Album not appearing in iTunes!

Question

Level 1

10 points

Album not appearing in iTunes!

I am a new user of an IPad and using it with iTunes. I have a good selection of purcahsed via iTunes music and that's all downloaded fine. I also have been ripping some of my purchased CDs using iTunes and in the main this works great. I have some audio tape cassettes of music. I have input this via Audacity into mp3 tracks. But I converted these to MP4 and put them in a folder of the Artists name and under that a folder of the album name. I then put the artist folder into the My Music/iTunes folder. But it doesn't appear in the list of artists on the iTunes for my IPad. So normally I tick this, say apply and then sync and the music is transferred to the IPad. Is there some way to tell iTunes to sync with the PC in the folder iTunes in My Music that appears to be where it puts all the music for iTunes/IPad etc...

iPad 2, Windows 7

Posted on Mar 27, 2014 3:15 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Mar 27, 2014 6:58 AM in response to moriarty7

Um, I'm trying to understand you clearly, sorry if I misunderstood you.

Right...

Music on CDs is in digital form and have data on them. They tend to have some small data on them that tells any machines, be it portable CD players, Hi-Fi, car CD players, computers, etc., what is the album called, who is the artist, how long is the track, and so on. That's how those LCD displays list track numbers or how long it is or whatever.

When you rip your CDs in your computer, via iTunes or any other software, it is my understanding that those tend to go online and connect to some big database that contents all the details about CDs sold in shops, your software reads some kind of catalogue number off the CD and compare it to the database, and download information about the CD.

This big database is called Graceland or something. You could check it out on Wikipedia for some more details.

However when it comes to audio tapes, the music on them are in analogue form, when you imput those music into your computer via Audacity or whatever you got, and converte them into MP3 or MP4 form, whatever you do, there is no way for those software to know any details about the music on the tapes. There is no data files for the computer to send via Internet to Graceland or similar to get a full list of artist, album title, track titles, running time, album art, etc.

It is somewhat similar to say...

A digital camera will tag the photo with a small file that contents date, time, etc., so your computer will know when it was taken. That's your CD and ripping.

But a film camera only captures the picture only. You are the one who knows when it was taken, so you are the one who have to write down the date and time on the back of the photo yourself. That is you and your audio tape.

So go to any of the tracks you have on iTunes, right click to bring up a sub-menu, click on 'Get Info' to bring up a box, then you would have to type in manually the name of artist in the boxes. You have to tell iTunes who this track belongs to, otherwise iTunes would assume it is unknown artist.

Hope this helps?

Reply

Answer 2

moriarty7 Author

Level 1

10 points

Mar 27, 2014 9:54 AM in response to Major Eazy

Ok I do realise that the tape file has no details. So using Audacity I added Album title, Artist and Track titles to the MP3 files. (Couldn't quite get the FFmeg add on to work to go straight to MP4a)! Then I used an Audio Convertor to convert to MPEG4. The I put these in an Artist name folder/with Album folder below. Used the Add Folder from iTunes. Then the artist appeared in the list of artists against my IPad. So ticked the artist, applied Apply and Sync and the 'ripped' cassette tape tracks appear on my IPad. At this stage no Album art work. Maybe I will work that out later. Plus getting Audacity to use the plug in that produces M4a etc... But eh I am new to Apple/IPad all that jazz! I'm really an ex UNIX and network engineer.

One problem I still have is that when I first installed iTunes it looked all over my PC and added all the Artists/Albums/tracks it could find. Many of these were MP3 ripped stuff. It list all these as potentials under my IPad but some of them are no longer on my PC as I cleared them all out. I am now slowly ripping my CDs via iTunes. AND if I have any cassette audio tracks I will now add the artist/album/track tags etc... Isn't technology fun! But thanks for your input. But I will welcome any more feedback up on cleaning up my pseudo library from olden times.

Reply

Answer 3

Mar 29, 2014 7:19 AM in response to moriarty7

You do not have to expect iTunes to get album artwork for you, all automatically.

If iTunes could not supply the album art, you can go on the Internet, use Google or whatever, and find an album art yourself, or scan your tapes album art, just copy it or save the image file.

Right click on any of the tracks, click on 'Get Info', click on the 'Artwork' tab, then click on the 'Add...' button and do the usual open whatever folders you want, and click on whatever image files you have, or just paste in the empty box.

Reply