1 song on multiple albums = Space Waster?

[OzDog]

Please choose the appropriate forum for this topic. Thank you. Hey All,

Wondering about everyone's best solutions for my only iPod gripe. Actually it's more about MP3 than iPod.

Let me explain the scenario:
You buy 2 albums at the music store. One is by your current favourite artist, and the other is a compilation album. The compilation quite possibly features a track that's on the other CD you bought, or another you already own.

So, you have 2 choices:
1. Rip both CDs in full, storing some songs more than once, using all that extra space, or
2. Manually make up playlists for each albums that use a single version of the song.

Neither is ideal. Currently, I am using option 1, and with a very full 40Gb player (I have over 60Gb of MP3s in total) I am unable to include some music.

What I would like to see (and it's probably a pipedream) is a way to store multiple album names linked to multiple track numbers for each MP3, so that the track would appear under the artist's album as well as the compilation album.

Does that make sense? Anyone agree/disagree/have a better way?

Cheers,
Dog

[MikeM]

I've pretty much given up listening to albums, especially with the iPod. So for me, the decision its easy: delete dupes. I still listen to albums, but that's at home with my CD player. The iPod I treat as my own personal radio station and leave it on shuffle at all times.

Since you like to have intact albums, you have no choice but to do what you are doing now with the duplicate songs.

I think the chances of seeing multiple album [especially with the track number issue] fields is slim to none. I would expect to see multiple genre selections before that.

[honeybee1236]

What I do is simply import only one version of the song. If the other version is a remix by the same artist then I will import both and label one 'orig' and the other 'remx'. I like to only put the songs that I like and listen to on my iPod, so this is not a problem for me. I only have full albums if I like the album, so I don't have a lot of full albums. I also have a separate compilation playlist and the other playlist are 'mood' playlist. My method works great for me.

So to answer your question, I disagree, only because if seems like just a way to take up a lot of disk space and I don't want that.

My main thing is to just have only the songs that I like on my iPod and that's it. The rest are books, text notes, contacts, appointments, pictures, etc. I need my drive space for other things more important than 2 copies of the same exact song. It's a waste of space to me.

[MOCKBA]

Generally, you can refer the same song file from multiple locations. So there is no any space wasting. However, I do not know any software capable to do that, although it's very simple to implement.

[OzDog]

Gentlemen,

Yes, I love listening to my full albums, and at the moment, I am happy to sacrifice the space for this reason. However, it occurred to me the other day that as the iPod uses tags for it's data, it would make my world a better place if this were possible. I would also love to see multiple genres in tags.

I believe that multiple albums (and associated track numbers) would be just as easy to implement as multiple genres. MikeM - why do you say "[especially with the track number issue]"? It's not hard to do.

I'm not a programmer (anymore - still in IT), but it's not rocket science. That said, I probably couldn't do it!! ;)