Call me old school, but I want my music files in folders, that I can organize, without iTunes

[theLemur]

I'm a pretty tech savvy person, but still, after all these years, I just don't "get" iTunes.

I want to be able to plug my phone into the computer, see it's drive contents, and drag and drop my music folders to a place of my choosing, and then open up a music player of a my choosing to play it.

I have a 100GB music and audio book library. I use a 64GB Macbook Air. I can't just load everyone on the computer and add it to some iTunes 'library' and then sync it with my phone. I need to selectively pick which folders I want.

Every time I try to put music on a phone it turns into some big sync/library/organizational duplicate files nightmare.

I just want to go back to basics. View all files and folders on the phone, pick a place that I like, move my files there, and be done.

Is this possible?

 

[Eau Rouge]

Manually manage your music and media? It's not exactly drag and drop from the finder but you have granular control down to the file level over what you want on the device. There's no syncing involved so you can purge stuff that's already on your iOS device from the Macbook to make way for more media. A bit piecemeal and not totally elegant but it will accomplish what you want.

 

[theLemur]

Manually manage your music and media? It's not exactly drag and drop from the finder but you have granular control down to the file level over what you want on the device. There's no syncing involved so you can purge stuff that's already on your iOS device from the Macbook to make way for more media. A bit piecemeal and not totally elegant but it will accomplish what you want.

I would expect to see my phone mounted as a drive in finder, but I do not. Is there a way to do that?

 

[Eau Rouge]

I would expect to see my phone mounted as a drive in finder, but I do not. Is there a way to do that?

There are applications that can do that. iexplore, I think but have never bothered trying it. You can probably use that to transfer music as well.

 

[theLemur]

What would you guys normally do if you had 100GB of audio on your dropbox, and wanted to transfer say.. 10GB of that to your iPhone? I don't want to clog up my computer hard drive with a "library" because my SSD is only 64 GB.

 

[theLemur]

I just tried Iexplorer 3 but when I mount the phone as a drive it won't let me delete/modify files

 

[zone23]

What would you guys normally do if you had 100GB of audio on your dropbox, and wanted to transfer say.. 10GB of that to your iPhone? I don't want to clog up my computer hard drive with a "library" because my SSD is only 64 GB.

Buy an external hard drive and download everything to it. I just use iTunes, sorry. The alternative is to jailbreak but thats kind of extreme.

 

[adamhenry]

Buy an external hard drive and download everything to it. I just use iTunes, sorry. The alternative is to jailbreak but thats kind of extreme.

That's what I do. I have my music stored on an external drive and use iTunes to sync playlists. Nice and easy.

 

[eyoungren]

I would expect to see my phone mounted as a drive in finder, but I do not. Is there a way to do that?

As already mentioned – you need to jailbreak. And even then, you'll need to install specific tweaks to allow for what you want.

Apple pretty much does not want anyone messing with the file system.

What would you guys normally do if you had 100GB of audio on your dropbox, and wanted to transfer say.. 10GB of that to your iPhone? I don't want to clog up my computer hard drive with a "library" because my SSD is only 64 GB.

My PowerMac G4 holds all my music in iTunes. However, none of it is on my iPhone and I do not use Music/iTunes on my iPhone to play my music.

My entire library is uploaded to Google Play. Whatever I add or delete from iTunes reflects to Google Play - including playlists. I use the Google Music app to stream my music to my phone if I want to listen to music.

That's what I do.

Incidentally, if you allow iTunes to organize your library (it's a checkbox option) all of your music will get organized in nice neat folders by artist and album inside your iTunes Music library. No need to sort it yourself.

 

[zone23]

That's what I do. I have my music stored on an external drive and use iTunes to sync playlists. Nice and easy.

Yeah I bought a laptop hard drive enclosure and put a SSD drive in it. I use it for file backup and Time Machine backups. Its nice because you can restore a Time Machine backup pretty quick.

 

[adamhenry]

Yeah I bought a laptop hard drive enclosure and put a SSD drive in it. I use it for file backup and Time Machine backups. Its nice because you can restore a Time Machine backup pretty quick.

I stuck a Jetdrive in my MBP and keep my music there. iTunes is happy and it's really easy for me.

 

[zone23]

When I first got a iPhone i wanted to be able to use it as a storage device, but then noticed that I couldn't. My solution was just to use a jump drive. They are cheap and have a lot of capacity.

 

[g35]

What would you guys normally do if you had 100GB of audio on your dropbox, and wanted to transfer say.. 10GB of that to your iPhone? I don't want to clog up my computer hard drive with a "library" because my SSD is only 64 GB.

I would se smart playlists. Which 10 GB do you want to transfer? The most recent songs? The 'alternative music' only? There are ways to do that with smart playlists.

Also, I don't know how file/folder management would help you in this scenario. Your music folder is bigger than your hard drive. You seem to need some kind of Dropbox cloud player app that pulls music directly from your dropbox onto your phone without a computer in between.

I too would prefer file/folder management for music but I don't see how it would help you here. Even file/folder management wouldn't allow you to drag and drop music from your Dropbox to your phone without first storing those files on your computer. I manage to get pretty fine-grained control over what music makes it to my tiny 16 GB phone using smart playlists.

How about this? Use the Dropbox website or phone app to sort your music into folders, however you want. Then selectively sync those folders to your computer, to a maximum of 10 GB worth of files. Then add those to iTunes and sync. When you get tired of that 10GB, switch which folder Dropbox is storing on your computer, re-add to iTunes, and sync again.

 

[theLemur]

So, correct if I'm wrong - I basically have to sync my music to the phone via iTunes unless I go to extreme measures, right? Let's say I download a folder from my dropbox to my macbook, like 10GB worth, then I use iTunes to sync it, is it going to create a duplicate of that 10GB on my laptop as an iTunes library, or will it just organize the existing 10GB folder I made?

 

[zone23]

So, correct if I'm wrong - I basically have to sync my music to the phone via iTunes unless I go to extreme measures, right? Let's say I download a folder from my dropbox to my macbook, like 10GB worth, then I use iTunes to sync it, is it going to create a duplicate of that 10GB on my laptop as an iTunes library, or will it just organize the existing 10GB folder I made?

It will duplicate them. You can then just delete the original folder. This is why I use iTunes Match so I don't have to sync with iTunes to get my music.

 

[theLemur]

Thanks, I think I get it now.

What a crazy process. I miss just having my own folders that I organized myself. I have all my music sorted by folders labelling each genre. iTunes is going to mess it all up. This actually makes me want to get an android phone.

 

[yjchua95]

Thanks, I think I get it now.

What a crazy process. I miss just having my own folders that I organized myself. I have all my music sorted by folders labelling each genre. iTunes is going to mess it all up. This actually makes me want to get an android phone.

Why not just store the entire iTunes library in a massive external drive and point iTunes to refer to the library residing there? That way you can just sync everything without taking any space in your MacBook.

 

[theLemur]

I travel a lot, and I don't want to have to take an external drive around with me.. Hence the tiny 11" macbook air with the 64gb drive.

 

[zone23]

Thanks, I think I get it now.

What a crazy process. I miss just having my own folders that I organized myself. I have all my music sorted by folders labelling each genre. iTunes is going to mess it all up. This actually makes me want to get an android phone.

I can understand that. Just throw it all in iTunes and let it sort it out. You will be able to view your music via genre after its sorted. Hopefully you will be able to deal with it. It's different but it is what it is. Maybe even try google music like suggested earlier.

 

[theLemur]

So if I have a folder of "Favorite Metal Songs" and I import that into my library, it's going to make 50 different artists and albums, right? So how do I make it now do that, and stay as one grouping?

 

[Eau Rouge]

So if I have a folder of "Favorite Metal Songs" and I import that into my library, it's going to make 50 different artists and albums, right? So how do I make it now do that, and stay as one grouping?

Modify the id3 tags; Album, Genre, however you like. Or just use a Playlist.

 

[zone23]

Honestly I don't see the benefit of sorting your music yourself by genre doesn't it make albums hard to find sometimes? iTunes will sort them by artist \ album then the player will allow you to list your music it different ways by artist, album, songs and of course genre. Even on android if you buy an album and rip it you have to go and organize it yourself. Even windows doesn't rip albums the way you like. The only thing your missing is organizing your music manually and why bother?

 

[zone23]

So if I have a folder of "Favorite Metal Songs" and I import that into my library, it's going to make 50 different artists and albums, right? So how do I make it now do that, and stay as one grouping?

I would then create a playlist called "Favorite Metal Songs" and add those songs to it. Sounds like a pain but when your done its easy to add and remove tracks.

 

[Applejuiced]

You're old school

 

[theLemur]

I would then create a playlist called "Favorite Metal Songs" and add those songs too it. Sounds like a pain but when your done its easy to add and remove tracks.

Ok ill give that a shot