Arranging songs on an mp3 player

[Big Al]

I've got a Sandisk 512MB player. I'm trying to load a couple of Bill Evans albums onto it. During playback, I notice that instead of playing the songs in album-order, it plays the songs in numerical order (i.e. Track 1 of the first album; track 1 of the second album; so on and so forth).

I've tried saving the tracks on a Playlist thru both RealPlayer and MusicMatch (don't get me started on that useless waste of computer memory), but the end result is still the same: the songs are still played in numerical order.

Does anyone know how to remedy this?

Thanks in advance.

[Jim Alfredson]

Can you create folders?

[vibes]

Al, does your player look like this?

If so, you've got the same player as me. What you need to do is make individual folders for your albums, then make sure that you have the filenames and ID3 tags correctly numbered. You can make these folders and file edits on your PC and then copy them over to the player, or you can make them right on the player, since it acts as an external hard drive when connected to your PC.

[Big Al]

Yup, that’s the one. And yes, I can create folders on the player itself, which is very nice.

In this particular case, I was trying to take two Evans albums and arrange the songs in a particular order. I finally figured out how to do this: create the folder on the player, and the just copy the songs to the player one at a time, in the order I want to hear them.

BTW, how do I get the filenames and ID3 tags correctly numbered? Maybe if I knew that, then I could copy the files over all at one time.

Whatever, though; this sure beats the old days of having to wait 45 minutes to make a tape for my Walkman to eat up!

[Claude]

I don't know that player, but most MP3 players play the songs within a folder in alphabetical order.

The worldwide "standard" to name mp3 files is

01 Trackname 1.mp3

02 Trackname 2.mp3

.

.

which solves the track order problem. Most MP3 creator software allow to generate filenames like this when ripping the CD. There are also many mass-renaming programs that do the trick, by using the data within the ID tags (if they exist) to rename the files.

Using playlists is more complicated, and generally only used to play tracks in an order that differs from the order on CD.

[vibes]

ID3 tags may be edited in Windows XP by right-clicking on the file, going to "properties," and then the advanced summary view. You can also edit them in many music programs, such as Winamp.

[Tjazz]

I think you can organize your mp3 tracks with itunes software.

Just download it for free. Make folders like suggested.

[Claude]

ID3 tags may be edited in Windows XP by right-clicking on the file, going to "properties," and then the advanced summary view.  You can also edit them in many music programs, such as Winamp.

←

Yes, but MP3 player software only allows to edit tags file by file, while dedicated tagging software is much more comfortable because it allows to edit all the common tag fields of many files at once.

[neveronfriday]

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

Excellent tagging programme.

[vibes]

ID3 tags may be edited in Windows XP by right-clicking on the file, going to "properties," and then the advanced summary view.  You can also edit them in many music programs, such as Winamp.

←

Yes, but MP3 player software only allows to edit tags file by file, while dedicated tagging software is much more comfortable because it allows to edit all the common tag fields of many files at once.

←

This is true. You can edit many fields at once in XP, too, as long as all your files are in the same folder.

[Big Al]

This is why I come here instead of doing a Google search! I'll try those organizing softwares you guys mentioned.

Thanks again!