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This is exactly why I run Rockbox on my iPod. I can now use simple folder-organization to sort my music and have it show up exactly the same way on my iPod! I h
by reedlaw 17y ago
This is exactly why I run Rockbox on my iPod. I can now use simple folder-organization to sort my music and have it show up exactly the same way on my iPod! I hated having one organizational structure on the disk and an entirely different one when I opened iTunes. Who knows if the ID3 tags in all my various mp3s are correct, standardized, or contain the information I would need to find them? In iTunes, I'd often have to go back to my folders to find a file, figure out how that file was tagged, then go back to iTunes and find it again!
When I find mp3s online or get them from friends, I never bother to edit their ID3 tags, but I often sort them using a simple tree-structure that's built into almost every device called a file system. I'm used to storing documents, photos, and source code this way. Why should I learn a new way just for one app? If my files' ID3 tags were entered correctly or can be downloaded automatically, I'm happy of course, but when I make my own mp3's or find ones with empty tags I hardly ever bother to fix them. What's the use?
- mattmaroon 17y agoI didn't know there was such a thing. Maybe I'll bring my Nano out of retirement. I've owned more mp3 players than I can count, and the only iPod I'v ever liked was the Nano but I gave up on it because iTunes was just so unusable.
- reedlaw 17y agoRockbox is an awesome open source firmware for mp3 players. I run it on my 1st gen Nano. http://www.rockbox.org/ http://www.rockbox.org/
- joubert 17y agoIsn't the whole premise of the iTunes approach that you shouldn't have to bother with folder structures? I mean, really, what's the advantage of doing that? Isn't it better that you can literally just type in a keyword and the system shows you the matching music?
- randallsquared 17y agoNo. When I want a playlist, it's often not easy or not possible to find a search term that includes just the album I want, so I have to drag the album into a new playlist, which creates clutter. Playlist searching is great for finding a song but terrible for building a playlist.
- joubert 17y agoType in the name of the album? Or even the artist. If you're in Grid view (top right, next to search), you get pretty album art, you can simply drag & drop the album into your playlist.
- randallsquared 17y agoThe name of the album or the artist are the kind of "seems like it should work" that doesn't work. Lots of artists reuse album names as (all or part of) song names, or there'll be other metadata in the ID3 tags that happens to match an album by a different artist, or whatever. Also, the grid view would be more useful if you did get album art for most albums, but most of the icons I see are a gray musical note. This is one of those better-in-theory features. :) Anyway, though I use it today for lack of an alternative, I'm still holding a grudge against iTunes for destroying my music library back in May 2003 when I switched. I only had five thousand tracks or so at that time, but most of them didn't have any ID3 information because I'd ripped them from CDs myself over the years, and the filenames already contained the information I cared about, which was visible in the CLI (I came from Linux); the ID3 tags were invisible metadata I never paid attention to. Then I imported my music, and iTunes helpfully arranged all my MP3s into "Unknown Artist/Unknown Album/Unknown Title (n).mp3" based on ID3 information that didn't exist. Thanks, iTunes.
- joubert 17y agoFor music I don't buy through iTunes, I either do "Get Albmum Art", or I find it online and add it manually. This is something I can highly recommend as your iTunes experience would certainly go up a notch.