Any way to use FOLDERS instead of ID3 taggs for ALBUMS?

[lobski]

I have many songs, folders as albums in Windows (Obviously.) When I drag the folders into itunes(ipod) it screws up because they're not properly tagged. I have them in folders so I DON'T need to properly tag them. Looks like iTunes ignores the folders COMPLETELY and sorts the songs by the ID3 tags, which most of my songs dont have, and they end up going everywhere, all in a cluster mess.

How the hell do I get around this? Is there a way to make iTunes/iPod recognize my Windows folders as ALBUMS? I don't want to have to properly tag my thousands of songs every single time I want to put songs onto my ipod.

Why would Apple go through with this crappy filedatabase? WTF?

[bascule]

Yes, Rockbox allows folder structures to be dragged onto the player and then used for navigation.

[Febs]

Or, use a tagging program to populate the ALBUM field and properly tag the files based on your directory structure.  Any decent tagging program can do this.  Media Monkey or mp3tag are a couple of good programs for this.

[lobski]

Thanks for the replies.

And as I understand it, it is impossible to make a stable release of Rockbox on 3G Nano's, am I correct? It is what I have!

[Febs]

Correct. Rockbox does not run on the Nano 3G.

[lobski]

This is very annoying. I am going to trade in my iPod later today. Apple's filedata structure is very retarded.

[MarcGuay]

Here's the strangely-missing-the-Archos' Buyer's Guide wiki page:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/BuyersGuide

[Zoness]

You can navigate the folders looking for music by folder organization instead of tags but is there a build coming where the database can recognize that data as well? Thank you.

[Chronon]

I don't understand.

The database is built from exactly the same files that live in your file tree.  I'm not sure what you're asking.

[Febs]

The database is built from metadata stored in file tags.  It does not read folder information.  If you want to use folder information to browse your files, you have two choices:

1.  Use the file browser.

or

2.  Use a tagging program like the ones mentioned earlier in this thread to tag your files with the information from your folder structure.

[Chronon]

Silly me. . .  

I was assuming that people would properly tag their files before loading them onto their player.  But that's not a safe assumption for me to make.  Now it seems to me that the question was whether, in the future, the database would support tag creation based on folder structure.  I would say no.  As Febs said earlier, there are desktop programs that do this sort of thing already.  It seems like a perfectly reasonable idea to manage your library from your computer anyway.  Such a feature seems like unnecessary bloat to me.