[MIKEHUNTSKI]

Thinking this morning about the most annoying thing about the USB ipod connection (the need to scroll through hundreds of artists to get to the end of the alphabet), I think I came up with a fix. I know myself and there has never been a day when I had my ipod and thought "Hey you know, I could really listen to some Rock." or "Reggae sure would fit the bill right now." I would always think to myself I would like to hear the Rolling Stones or some Ziggy Marley, so essentially looking through my tunes by Genre was worthless. Until now . . .

I have gone through iTunes to my Ipod and changed the genre to either A, B, C, D, etc. based upon the artist name. This is very easy to do if you sort your music list on you iPod by artist (duh). Now when I go to Genre I see just these letters. When you select them it takes you to Artist. Voila! Go to Genre and jump to Z for Ziggy Marley (not sure why you would do that but that is another issue, let's assume that you wanted to). You are there in a fraction of the time. Easy fix.

If anyone is interested I can post pictures later today. ENJOY!

P.S. This DOES NOT overwrite your GENRES in you library, just on your pod. So you got that going for you, which is nice.

[HellFish]

Very interesting.. Thanks for the post! If I want to keep my genres, however, I guess you could do the same thing with playlists?

[MIKEHUNTSKI]

Sure. You would just have to add to the playlists as you add to your ipod.

Driving to work today I tried it out under Genre you click A (or any letter)it takes you to artist, click the artist it takes you to the albums, click album takes you to songs. Very logical. I am not sure if Playlists give you this same path to the music.

I know on the ipod when you pick a playlist is just shows you a list of songs (no artist or album info).

[HellFish]

Damn I think I may have deleted my genres in Itunes a couple of months ago... how do I get them back?

[kyee]

One thing that bugs me is when you select a playlist, it displays the songs in order by artist. How do you get it to just play songs at random in the playlist?

[LEDZEP]

Originally Posted by MIKEHUNTSKI

Thinking this morning about the most annoying thing about the USB ipod connection (the need to scroll through hundreds of artists to get to the end of the alphabet), I think I came up with a fix. I know myself and there has never been a day when I had my ipod and thought "Hey you know, I could really listen to some Rock." or "Reggae sure would fit the bill right now." I would always think to myself I would like to hear the Rolling Stones or some Ziggy Marley, so essentially looking through my tunes by Genre was worthless. Until now . . .

I have gone through iTunes to my Ipod and changed the genre to either A, B, C, D, etc. based upon the artist name. This is very easy to do if you sort your music list on you iPod by artist (duh). Now when I go to Genre I see just these letters. When you select them it takes you to Artist. Voila! Go to Genre and jump to Z for Ziggy Marley (not sure why you would do that but that is another issue, let's assume that you wanted to). You are there in a fraction of the time. Easy fix.

If anyone is interested I can post pictures later today. ENJOY!

P.S. This DOES NOT overwrite your GENRES in you library, just on your pod. So you got that going for you, which is nice.

Good tip!

Originally Posted by kyee

One thing that bugs me is when you select a playlist, it displays the songs in order by artist. How do you get it to just play songs at random in the playlist?

Might be the way you have it organized in iTunes before you synch. My playlists have the songs in the order I want them - which for me, is one of the main purposes for a playlist. I put some thought into the songs and the order in which I wish to hear them.

You can shuffle or random play the list by clicking your controller down on the current (or any) title and select Random from the short menu.

[MIKEHUNTSKI]

Originally Posted by HellFish

Damn I think I may have deleted my genres in Itunes a couple of months ago... how do I get them back?

I think this is just a view change. ON a mac if you control click the gray bar that labels the columns you should see a list of items that you can add and delete from your library view. I assume windows has a similar thing, maybe a right click?

[nitramluap]

Umm... why don't you just create smart playlists instead?

You could create all sorts of useful playlists but creating a playlist with "All Artists that start with 'A' " would be a start. If you do this you don't have to rename genres, etc. and it updates automatically as new tracks are added.

The smart playlists is an underused feature of iTunes.

Paul Martin
www.paulnika.com

[MIKEHUNTSKI]

Originally Posted by nitramluap

Umm... why don't you just create smart playlists instead?

You could create all sorts of useful playlists but creating a playlist with "All Artists that start with 'A' " would be a start. If you do this you don't have to rename genres, etc. and it updates automatically as new tracks are added.

The smart playlists is an underused feature of iTunes.

Paul Martin
www.paulnika.com

From what I have seen, going to playlists only give you a list of songs. If I had all my "A" artists in one playlist I would still need to scroll through all the songs to find what I want which really does not solve the problem. Using Genre (with the changes I mentioned above) gives you a logical way to find the artist, album & song that you want.

In my opinion searching Genre by itself is pretty worthless (especially since Random does not seem to work). After changing the settings as I mentioned above, I have really enjoyed this option much more. I have even found some music I have not heard in a LONG time.

[rocketman99]

You guys must have a different ipod adapter than me because I did the genre swap and I go to genres and open a letter and it's just a big list of songs. There are no artist or album submenus of any kind. Is there something I missed?

[MIKEHUNTSKI]

Originally Posted by rocketman99

You guys must have a different ipod adapter than me because I did the genre swap and I go to genres and open a letter and it's just a big list of songs. There are no artist or album submenus of any kind. Is there something I missed?

Weird. That sounds like what happens when you use playlists. I have the USB iPod adapter. Genres are now just a list of letters, click letter it goes to artists, click artist goes to albums, click album goes to songs. I did nothing other then changing the genres to the first letter of the artist on the ipod.

I wish I could be more helpful.

[LOLrance]

Thats actually a great idea. I never thought of that. Thanks for the tip!

[Brett]

Originally Posted by MIKEHUNTSKI

From what I have seen, going to playlists only give you a list of songs. If I had all my "A" artists in one playlist I would still need to scroll through all the songs to find what I want which really does not solve the problem. Using Genre (with the changes I mentioned above) gives you a logical way to find the artist, album & song that you want.

In my opinion searching Genre by itself is pretty worthless (especially since Random does not seem to work). After changing the settings as I mentioned above, I have really enjoyed this option much more. I have even found some music I have not heard in a LONG time.

Why not do a combination of the two ideas.

Rename Genres to first letter of Artist.
Rename Misc. Field to original Genre
Create Smart Playlist of all Genres (matching Misc. Field)

What this would give you is the quick browsing by letter mode, and smart playlist with full random play. Meaning you could just click the playlist "Rock".

Just a thought...

-Brett