Including Year field on iPod

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Including Year field on iPod

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Q: I have the year field populated for all of the tracks in my iTunes library. I have an 80 GB iPod and I love the search function, but is there anyway to obtain the track year on my iPod when I’m not in front of my iTunes library?

- Michael

A: Unfortunately, there is no way to view or search for any fields on the iPod other than the standard fields such as name, artist and album. Further, while you can browse by fields such as Genre and Composer, these are not available to be searched on.

A common trick that many users employ to get access to the “Year” field is to simply embed it into the album or track names in some way. Placing it at the front of an album name will allow you to sort your albums by year, but placing it in parenthesis at the end (ie, “Hold Your Fire (1987)”) will still allow it to be displayed or search on.

Another possibility if you’re simply interested in being able to view the year, you can also embed it within the “Lyrics” field for your tracks.

There are a number of ways you can automatically add the year information into your lyrics or other tags without having to go through them manually. If you’re a Mac user, you can do this via AppleScript, and there are some AppleScripts that can be found at Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes page and in our AppleScripts Discussion Forum. If you’re a PC user, your options in iTunes itself are a bit more limited, but as long as your tracks are in MP3 format, you can use a tool such as Tag & Rename or MP3Tag to adjust the tags in your MP3 files themselves. Note that changes tags adjusted directly within your MP3 files will not appear in your iTunes library until you either play the track of view its information by selecting File, Get Info.

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Comments

1

I watch video Podcasts on my touch. I play to the end so it shows as having been played. But I find after I recharge the Touch many of the previously marked watched podcasts turn back to unwatched. Any suggestions?

Posted by Mike Nash on November 15, 2008 at 10:03 AM (PST)

2

I think the fact that Apple doesn’t support Windows Media puts quite a big restriction on internet radio streaming. Most, if not all stations I listen to stream in Windows Media. We can all complain about evil empires, but this is a key reason I haven’t been able to commit to buying an iPod touch. My only option with the touch will be streaming vicariously through my home computer.

Posted by Leon on November 16, 2008 at 5:55 PM (PST)

3

Hi, I got an ipod touch for xmas and have been able to use itunes and listen to music fine. Big problem i’m having trying to access the internet at home, I have wireless broadband at home. When I select internet connection on it tells me i’m connected to sky internet, only when I attempt to get on anything it says invalid arguement etc, Help please?! I’m quite new to this.

Posted by connor galloway on March 26, 2010 at 5:48 AM (PST)

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