Q: I have just started adding album names and release year dates to my songs in iTunes by highlighting the song then adding info via the info tab. Everything looks fine in iTunes and I can see all the song/album/year info, however, when I sync my iPod classic and play the songs, the iPod doesn’t display the release year. It shows the Song Title, Artist & Album but not the Year. Is there a way or setting to make the year also display with the song/artist/album info on the iPod? I have tried going through the settings in iTunes and the iPod but can’t seem to make it happen. I’m sure it used to display the year date when I first got it, but now that I want it to, it won’t. If could you please advise if there is a setting I have missed that can make this happen, it would be greatly appreciated.
– Stuart
A: Unfortunately, none of the current iPod models provide the ability to display any of the more advanced metadata fields such as Year within the iPod interface itself. Specifically, the iPod is limited to displaying fields such as artist, album and track name as well as the album artwork and lyric information that may be stored within your music files.
You can work around this limitation, however, by adding the year information into another field where it may be useful. For instance, many users choose to add the year as a suffix to the album name or to each track. Another useful place to store this information would be within the lyrics field for each track. Although this won’t show up in your track listings on your iPod, you can see it while listening to an individual track simply by pressing the center button a few times to bring up the lyric display. This can be a useful field for storing other track notes as well, since the general comments field from iTunes is not available on the iPod either.