Song order in flashdrive

Question

Level 1

14 points

Song order in flashdrive

I have an IMac, the latest version of OSX Mountain Lion and the latest version of ITunes. I also have a 64GB SanDisk Cruzer flashdrive.

I copied or transferred all my ITunes songs from my IMac Hard Drive to my SanDisk flashdrive a few weeks ago. The songs copied to my flashdrive were organized in the flashdrive by the artist (singer), in alphabetical order, which is what I want. They all show the name of the singer or artist.

However, in the last week or so I have added more ITunes songs a few times to the flashdrive. These songs that I recently added to the flashdrive are not in order of artist. They show up at the top of the list in the flashdrive, but only show the title of the song. They do not show the name of the artist. I would like them to be organized by artist, and in alphabetical order, as the earlier songs I sent to the flashdrive were. Any suggestions? Any explanation as to why the more recent copies are showing up differently?

Posted on Apr 12, 2013 12:01 PM

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Answer 1

janneh71

Level 1

4 points

Mar 17, 2017 3:25 AM in response to J Soren

no didnt help me

I don't want to manually go and put a new folder for each artist. I want it copied as it is in my playlist and I can choose to listen to the songs via alphabetical artist with only one folder being that of this particular playlist. If i was copying whole albums or lots of songs by the same artist i can see how the above info could work even if tedious but surely this is a problem others have fixed without manually doing all the work

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Answer 2

Henry R Author

Level 1

14 points

Apr 12, 2013 12:24 PM in response to Henry R

I should add something else. Almost all the songs I recently added, when viewed in the Flash Drive, show a number in front of the song title, such as 03 or 05.

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Answer 3

J Soren

Level 1

120 points

Apr 12, 2013 1:48 PM in response to Henry R

Henry,

So your music is all nicely organized on your USB drive, then you add a few individual items (e.g. new songs you purchased on iTunes) and they show up at the top as opposed to in the artist folder to which they should belong?

The file system on your USB drive - presumably formatted HFS/HFS+ - has no way of knowing how you want your data organized when you simply drag and drop songs to the icon in Finder.

The rather tedious way of solving this problem would be to drop the newly purchsed tracks into the artist folders to which they belong on your flash drive. Once there, you can change the file name to remove the numbers. If you are looking for an immediate way to back-up your music, that's how you'd do it and maintain your system of organization.

Alternately, if you don't need to back-up immediately, you could do it periodically. You could copy your whole music library back to the USB drive, though having never attempted this, I'm not sure you wouldn't have to click through a lot of 'duplicate file' messages. Easiest way would be to simply erase all data from the USB drive and copy your library over again.

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Answer 4

Henry R Author

Level 1

14 points

Apr 12, 2013 2:24 PM in response to J Soren

Thanks. I may try your first method, the tedious method. Othewise I would have to delete my entire flashdrive periodically and re-transfer all the songs again, which sounds time consuming.

I had a question about the first method, which is dropping the newer songs into the artist folder to which they belong in the flash drive. Some of these songs belong to artists which are not yet in my flashdrive. So how would I enter those songs using your first method?

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Answer 5

Henry R Author

Level 1

14 points

Apr 12, 2013 2:59 PM in response to Henry R

I just found out how. Go into the song title on the flashdrive and type in the name of the singer. It then creates a folder under the singer's name.

The only problem is when you click on this new folder nothing happens. It doesn't open up and show the list of songs in the folder. The other folders will open up and show the names of the songs in the folder, even if it's only one song, but this does not. I think what is happening is it is showing it as a song but not as a folder. Looking further down the list I saw some with artists names but they were not folders, just songs. They showed the icon for a song but not for a folder. So maybe there is a better way to do this.

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Answer 6

Henry R Author

Level 1

14 points

Apr 12, 2013 3:23 PM in response to Henry R

I guess my question is how do I create a folder in the Flash Drive. I can then name it after the artist.

This would work for any singers that I do not have folders for at the moment.

Typing in the artist's name in place of the name of the song, which I wrote about in my previous post, does not work. The reason is that it will not be a folder, just a song. Those songs had the music icon, not the folder icon, next to it.

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