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A couple peculiar ipod glitches

A

absurdio

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 25, 2003
380
0
RI, Chi, and/or NY.
I've run across a couple of little oddities with my ipod which, if they were isolated occurances, I would just ignore. However, they've started slowly adding up...and so I thought I'd turn, as always, to my trusted friend, the internet. =)

Oddity 1: There are a couple of songs that I've found that don't play. One is a Casualties song from a mix cd I made long ago, and the other is a Postal Service song that I got from the iTunes music store. Both songs play perfectly fine in my iTunes library. On my iPod, though, both songs have the same problem...and don't play. They appear, as they should, in the menus under the lists of their respective artists...and you can select them...and, indeed, when you do, it LOOKS like it's going to start playing (that is, it goes to the screen with the song title, band name, elapsed time, etc...) but then, instead of starting, it goes immediately back to the main menu (Playlists, Browse, Extras...). No idea why. They don't start playing and then stop...they just don't start...and I don't know why. Same problem for both songs, and both are 128kbps aac...just like almost all of my iTunes library.

Oddity 2: One band appears twice on my list of Artists in my iPod. And right after itself on the list...so my list reads "Beat Happening, Beatsteaks, Beatsteaks, Belle & Sebastian," and again, I can't explain why. The two headings are spelled identically and have identical album and song contents. I checked my iTunes library, and I definitely only have one folder called "Beatsteaks" and only one copy of each song. This isn't a HUGE problem, but it is a nuisance. And annoying as hell. All the songs play fine in both listings, but there just shouldn't BE two listings.

Both of these problems exist even right after I update my ipod. I have no clue what's going on. Anyone else run into this? Anything I can do? Is there a way to delete the songs/headings from my ipod and then try re-updating it? As always, thanks, everyone.

-nb
 
absurdio said:
Oddity 2: One band appears twice on my list of Artists in my iPod. And right after itself on the list...so my list reads "Beat Happening, Beatsteaks, Beatsteaks, Belle & Sebastian," and again, I can't explain why. The two headings are spelled identically and have identical album and song contents. I checked my iTunes library, and I definitely only have one folder called "Beatsteaks" and only one copy of each song. This isn't a HUGE problem, but it is a nuisance. And annoying as hell. All the songs play fine in both listings, but there just shouldn't BE two listings.

-nb
Click to expand...

Dunno about problem one, but check out the artist name in the song info, there might be a space after one of them, which makes it come up twice. I've had that happen a few times.

Rob
 
mrgreen4242 said:
Dunno about problem one, but check out the artist name in the song info, there might be a space after one of them, which makes it come up twice. I've had that happen a few times.

Rob
Click to expand...

Another possibility is that for some reason, one of the songs has a different genre than the other. I've noticed some funny business regarding genres on the iPod. Sometimes different CDs are coded in gracenote differently. I had two Shonen Knife CDs and I couldn't find one because it was in the wrong genre.

For the other problem, that's really interesting. Are they files off a CD? If so, is it worth it to try ripping them in another format, such as MP3? I can't say I've had this problem, but I think there are an awful lot of playcount=0 songs on my iPod. ;)
 
re: problem #2

Sounds like you definitely have some extra spaces at the end of the artist name. I had this occur for several artists scattered throughout my library and couldn't figure out how they got there. Being a details man, I finally had to clean house.

To get rid of them, sort your library by artist and select the first line. Click "Get Info" and highlight the artist name. If the highlighted area is greater than the artist name, you have extra space(s) at the end of the name. If the number of spaces differ, you will get multiple occurrences of, in essence, the same artist in your libray. So once you highlight the artist, choose "Next" and see if any others have the extra space(s).

Getting rid of these extra spaces can be frustrating. For one thing, you cannot simply backspace. You need to either clear and retype the name(s) or select only the extra space and delete it.

I believe this will solve half of your problems. One can tell if there are extra spaces for an artist by the presence of ellipses "..." at the end of an artist name on the iPod and also the format is left justified and not centered across the screen.
 
You guys got it right. I was so hung up on making sure the spellings were the same, I didn't actually check to see if there were any extra spaces or anything. So i just highlighted all of the song with "beatsteaks" somewhere in the artist/title line and got the info for all of them. Sure enough, the band name was blank, suggesting that there had been two different names. So i typed in a single name, updated everything, and now that's as it should be. Thanks again.

...Now on to problem number 1 =)
 
i got a few probs too.. every now and then, while playing through a song, partway through, it'll just skip the rest of the song and go to the next..

and secondly, I got Nirvana's Nevermind.. the iPod lists "Nevermind" and "Never Mind" as two seperate albums, both with exactly the same songs in it. iTunes has only one copy listed under "Nevermind".. and yeah. if you go to "All" the songs for Nirvana on the iPod, only one set of songs comes up also...
 
Well, still no solution, but another song to add to the list.
This is a Rancid song from their new album. It plays fine in iTunes, it plays fine from the cd, nothing SEEMS suspect...except that in my iPod, it doesn't play. Same problem. It skips over that song and goes to the next one. Even if you select that song, it just goes to the next one.

Is there a way I can delete that from my ipod and re-update and hope it works this time?
 
absurdio said:
Well, still no solution, but another song to add to the list.
This is a Rancid song from their new album. It plays fine in iTunes, it plays fine from the cd, nothing SEEMS suspect...except that in my iPod, it doesn't play. Same problem. It skips over that song and goes to the next one. Even if you select that song, it just goes to the next one.

Is there a way I can delete that from my ipod and re-update and hope it works this time?
Click to expand...


maybe your ipod is excersizing civil disobedience against your poor choice in music???
 
absurdio said:
Oddity 2: One band appears twice on my list of Artists in my iPod. And right after itself on the list...so my list reads "Beat Happening, Beatsteaks, Beatsteaks, Belle & Sebastian," and again, I can't explain why. The two headings are spelled identically and have identical album and song contents. I checked my iTunes library, and I definitely only have one folder called "Beatsteaks" and only one copy of each song. This isn't a HUGE problem, but it is a nuisance. And annoying as hell. All the songs play fine in both listings, but there just shouldn't BE two listings.
-nb
Click to expand...

yhea i get that to i got five different dusty springfeild's all spelt the same way
 
Hector said:
yhea i get that to i got five different dusty springfeild's all spelt the same way
Click to expand...

I've got some songs that seem to do this consistently on the first try, and then play correctly the second time. Maybe my songs are considered borderline tasteless? :)
 
absurdio said:
Oddity 1: There are a couple of songs that I've found that don't play. One is a Casualties song from a mix cd I made long ago, and the other is a Postal Service song that I got from the iTunes music store. Both songs play perfectly fine in my iTunes library. On my iPod, though, both songs have the same problem...and don't play. They appear, as they should, in the menus under the lists of their respective artists...and you can select them...and, indeed, when you do, it LOOKS like it's going to start playing (that is, it goes to the screen with the song title, band name, elapsed time, etc...) but then, instead of starting, it goes immediately back to the main menu (Playlists, Browse, Extras...). No idea why. They don't start playing and then stop...they just don't start...and I don't know why. Same problem for both songs, and both are 128kbps aac...just like almost all of my iTunes library.
-nb
Click to expand...

Hmm.
I have had a similar-ish problem. When I plug in my iPod and it syncs, I get told that "Songs including 'Song Title' can't be copied to the iPod". But they once were on my iPod.
I suspect it's something to do with the glitchy new update
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/69826/
and I thus wonder: did you install either the iPod update or iTunes 4.5?
Because both seem to be causing problems.

Very mysterious.
 
I've found that some of my little iPod problems can be dealt with by openning iPod options, switching to "Manually manage songs and playlists," and then deleting the troublesome song or songs. Then I just switch it back to automatically updating, and it adds those files again...and ususally works. Hope that helps.
-nb
 
B&S YES!

Although this is of no help to you, I would just like to say "right one!" for having Belle & Sebastian on your iPod!!
 
g30ffr3y said:
maybe your ipod is excersizing civil disobedience against your poor choice in music???
Click to expand...

*smile* Maybe the Belle & Sebastian even compensates for my owning Rancid's Indestructable (which prompted the above comment)
 
the same thing happens to me sometimes.
i record something with my italk, and it wont play the voice memo. could it be the same problem?
 
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