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User profile for user: John Mcalister1
John Mcalister1 Author
User level: Level 1
15 points

iPod Classic and Catalina

I have a perfectly good iPod Classic that I had not used in some time because I have an iPhone and played my music from it. Today I was working again in my shop where I have always used my iPod Classic to play music through an amplifier. I had not updated the music on the device for some time so I decided to do that. I recently updated my MacBook Pro to Catalina. I have sync'ed my iPhone successfully using the new Finder scheme. Unfortunately, that is not working for my iPod.


I did as others have suggested and "Restored" my iPod to factory settings. That seemed to work. However, nothing I do can seem to cause a sync to the iPod. There are no entries in the list for music at all in the Finder pane but I assumed that would be filled in as the Sync progressed. I selected Apply and then Sync. Initially, the iPod shows the sync rotating arrows but then quickly (10 seconds) stops. It appears that it cannot locate any music.


After enduring this behavior for some time, I again went through the Restore process. Same result.


What is going on? Has anyone got any answers?

Posted on Jan 13, 2020 7:27 PM

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User profile for user: turingtest2
turingtest2
User level: Level 10
274,982 points

Posted on Jan 15, 2020 7:23 PM

I don't know why Apple didn't do a better job of moving artwork from iTunes to Music.


If iTunes/Music shows multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Get Info to add say a trailing X to each of the fields that the tracks should have in common:

  • For an album; Album, Album Artist, and Artist (if artist is the same for all tracks) *
  • For an artist; Album Artist (and Artist unless there are guest/featured artists listed which should not be changed)

Apply the change which merges things together, then remove the excess characters. Occasionally it may help to close and reopen iTunes between the two renaming operations. Part of a compilation should also be set consistently.


* If tracks are to be synced to a non-iOS device there should be a common Artist and/or the album should be set as a Compilation.



Use the songs view and display the fields Album, Sort Album, Album Artist, Sort Album Artist, Artist and Sort Artist side by side so you see whether or not it is appropriate to edit Artist and if sort values could be causing any further problems. See Grouping tracks into albums for more help if required.



One further tip for really stubborn duplicates. At one point I had three lots of Various Artists in the artists view of my library that wouldn't respond to the usual trailing X treatment. What I found worked was to add the trailing X to start with, but then with each group that iTunes wanted to keep separate start typing a value and let iTunes autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.



tt2

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User profile for user: turingtest2
turingtest2
User level: Level 10
274,982 points

Jan 15, 2020 7:23 PM in response to John Mcalister1

I don't know why Apple didn't do a better job of moving artwork from iTunes to Music.


If iTunes/Music shows multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Get Info to add say a trailing X to each of the fields that the tracks should have in common:

  • For an album; Album, Album Artist, and Artist (if artist is the same for all tracks) *
  • For an artist; Album Artist (and Artist unless there are guest/featured artists listed which should not be changed)

Apply the change which merges things together, then remove the excess characters. Occasionally it may help to close and reopen iTunes between the two renaming operations. Part of a compilation should also be set consistently.


* If tracks are to be synced to a non-iOS device there should be a common Artist and/or the album should be set as a Compilation.



Use the songs view and display the fields Album, Sort Album, Album Artist, Sort Album Artist, Artist and Sort Artist side by side so you see whether or not it is appropriate to edit Artist and if sort values could be causing any further problems. See Grouping tracks into albums for more help if required.



One further tip for really stubborn duplicates. At one point I had three lots of Various Artists in the artists view of my library that wouldn't respond to the usual trailing X treatment. What I found worked was to add the trailing X to start with, but then with each group that iTunes wanted to keep separate start typing a value and let iTunes autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.



tt2

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User profile for user: John Mcalister1
John Mcalister1 Author
User level: Level 1
15 points

Jan 15, 2020 4:12 PM in response to turingtest2

I have to admit that I made a mistake that led to this outcome. I assumed that the music from the iTunes library had been automatically converted to the new Music app when I installed Catalina. That was certainly true of the podcasts that had automatically been converted and were being managed by the Podcast app. After filing this request for help, I discovered that the problem was that the iTunes music had not been converted and added to the Music app. That explains why the sync to the iPod Classic was failing. I had not noticed this because I normally access my music on an everyday basis on my iPhone.


I converted the music from iTunes and it is now in the Music app. That solved the immediate problem that I posted.


In the process, I discovered a different concern. All my music in iTunes had cover art that I had carefully curated over the many years that I have been using iTunes. Unfortunately, many of the imported albums did not receive the cover art from iTunes. Another matter that arose that I cannot understand nor fix is that two of the albums (out of 500) were split into two and three albums. Looking at the individual song entries, I cannot find anything that would lead to this split.


I thank you for your attention to my post and apologize for posting in error.

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iPod Classic and Catalina

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