[HellFish]

Someone posted here a while back of changing the Genre tag of all your songs in Itunes to the letter that the particular band starts with. This allows you to easily search through all your songs using Idrive. I was not ready to do this because I sort everything on my PC by Genre so this is what I did.

I made the "composer" tag of every song the actual Genre, and sorted all my songs by "composer"... This keeps the exact same order, but allows you to change Genre to the letter so you can search easier.

I am exhausted right now and feel like what I just typed made no sense so if you can't don't get it I will clarify tomorrow lol

[Bimmerforlife]

Yeah can you explain that again I also remember someone writing something about genre and be sure that you have your genre filled in for the 6FL.

My genre auto fills in each time I burn a CD to my iPod so what else do I need to do? confused.

[HellFish]

ok sorry lol I typed that last night in about 30 seconds.

When using the 6FL option with Idrive, you are able to search via Arist, Genre, Playlist, Song, and Album.

Searching by Artist obviously takes forever to get where you want to go. If you notice, go to Genre on your ipod screen and then select one (Aternative for example). Once you select a Genre, you will see all of the artists in that genre.

The overall goal is to change the genre in Itunes to match the first letter of the artist. So for example, you change the genre of all your artists that start with A to A.

Okay now this is how I did it. Open Itunes and go to "edit" at the top and click on "View Options" at the bottom of the pull down list. Check the box that says "Composer" in the far left column near the bottom and click ok

Now, click on the Genre tab to organize all of your music according to their specific Genre. It should start with something like Alternative and go down from there. click on the first song, and then scroll down to the last song with that specific genre. With the first song clicked, hold down SHIFT and click on the last song. It will highlight all of the songs in between. Now right click in the highlighted space and select "Get Info" and click yes when asked if you want to edit multiple songs. Now look at the Composer box. It should be empty. Simply type the Genre into that box. Once you are done, your Genre tab should be the exact same as the Composer tab.

Once you have copied all of your genres into the composer tab, you are ready for the final step. Now, organize all of your music alphabetically by artist name by clicking on the artist tab in itunes. Highlight all of the bands starting with numbers and change their genre to "#" and then A for bands that start with A etc..." You do this the exact same way as listed above, shift highlighting all of the songs and right clicking and selecting "Get Info".



Once you are done, sync your ipod and plug it into your car. Now go to Genre on the idrive screen and you should see all of your letters, #-z. Select a random letter and it should display all of the artists that start with it.

I hope this helps guys, please let me know if I was unclear on any part.

P.S. Yes when you burn a CD it will autofill your genre, but you will have to go back and change it in the way described above. It kind of makes it a hassle to add new music, but what can ya do ;-)

[Bimmerforlife]

So for the 6FL option with iDrive, is it that much quicker to search doing it this way. So searching using artist, song or album is it really that slow? I have not had a chance to witness how the 6FL option really works yet but I am hoping it will be quick to search between artists or albums to listen to what I want when I want to. Your way sounds like a good idea because without doing it your way the basic genre field in itself is kinda useless to me, why would I want to search for pop, rock, blues, country when I can easily just search by artist or album. How much quicker is it searching doing it this way?

[HellFish]

My 30 gig ipod is almost full and its impossible to search without doing it this way. I turn the wheel for a good 2 minutes just to get to the letter C doing it the old way. You will see when you get it.

[Daya]

awesome - I think I will do this as well

thanks

[Reize]

It does appear that we've had a number of positive replies to using this method (BimmerForLife's artwork issue notwithstanding) and people seem to like it.

I'm glad it's been recieved positively and HellFish's instructions are much more comprehensive than my original ones.

Maybe this thread could be made sticky to keep it at the top for other to find easily.

Thanks everyone who continues to contribute to make it easier to use the 6FL and maybe Lyndon_h can attach his application to this thread too to keep it all together.

[HellFish]

I have encountered a small hickup with doing it this way. It still works smoothly with the 6FL option, but within Itunes when you sort things by "genre" or really by composer, it then sorts everything within each "genre" by album alphabetically. So basically you don't have all your bands in the same place because all of the album names are different. Kind of annoying but worth the price in my opinion.

[HellFish]

And yes I think it would be nice to make this a sticky. I think it would not only help people but hopefully someone will find a better way by reading this. Mods please consider!

[Reize]

Hey HellFish,

I've just connected up to my PC at home and loaded up iTunes. When I re-order everything by Genre (which in my case is the straight initial ie B for Beatles and C for Elvis Costello) all my artists are listed still in alphabetical order and the albums are all grouped together and in the correct track order (where I've got track numbers that is)

Is that not working for you? Or have I completely misread your problem?

[HellFish]

Originally Posted by Reize

Hey HellFish,

I've just connected up to my PC at home and loaded up iTunes. When I re-order everything by Genre (which in my case is the straight initial ie B for Beatles and C for Elvis Costello) all my artists are listed still in alphabetical order and the albums are all grouped together and in the correct track order (where I've got track numbers that is)

Is that not working for you? Or have I completely misread your problem?

Yes you are correct, when you order everything by Genre field, IE the letters, it will order them correctly... What I am talking about is ordering it by "composer" which is really the new genre...

What I am referring to is ordering your entire library by "Genre" first... so you have alternative, for example, at the top and it goes down from there. Within your alternative field, it orders everything based on the name of the album instead of artist... So for example if you have a band with a album named "apples" and another album named "the zoo", then all of the songs by that band will not be grouped together.