I too like the idea of an "unheard" smart playlist. I also like using the Genius playlists.

I also keep a "Recently Added" playlist that keeps stuff that I've added to my library for the last month. I don't have a cap on it either, so if I get a lot of new music then the size of the list jumps.

That is the only playlist I have right now on my iPod. The other is just 5-6GB of music randomly chosen from my library. (I only have an 8GB Nano - 3rd gen) The rest of my space is movies and TV shows.

One other handy thing like this - I use the ratings in my library, so I keep an "Unrated" smart playlist around. You can set the ratings from the iPod and they get copied back to iTunes next time you sync up. So when I've got some time, I shuffle my Unrated playlist and assign ratings as I listen, and then they are automatically removed from the playlist as I go.

I've been using the Rating feature more often - I like that I can do it in iTunes or on the iPod itself. Now I'm actually using the Lyrics field - I added the lyrics for The Magnificent Seven to the song just for fun. The iPod displays them on a scrollable separate screen.

BTW, the main reason I prefer shuffle over random is that shuffle "discards" songs until it's done. This is like taking the deck of cards and dealing them out until you have no more.

I've been meaning to use the ratings more, but Ijust haven't gotten around to it. Hmmm, maybe I should have a "recently added" playlist for the last month of everything, and then another "recently added" list for the last 3 months plus a rating of 3 or higher. Often the songs I like drop off the recently added list far too soon for my taste. But if I leave it open for songs added more than a month prior, it gets to be a huge list.

Well I got the Ipod today when my cousin came over for a BBQ. Cant say Im impressed with the Nano so far. Its a pain in the ass using Itunes. My complaints (maybe someone here can tell me a way that these shouldnt be a problem):

I cant just put a CD onto the Ipod, I have to add it to the playlist first, wait, than sync and wait.

I cant add album artwork without an account, but I have to put my credit card? I NEVER have an intention to buy from the store so I dont want to input my info.

I cant see the songs Ive added to sync up, all I can do is click "sync new additions"

I cant arrange the order of songs; put different songs in the same album (for instance some of my CDs have a bonus disc, I want that disc included with the main one)

I cant see where to go to add MP3s from my harddrive.

Yea, Im not digging this

So, it sounds like you have a separate playlist just for your Nano, right? It should be pretty straightforward, unless you're talking about the time it takes to convert the CD to MP3s. But in general, you have to rip the CD, then just drag the album over to the playlist name, and sync.


Yeah that's a minor annoyance, I agree. But it's not that you can't add artwork at all, you just can't get it from the iTunes store. If you get artwork from Amazon or something, you should just be able to add it into iTunes from your desktop.

I didn't have any intention of using the iTunes store either, but I found myself using it once in a while to get single tracks I wanted which I couldn't find anywhere else, so I signed up for it. Although now I buy most of my music from Amazon's MP3 store.


Create a Smart Playlist called something like "Recent Syncs" and set the parameters to be something like "Date added is in the last 1 week" and make sure Live updating is checked. I have a similar "Recently Added" playlist (set to the past 4 months in my case) which I always sync up to.

Smart Playlists, by the way, are a great way to do a lot things once you play around with them.


Easy, just change the track numbers by right-clicking and hitting "Get Info". You can also change the album name of the bonus disc this way, so that everything plays as one album.


File... Add File/Folder to library.

Achtung beat me to responding to this, but I thought I'd expand just a bit on a couple of points.

To add artwork on your own, I've found the easiest way is to save the artwork (I've gotten quite a lot from Amazon), and then go into Info. If you do it song-by-song, you'll see a separate tab just for Artwork; if you do multiple songs at once, there will be a thumbnail in the same tab as the song and album information.


Give each disc the same album title (don't forget to make sure the Sort Album Titles match, too). Make the Album Disc 1 of 2, and the Bonus Disc 2 of 2. Then, when you play the album through, it will simply go right out of the Album and into the Bonus. The CDDB information often automatically names them "Album" and "Album [Bonus Disc]," and that's why they're not playing together.

Purists may decry this, but what I do for double albums is just number the tracks as if it was one album. So, if there were 12 tracks on each disc, the first track on the second disc would be "track 13" and so on.

After all, some albums that were double LPs have been issued on a single CD, and they have a continuous track listing. They don't take LP sides into account with CDs either. Why not continue this merging for double CDs when the length is no longer restricted by the format?

Cool man, thanks for the tips. You were right on the changing track order/albums, worked like a charm. I also decided to sign up to the stupid store anyway. Some of my albums dont even have art work. I guess cause theyre rare/indie metal albums. What sucks is that I have to manually right click and say add art work. Adding songs from my HD was easy as pie, thansk for the tip! I was even able to add the artwork to it, which was very cool. I forgot how it does have to convert to MP3 first so I guess the wait is normal. Wish technology was advanced enough to just put it straight on the ipod.

Havent tried the smart playlist yet, I will when I get more time. I just figured out that I need to get the whole manual online. I thought the little cheat sheet that came with the ipod was it

Thanks a ton man. The help is greatly appreciated

Thats exactley why I wanted it. I have a few rock/metal opera concept albums and I wanted all the songs together. Ach's sucggestion worked like a charm.

Good idea with the artwork idea Min. I can try that, but I wonder, will it assign it as art or will it save as a picture.

Oh and I still havent discovered how to remove songs from the Ipod

For artwork, I just copy from the internet and paste into the songs in itunes.

One other thing you might consider: under the Advanced menu is "Join CD tracks". You can use that when importing tracks from a CD to merge them together into a single seamless track, if you decide you are always going to play a group of songs together in order. There are also apps that can join MP3s together after the fact, but I find that most of them leave a small but noticeable "blip" in between the tracks.

When your iPod is connected, you can select it under Devices. There is then a Music tab in the main window where you can choose exactly which playlists should be synced over to the iPod. I don't think there's a way to control down to the individual song level, though. Any songs that aren't in a checked playlist will automatically be deleted from the iPod the next time you sync.

Yeah, it would take up a lot of space on the Nano if it was WAV files. Someday we probably won't need any kind of compression though (at least for music).

I find that a lot of electronic products are like this now. Part of it is the paper/printing cost, but another thing is that with devices like this, they're packaged in such small boxes that a full manual would take up a lot of room. For instance, my cell phone's manual is nearly 200 pages, and I imagine it would be more if they tried to cram it into a tiny book. Then you have people that never bother to read the manual, and they figure, why print it?

One other thing you can try is, when your iPod is connected, choose "Sync only checked songs and videos", and then uncheck the songs you don't want on your iPod (it's easy to ignore, but every track in iTunes has a little checkmark right before the name).

You should see the box that came with my old iPod mini back in 2004. It was a cube, had to be a solid 6" x 6" x 6". But that was back when they gave you an iTunes CD, AC wall charger, Firewire cable, and belt clip as part of the deal.

There are plenty of things where album art is tricky to find. iTunes imports images from the CD Database, and sometimes it either doesn't have the right album art, or it doesn't have any at all. I have had a very frustrating time with CD singles, most of which are at least a decade old and their artwork just hasn't been well archived, it seems. You can, of course, Google the album, but sometimes you just have to improvise.

The fun thing is, you don't even have to use the actual album art at all. I mean, if you were so inclined, you could even replace all the album art with your favorite amateur porn images. (I've heard about a guy who actually did this, but his porn library dwarfed his music library.)

Kind of unrelated, but I was wondering if any of you have ever experienced what I call the "artist of the day" syndrome when using shuffle?

I've noticed on MANY occasions that the iPod will randomly play a certain artist several times in a given listening session. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but it's kind of neat and happens most of the time when I listen to the iPod in shuffle mode.