Finding music on my new Zune...

[charlied-uk]

hi all - hope you can help.
I just got a new zune from the states today - (I'm in the UK). The mp3 player I've been using for a few years used to allow me to navigate by folder structure so finding and choosing music was easy. No such luck on the zune, so everything has to be a bit more organised. I made sure all my music was catagorised by genre, and figured I could search for stuff like that on the player. But, when you select genre then browse down the music, I can only see albums, not songs. A lot of my music doesn't fit into albums, it's just single songs, so it doesn't show up. Am I missing something....can someone help me - I think I'm just simply not going to be able to find a lot of music that I want on the new player if I can't show it or organise it a better way. thanks a lot, Charlie.

[charlied-uk]

hi all - hope you can help.
I just got a new zune from the states today - (I'm in the UK). The mp3 player I've been using for a few years used to allow me to navigate by folder structure so finding and choosing music was easy. No such luck on the zune, so everything has to be a bit more organised. I made sure all my music was catagorised by genre, and figured I could search for stuff like that on the player. But, when you select genre then browse down the music, I can only see albums, not songs. A lot of my music doesn't fit into albums, it's just single songs, so it doesn't show up. Am I missing something....can someone help me - I think I'm just simply not going to be able to find a lot of music that I want on the new player if I can't show it or organise it a better way. thanks a lot, Charlie.

[Adam Krebs]

Yeah, it seems Microsoft followed Apple's (and Creative's) lead in using ID3 tags to sort music. Folder structure is just too complicated and not many people use it, unfortunately. What I'd suggest is to use a metadata editor such as MediaMonkey to find and update all your tags. Even if most of your music is just single songs, you can put them in their own albums, group by genres, or add playlists if you like to go that way. This will all but future-proof your music collection, and will ensure the best experience with your device.

The downside of this is of course that it takes time. Set aside a good chunk of a Saturday and just get this out of the way. Believe me, it's worth it.

P.S. I'm not sure what you're saying about the "genres only showing albums" thing. Can you describe in detail what's happening?

[charlied-uk]

Thanks for replying Adam - I started going through my collection with mp3tag....it works well...it just takes time....ugh! I think you're right - bang goes a weekend at some point - how exciting!!

"P.S. I'm not sure what you're saying about the "genres only showing albums" thing. Can you describe in detail what's happening?[/quote]"

What I mean is....the quickest way of sorting my music is to sort the genres of everything out I reckon.....so then I can search and browse on the player by genre. But....when I select genre....the listing only shows albums....not songs. So all songs not in a specific album,which as I say is probably most of them, don't show at all in the listing under genre.....so I can't find or select them. does that make sense??