iPod App Question

[TechJunky]

Is there anyway to have shuffle on, turn it off while its playing something, and have it go to the next song on the album? Then turn it back on and it continues to shuffle all songs?

I've tried several ways to list all the songs in alphabetical order by artist's name. Maybe I'm missing it... TIA.

 

[hazza.jockel]

umm... not sure what you mean but when you are playing a song touch the screen so the time bar comes up. On the left there will be two arrows criss crossing. If you touch that it will toggle shuffle on and off. Not sure if that answers your questions?

 

[TechJunky]

Yeh, I've got the shuffle button...

Please excuse the reference, but on Media Player, when you list all songs, it sorts them by artists, with every song listed under every album. So when you shuffle, you are shuffling all songs, but when you turn off shuffle, it plays the next song on the album. I really enjoyed the feature because sometimes shuffle will hit an old band I forgot about, and I'll want to hear another track from them, but then can just start shuffling again.

It seems on the ipod, it can only sort all songs alphabetically by song title. So turning off shuffle, just goes to the next alphabetical song.

Sorry for the lame question, but this is my first

 

[Eso]

In iTunes, bring up the playlist you use for "all songs" as you say. Click on the album column and you will see it cycle through three different ways of sorting by album - alphabetically by album name, alphabetically by artist then by album, or alphabetically by artist then by year released. Choose either of the second two options to keep all the songs by each artist together on your playlist.

Sync the playlist to your iPhone and play it with the iPod. It will work the way you want. Just remember that the iPod will remember what "playlist" you have queued and will only shuffle/advance for that playlist. For example, if instead of using your playlist, you went to coverflow and chose an album, listened to a few songs, then tried to shuffle, it will only shuffle through the songs on that album.

FWIW, I was new to iTunes when I first got my iPhone too, and I just hated it. I've generally got it working now, however, and it's actually pretty good. Smart playlists are very powerful, so I suggest playing around with them a bit.

 

[TechJunky]

Awesome! Thanks for the help!

I have not created any playlists yet, I have just been syncing albums and songs directly...and it's worked fine. So from what I gather, once I create a playlist, I will be able to sort it differently in itunes, and then when I sync it to the phone, it will remember the playlist settings. I'll give this a shot...