iPod Question on ipod nano 4th gen....

[marc55]

We have an ipod nano 4th generation, and when we sync it to itunes on the computer, it everything transfers over.

Since the nano is only 8GB, my wife keeps her music in her itunes account. My itunes account has all our music which is about 30GB.

I would like to be able to go down to one itunes account, and be able to simply select which music we want to transfer to the nano; she can do that with her iphone.

Is there anyway to just select which music you want to transfer?

Thank you

 

[dXTC]

There are a couple of ways to do this. My recommended way is to set up a "nano" playlist on the iTunes library you're consolidating to. Fill the playlist with songs you want to appear on the nano. Then attach the nano, and on the Music tab of the nano's Device entry, indicate that you want to sync music, and select that playlist from the Playlist section. (Alternately, you can select one or more Artists or Genres in addition to the Playlists.)

Note: You will need to turn "Manually manage music and media" OFF. This will cause the nano to "forget" everything it previously housed, but as your 30 Gb library has everything anyway, you won't be losing anything.

You can set up several playlists to sync if you wish, not just one. You can make changes to the playlist(s) when the nano is not attached, and the nano will update itself with those changes the next time it's attached. Multiple devices can sync the same playlist; your wife can thus make the nano automatically have the same songs as her iPhone at all times, as long as they both sync from the same library.

On my 5th gen nano, I have two main playlists: one that has my "essential" songs in it, and another smaller Smart Playlist that chooses songs from the rest of my collection by random.


The "other" way to do this is to keep "Manually manage music and media" ON and physically move each song onto the nano. You're not "tied to a playlist", but the nano must be attached while selecting songs to transfer, and if you ever need to reset your nano to factory settings, there is no record of what was on your nano, and you'll have to recreate it entirely from scratch.