iPod iTune names

[Howard Brazee]

Why is it some CDs that I rip with iTunes go into subdirectories from Compilations, and others get spread around by singer?

And why do some MP3 files get named with the song, and others get named with a 4 letter code?

Renaming isn't difficult - but it is interesting that when I rename all of the songs on an album, iTunes starts looking for the renamed song from a directory from a previous action - and I have to drill up and then down to the directory with the renamed .mp3 file.

 

[SilentPanda]

Why is it some CDs that I rip with iTunes go into subdirectories from Compilations, and others get spread around by singer?

Because they are marked as compilations where iTunes pulls the data from. You can move or remove them from that directory by checking or unchecking that box on the songs.

As for your other questions... dunno. I never look at my Music folder. I obsessed about it in the WinAmp days but haven't looked at it a bit since iTunes came about.

Are you using Windows or a Mac? Possibly the characters in the song name or artist name aren't valid for your file system? Can you give us some example songs? Sometimes that helps.

 

[Howard Brazee]

Because they are marked as compilations where iTunes pulls the data from. You can move or remove them from that directory by checking or unchecking that box on the songs.

I never quite figured what "compilation" did for me - I see it moves original songs around. I'll have to experiment unchecking them and see if they move. I'm trying to clear up space by getting rid of duplicates that aren't seen by iTunes. And I have a lot of them.

As for your other questions... dunno. I never look at my Music folder. I obsessed about it in the WinAmp days but haven't looked at it a bit since iTunes came about.

Are you using Windows or a Mac? Possibly the characters in the song name or artist name aren't valid for your file system? Can you give us some example songs? Sometimes that helps.

Both.

If I click on CVAK.m4a, iTunes loads "I Concentrate On You".

 

[killmoms]

"Compilation" is useful for exactly what it sounds like: CDs that are compilations of songs by many different artists. It lets you put the individual artist in the Artist field for each track but still keep all the album's files together in one place. By default, a track with a given artist name goes in that artist's folder. If you have a whole CD of tracks like this, that CDs contents will be split up over a bunch of different artists' folders on your hard drive. By checking "compilation" for that album's tracks, you move all those files together into one album folder under a "Compilations" folder.

As for why some CDs you rip do that and some don't, I'd imagine it has to do with how iTunes gets info from CDDB. If they're not marked as compilations there, iTunes won't put that flag on by default. But it's easy enough to fix. Just go to an album, select all of its tracks, do Get Info, and change "Mark as Compilation" to "Yes."