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General discussion

iTunes library updating; Forgive my stupidity

Jul 29, 2010 1:47AM PDT

I have not been able to find a REAL answer for this, but I may be searching wrong. I just got an iPhone, and have never owned a piece of Mac/Apple hardware before. I have also never used iTunes before. I have a media server I use in my home to allow access to my assorted media from hardware such as my PS3 and desktop and whatnot.

I really don't want to install iTunes on my server (not sure if it will even run on Server 2003), so what I do (since I can't open the phone as a drive like my Win Mobile phone) is transfer music I want to put on my iPhone to a folder on my PC to put in iTunes to transfer to my phone. Problem is that I cannot get anything new into the library except what was imported when I installed iTunes. When I search on this issue, I get a bunch of sites advertising software to auto update the library. I don't care if it auto updates. I already have steps I have to take to import new music. I really wish I could just treat the phone like a drive and drop my music on it, but that apparently won't work. I also don't want to buy my music through iTunes because then I couldn't use it over the rest of my network without heavy modification to my systems.

Discussion is locked

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What happens
Jul 29, 2010 8:58AM PDT

when you "import to library"

Some form of error message?


P

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No option
Aug 4, 2010 7:21AM PDT

I don't have any option to import mp3s. I can import CDs, but that is it. THis is getting really frustrating because I can't put any new music on my phone, and that is one of the reasons I bought the thing.

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If you have the...
Aug 4, 2010 7:53AM PDT

MP3's on your computer with iTunes, open iTunes, click on "Music", then "File", then "Add file to library", go to folder with the MP3's and add the files you want.
When done, sync iPhone and your music should be on there.

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Import/Add to Library
Aug 4, 2010 9:50AM PDT

got moved around during iTunes updates.

Try the above suggestion

Did you mention anything about drag and drop into the iTunes Library?
Have you tried that?
Just dragging the track from its location onto the open iTunes library window


P

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Dragging doesn't work...
Aug 4, 2010 10:05AM PDT

On my Win 7, must be added using the above method.

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(NT) OK, At least you have a method now
Aug 4, 2010 10:03PM PDT
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That works...Sort of
Aug 4, 2010 10:28PM PDT

That does work to an extent. I am having an issue with adding certain albums. I organize my music by artist and album, so albums are in a the artist folder, songs in the album folder and so on.

One of the artists I am adding is giving me fits. First, I dropped the folder, and it only added one album (of 3). I looked in the folder I had the songs in, and they were gone! So, I copied the folder again, and made sure the songs were there, dragged into iTunes, and they disappeared again. I went in and disabled "auto sorting" of files and tried again. Now the files stay put, but they refuse to be added to the library.

What the heck am I doing wrong?

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When adding songs...
Aug 5, 2010 12:10AM PDT

To albums, in my experience, all songs must be are added to "Music" first. Then, make the different albums in iTunes by making a new "Playlists" folder: File; New Playlist Folder, and name it.
Drag the preferred songs from "Music" to the new "Playlist". This only copies the files to the albums and does not remove them from "Music".

Connect you iPhone to the computer and check the "Music" tab to have it sync your desired "Playlists" (albums) and music.

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That is correct.
Aug 5, 2010 8:45AM PDT

The "music" section is the sum of all the music that iTunes is handling. It can be sorted in all sorts of different ways by clicking on the column headers.
Even though you have your music externally sorted into playlists, iTunes does not function like that. The iTunes library is the database that holds everything.
Smart Playlists, or just plain playlists, are what is used to sort your collection into playlists.
Smart Albums are the easier, and quicker, way of establishing order. Create a new Smart playlist, adjust the criterea, for example; the name of an album or a particular artist, and in an instant the playlist contains exactly what you asked for.

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Smart playlists...
Aug 5, 2010 9:02AM PDT

Are very useful. However, I might pull one song from one album, two songs from another album, etc., and put them in a favorite "playlist".
An album might have two songs on it I like so I don't want to take up space for songs I won't listen to.

You're right about the external playlists or files. Whatever is set up in iTunes program is all you're going to get on the iPhone.

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In that case,
Aug 5, 2010 10:05PM PDT

you would create a "normal" playlist and just drag whatever you wanted to listen to, into that playlist.

P

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HA! Figured it out!
Aug 5, 2010 10:16PM PDT

What happened was for the albums that were not being added correctly, the MP3s did not have artist or album info in the ID3 tags. I updated them with that info, added them to the library, and they were added correctly.

I should have thought to check that, but the program I use to MP3-ify my CDs usually pulls that info automatically from the online DB, but that info was not in the DB (???) and therefore did not end up being added to the ID3 tags.

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Oops, forgot to add...
Aug 5, 2010 10:18PM PDT

The songs were being added to the library, but since they were missing the ID3 info, they were added as unknown. So they were sunk to the very bottom of the list since I was in album view.

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(NT) Oh happy day!
Aug 6, 2010 2:21AM PDT