View Full Version : Cloning songs?
Sorry if this problem has been posted before; I didn't see anything about it on these forums or this site.
Anyway, the way I listen to albums on my iPod is to create them all as playlists, via MusicMatch, and then sync them onto my iPod. I'd have the songs from the album in a subdirectory off the main folder, where all my music is located (here's an example: "C:/My Shared Folder" is where most of my music is, but all albums will be in subdirectories such as "C:/My Shared Folder/Pink Floyd/The Wall"). This works for the most part, but recently I started getting this strange problem.
Some of my music files were repeating themselves. One day I noticed I had two "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"s on my iPod. They were both exactly the same. I checked out my MusicMatch library, but there was only one copy of the song. So I just deleted it off the iPod, and everything was good.
However, the other day I noticed that all of the Zeppelin songs out of a certain folder had cloned themself. I know I don't have two of every Zeppelin song. As I looked through more artists on my iPod, I also noticed the entire Rent soundtrack had cloned itself.
So the coincidences between all these are that:
1) They all cloned themself
2) All appear twice on my iPod but only once in my MusicMatch library.
3) All songs that cloned were included in various playlists, and were located in subdirectories off my main music folder.
Just some info as to the software/hardware I am using:
Windows XP Home Edition
Firewire card
MusicMatch 7.5ish
15 GB second generation iPod
If anyone can help me with this problem, it would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance, and happy holidays.
ashawley
12-21-2003, 01:34 PM
OK a couple of problems here:
1. I'll start off w/a question: why do you make playlists for your Albums? The iPod already will do this for you automatically. Just click Browse>Artists> select and Artist and you'll see their Albums? Just wondering why you're going through all that trouble making playlists.
2. Get off of MMJB. It has a terrible tagging bug that will put extra spaces in your tags. This doesn't show up on MMJB because it ignores these spaces, but the iPod doesn't. So, it will show "The Beatles" and "The Beatles " as two different artists (but you will think it just repeated "The Beatles". Not to mention it's IMO the worst iPod syncing program available.
3. Get iTunes import your tunes and start syncing with that. You'll get a number of features you don't have today (smartlists, ratings, playcounts, last played) so why not take advantage of it.
Adam
Originally posted by ashawley
OK a couple of problems here:
1. I'll start off w/a question: why do you make playlists for your Albums? The iPod already will do this for you automatically. Just click Browse>Artists> select and Artist and you'll see their Albums? Just wondering why you're going through all that trouble making playlists.
2. Get off of MMJB. It has a terrible tagging bug that will put extra spaces in your tags. This doesn't show up on MMJB because it ignores these spaces, but the iPod doesn't. So, it will show "The Beatles" and "The Beatles " as two different artists (but you will think it just repeated "The Beatles". Not to mention it's IMO the worst iPod syncing program available.
3. Get iTunes import your tunes and start syncing with that. You'll get a number of features you don't have today (smartlists, ratings, playcounts, last played) so why not take advantage of it.
Adam
1.) I know of the Albums feature, but I make them as playlists so they will play in the correct order. I didn't think there was a way to order songs using the Albums feature, but I may be wrong.
2.) Whilst I know many people don't like MusicMatch, I do. I understand the thing about adding spaces, but this isn't the problem I'm having. I'm saying it's making a copy of a song already on the iPod. If I delete one of the two songs off the iPod, then sync again, there will still only be one song, but this takes a lot of work, and I shouldn't really even have to be in this situation. I'm not having a problem with numerous artists, as all my songs are tagged properly (I'm kind of a perfectionist in this regard).
3.) As I said above, I like MusicMatch. I think it has a good library, and I really like the online radio feature it has. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with iTunes, but I have heard that you cannot have both installed; only one or the other. Perhaps I'll try this program, but only if my struggles continue.
Thanks for the help, and I appreciate your advice, but if anyone could be of any further assistance, I would be quite grateful.
Norman
12-22-2003, 10:21 PM
When you synch, do you check the box to allow/disallow deletion of tracks on the iPod that do not appear in the MMJB library? If it only exists once on MMJB, I would have though it would delete the clone next time you synch.
You can have iTunes and MMJB installed, you just can no longert synch with MMJB once iTunes installs.
But I use MC9 - best of the lot
Originally posted by Norman
When you synch, do you check the box to allow/disallow deletion of tracks on the iPod that do not appear in the MMJB library? If it only exists once on MMJB, I would have though it would delete the clone next time you synch.
You can have iTunes and MMJB installed, you just can no longert synch with MMJB once iTunes installs.
But I use MC9 - best of the lot
I'll check to see if I have this option checked or unchecked, but I think it is checked, as I've deleted songs off MusicMatch before, and it's deleted off the iPod too.
Maybe I will resort to using iTunes for syncing. We'll see.
What exactly is MC9?
ashawley
12-23-2003, 01:12 AM
iTunes also has a Radio Feature so you're really not out anything there.
Plus you'll get a number of features you don't have. Like SmartPlaylists.
The syncing problem you're having is an MMJB issue. iTunes will resolve that.
Regarding the Album sorting. Of course you can sort, the songs are sorted based off of the track number tag. As long as those are correct, the songs will sorted the way they should be.
Adam
Originally posted by ashawley
iTunes also has a Radio Feature so you're really not out anything there.
Plus you'll get a number of features you don't have. Like SmartPlaylists.
The syncing problem you're having is an MMJB issue. iTunes will resolve that.
Regarding the Album sorting. Of course you can sort, the songs are sorted based off of the track number tag. As long as those are correct, the songs will sorted the way they should be.
Adam
Alright, great. Thanks for all the info. You've convinced me to try iTunes. Hopefully it will solve my problems. :)