be able to retain your current organization across your hard drives; however, accessing those songs through your device is going to require adopting Apple's method. iTunes is like MS Office: either learn to do it their way or enjoy months/years of aggravation. Seriously, Apple (and Microsoft) is not providing a tool to manage your music. They are providing an ecosystem in which to buy songs and link them to their device.

There's probably some program out there that would eventually give you what you need. However, it'll probably also break the next time iTunes gets updated.

iTunes takes your MP3 meta data and does what it wants with it (as you're experiencing with the Natural Born Killers example). You can change the view in the Mini Browser to show by album name, but that's it. Short of changing file headers, you're stuck with Playlists per album, which as you've said, is a big freakin' PITA for someone with such a big back catalog.

[Ookii]

The problem is your ID3 tags aren't done right, you have to spend some time getting them correct in the beginning.  Download a program called MP3tag and use that, it can't make ID3 tags from filenames.  Don't use iTunes to change the ID3 tags as it doesn't actually change them in general, only within iTunes.

[Viin]

God, iTunes is ghey. I love my iPhone, but I really hate having to use iTunes to manage it.

[Azazel]

I've got the drag and drop shit mostly figured out. Other than that I am managing (some) of my albums etc by using winamp to go into the id3 and edit the information manually.

Which is a lot of fun.

[Engels]

I noticed last night that all my ripped Tool albums were scattered hither and yon in ITunes. Neatly ordered in my c:/users/user/music/Tool/ folder, however.

The issue was that the individual songs did not have the right Windows info, such as album and artist. I did a crtl-A within the album's folder in Windows, selected properties and then changed the info to reflect the correct Album and Artists. I applied it across all the songs for a specific album.

Naturally, ITunes was coded by retards, so it doesn't actually pick up on the file changes, even tho all my Music in ITunes are direct links to said files. I had to go to EACH SONG in ITunes and select Get Info (crtl-I) to 'refresh' the way ITunes sees the file. Then, and only then, after each song was 'refreshed', would ITunes sort the albums into the correct categories.

I thought perhaps this was just some deficiency of Windows and how it had ripped the albums, but lo and behold, the ONE solitary song I have purchased off ITunes (Prong's Snap your Fingers Snap your Neck) has no album or artist info, the song name and artist listed in the title tag. And this is a straight ITunes download.

[Lantyssa]

iPhone.  Heh.

[Trippy]

Are you sure you aren't confusing MP3 tags with MP4 metadata? iTunes store music files are in AAC format in MP4 containers which use a different metadata format than MP3 ID tags.

[Engels]

Actually, if you were talking to me, Trippy, you were right. I checked, and for some reason I can't fathom, I have two copies of the song. One is an m4p from Apple, the other is some random MP3. I think I got the song an age ago, and managed to convert it to MP3, then later on on another machine re-downloaded it from Apple.

[nurtsi]

The way I do it is to make a single playlist called "iPhone Playlist" or something and drag all the music you want on your iPhone into that. Then just select that playlist from the sync options so it gets synced to the phone.

To actually make your music show up correctly, you have to fix the ID3 tags. I use MP3Tag for this (also to add album covers to the files). It's tedious and boring, but you only have to do it once. When you change the ID3 tags, naturally you have to remove every fucking file from iTunes and re-add them so it actually refreshes.