Album Compilations on a 4G, non-photo iPod?
Let me start off by saying that I think my iPod use is a little atypical. I'm an album kind of guy. All of the MP3s on my iPod are ripped from CDs (really, I swear!), and they're all arranged in complete albums. No singles for me. When I listen to music, I start at track 1 and don't stop until I'm interrupted or the album ends.
So I've been having a bit of an issue recently. See, I just found this store in Providence that sells a lot of "mix-tape" CDs (tape CDs? Hey, that's what they call 'em). I've been buying these things like candy because they're pretty cheap and each one has a few rare tracks from artists I like. The problem is this: Each track is by a different artist, so now my 4G iPod is littered with artists that only have 1 or 2 tracks. This offends me for two reasons: First, it's hard to play the entire album because I have to navigate into the Albums menu, which currently has like 300 entries, and second, I'm a bit of an organization freak and I hate to see my Artist list go to hell like this. In iTunes, all of these albums show up under "Compilations". I want that to happen on my iPod too.
I did a little research and evidently only the iPod Photo can do this. Of course, I can't install iPod Photo software in my iPod... right?
No really, that's the question. Is there any way to put the iPod Photo software (or at least the part of it that does Compilations right) on my 4G iPod? I've already sent like 10 pathetic emails to Apple begging them to add this feature, but I need it now dammit
Any help would be greatly appreciated. TIA.
So I've been having a bit of an issue recently. See, I just found this store in Providence that sells a lot of "mix-tape" CDs (tape CDs? Hey, that's what they call 'em). I've been buying these things like candy because they're pretty cheap and each one has a few rare tracks from artists I like. The problem is this: Each track is by a different artist, so now my 4G iPod is littered with artists that only have 1 or 2 tracks. This offends me for two reasons: First, it's hard to play the entire album because I have to navigate into the Albums menu, which currently has like 300 entries, and second, I'm a bit of an organization freak and I hate to see my Artist list go to hell like this. In iTunes, all of these albums show up under "Compilations". I want that to happen on my iPod too.
I did a little research and evidently only the iPod Photo can do this. Of course, I can't install iPod Photo software in my iPod... right?
No really, that's the question. Is there any way to put the iPod Photo software (or at least the part of it that does Compilations right) on my 4G iPod? I've already sent like 10 pathetic emails to Apple begging them to add this feature, but I need it now dammit
Any help would be greatly appreciated. TIA.
Comments
Or if you don't use a lot of playlists, save the albums as playlists.
If they are "mix tapes" and you're only buying them for a couple of the songs, you really should make yourself a playlist or two.
From what Google tells me, the iPod Photo has an option under the Settings menu called "Compilations" that's off by default. When you turn it on, you get a new item on the "Music" menu that says "Compilations". Choosing that item brings up another menu that lists all of the albums that you marked as "Compilations" in iTunes. For some strange reason, the iPod Photo is the only iPod with this option. I want to get it on my 4th generation, non-photo iPod. Apple doesn't seem interested in adding it (basing this on several months of requests), much to my chagrin, so I turned to AI to find out a) if anyone else wanted this feature, b) if anyone had found a way to hack it in, or c) if anyone knows if it's even possible to hack it in.
Originally posted by BRussell
Maybe I don't get what you want, but compilations show up under "Various Artists" under "Artist" on my iPod.
My iPod doesn't have a "Various Artists" item under the "Artist" menu. Did you do anything to make this show up? Like, did you have to change the artist info in iTunes to get this? If so, that's not the solution I'm looking for. What if I wanted to do a spotlight search for "Mos Def"? I would want the Mos Def tracks that are on compilation albums to come up too, but they wouldn't if I changed the artist info on them.
Originally posted by Danosaur
I'm likely not understanding your problem entirely, but if you put a ~ in front of these albums you've bought, you will find them much faster through an album search.
Or if you don't use a lot of playlists, save the albums as playlists.
If they are "mix tapes" and you're only buying them for a couple of the songs, you really should make yourself a playlist or two.
All 3 of these are good suggestions and unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for any of them except "I don't wanna". I don't want to change the name of "Some Album" to "~Some Album" -- that's not the name of the album! Also, when I started using iTunes, I stopped using playlists. Back when I used PCs and Winamp, I used playlists to aggregate albums. Now iTunes does that for me, so I only use smart playlists to track things like which songs I like best and which songs I haven't heard in a while.
I know I'm being difficult here. There are plenty of workarounds that will effectively make a compilations menu. I don't want a workaround though. I want a compilations menu.
Originally posted by elron
My iPod doesn't have a "Various Artists" item under the "Artist" menu. Did you do anything to make this show up? Like, did you have to change the artist info in iTunes to get this? If so, that's not the solution I'm looking for. What if I wanted to do a spotlight search for "Mos Def"? I would want the Mos Def tracks that are on compilation albums to come up too, but they wouldn't if I changed the artist info on them.
Eh, you're right. I just apparently had a few compilation albums that had "various artists" listed for artist.
I guess I've never had a problem with it, because I just go to 'album' when I listen to a compilation. But you're absolutely right that it would be nice if it had 'compilations' listed like in iTunes. It seems like something they could easily do with a software update too.
Given your response to other suggestions like this, you probably won't like it, but how about tagging compilations as a different genre?