Married with iPods, Part 1: I hate your music
Managing two or more people's music in a single iTunes library can get messy. In the distance, you can see the CD rack that once made things so simple.
(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)
Back in the CD era, it was easy to keep my wife's music collection separated from my own. We kept my CDs on one side of the shelf and her CDs on the other side, and the few CDs we both enjoyed would sit somewhere in the middle. The territorial lines were easy to maintain, and for the most part, music was never an issue in our house.
In the MP3 era, however, everything's become more complicated. We have a central home computer that hosts our collective iTunes music library. Unfortunately, the CD shelf system we've relied on for years doesn't translate on the computer. Her Tori Amos and Fiona Apple are right up next to my Squarepusher and Black Keys, and our iPods don't include a "his and her" music feature.
Need a way to filter your family's egregious music taste from your iPod? Click here for a step-by-step tutorial.
Granted, we could have made separate user profiles on our PC with individual iTunes music libraries, but that would make it hard to share the music we have in common. (Editor's note: stay tuned for more on this approach, next week.) We also considered setting up our iPods to manually sync music instead of syncing automatically, but neither of us have the time to carefully groom our iPod's music collection and the extra step of manually ejecting our iPods each day can be a pain. We just want our shelf back.
Fortunately, I found a solution that worked for us. By setting up a couple Smart playlists, we made iTunes intelligent enough to reliably keep the worst parts of her music collection off my iPod, and vice-versa. Unlike typical playlist techniques, which create lists of music you enjoy, the beauty of this system is that it works off the music you hate--which is much more fun. If you're interested, I've put together a step-by-step slideshow on how it's all done.
If you've got your own method of maintaining peace with multiple iPods and a communal iTunes music library, help us all out by sharing it in the comments section.
Donald Bell is CNET Reviews' senior editor for MP3 players and portable audio, and one half of the MP3 Insider blog and weekly podcast. He also likes getting his hands dirty with digital audio tools for musicians and DJs.
Donald Bell is an electronic musician, a veteran record store employee, and a fearless hardware hacker. He's also CNET's Senior Editor for MP3 and digital audio.
Jasmine France is CNET's resident digital audio doyenne, writing and editing product reviews, crave blogs, and feature stories on all things MP3. And if you need advice on headphones, she's your girl.
It is always easier if there is only one person administering what goes into iTunes, that way it will hopefully be 'tagged' or excluded in the right way. I'm always forgetting to tag stuff coming in from the iTunes store (only buy non-DRM music kids), because I can't tag it before it's 'imported.' It's good to make a habit of distinguishing the song around the time of import (tedious for some).
As mentioned in posts below, tagging may be useful when multiple listening parties are involved. I sync two Smart playlists onto my iPod. One that has a Group tag of 'husband wife' and another that has 'husband' (includes 'husband wife' songs). My wife's iPod gets two Smart playlists that have 'wife' and 'husband wife'. That way depending on what iPod we have in the car, we can always play music that is bearable to both of us ('husband wife'). She's a lotta bit country, I'm a lotta bit rock 'n roll (metal).
As for man is man's comment, it is irrelevant which MP3 player you use, managing multiple libraries has never been a challenging problem that average intelligence could not solve, regardless of MP3 player. I do love my Archos 604 as well, though only as a movie player (too big to tote around in a pocket)
> My suggestions: Get a reliable old XP laptop (not easy to do) with decent specs and a 80GB hard drive to use as your digital media player. Keep as much of the music you want to hear to regularly on this PC (backed up to DVDs or external system and hooked up to home stereo system as you see fit). Create two directories in /music/ with His and Hers, then use iTunes/MediaMonkey, etc. to compile the shared library. MediaMonkey makes this particularly easy because you can sort your library tree by file location. Then, you know, just grab what music you want for your own portable player. ... The solution doesn't have to be complicated. <
>>> "neither of us have the time to carefully groom our iPod's music collection and the extra step of manually ejecting our iPods each day can be a pain" <<<
> I use a compact 2GB player now, which is what ... 15-20 hours? That's usually pretty good for at least a long weekend, if not a vacation. It's much easier for me to keep a "mass playlist" of ~20-25 albums/mixes compared to managing 40GB or something. It also encourages me to refresh music more frequently, which is a good thing, imo. All these suggestions may be geared towards the more obsessive music fans, fwiw. ;) <
Drag and drop works on an iPod just as well as an Archos player. The fact is "Drag and Drop" is not the easiest way.
The best idea seems to be creating separate user accounts. If you are having problems with you and your significant other(s) music, chances are that movies, pictures and interface modifications will be an issue as well.
Other great ideas from omegaknight17 and steel36 sound survivable however. salmanj1 had a good point about multiple libraries as well. Here are the OS X and Windows instructions respectively ...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iTunesMac/7.6/en/15499.html
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iTunesWin/7.6/en/15502.html
... the OS X instructions should apply to iPhoto, Aperture etcetera.
@blitz987
Get your head out of your ass. CNET is a place for technology enthusiasts and people just trying to manage all the electronics in there lives. Not everyone has the "intelligence" that you do. Embrace the community or go elsewhere.
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by violetltw
November 10, 2008 12:54 AM PST
- I actually have a question, is there anyway I can keep the 'old' music in the IPOD and sync new musics fr another computer?
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