how to delete songs from my ipod

Fantastic explanations, thank you. I have printed it out for future reference in case I forget. Why does Apple make everything so hard?!

I kept getting error messages when I tried to sync my ipod. All the message said was that I didn't have enough space on the ipod. After hours of trying to figure this out, I finally determined that the real problem is that my itunes library is too big to fit all of it onto the ipod.

The solution here is to check the itunes option to "sync only checked songs and videos" (although in my case it is checked audiobooks).

If you don't have that checked (and unchecked appears to be the default), the sync process tries to dump your entire library to the ipod and if there isn't enough room to do that it gives you this message that says it cannot sync because there is not enough memory space. You are left with the impression that the problem is that it won't sync because your ipod is too full and so you keep trying to remove things from your ipod, to no avail (mainly because the only way to do so is to sync!). But the actual point of that message is that your itunes library is too big for your ipod. If Apple had simply used some common sense when wording that error message, it would have said something like "your library is too big to fit on your ipod - either increase the ipod's memory or uncheck the items you don't want copied to the ipod. To do this, check the 'sync only checked songs and videos' option, then uncheck items you don't want to move to your ipod and try again". Had Apple done this it would have saved me a lot of wasted time and energy.

It's explained here:

https://www.imobie.com/support/how-to-delete-songs-from-ipod.htm