Posted by NRen2k5 on 09/02/06 22:24

Charles Russell wrote:
> I infer from comments in this newsgroup that many non-Apple players now
> permit simple drag-and-drop from the Windows file system without
> requiring any specialized music database. My question is: how do you
> control the sequence of play after drag-and-drop? Alphabetical by
> filename? Alphabetical by title in id3 tag? Numerical by track number?
> Playlist?

My feeling is that the player itself probably automatically reads the
ID3 tags and generates a database.

> Can you drag-and-drop playlists too? Wikipedia lists several playlist
> formats. Is there a single format that works with most players?

I doubt that most players would automatically find and load the music if
you just drag a playlist in, but I can tell you with certainty that M3U
is the single predominant playlist format.

> I expect to replace my iPod at some point with a cheap generic, and hope
> to avoid the need for bloated player/organizer/device-loader software
> (e.g. iTunes) even if it is free. It would be ideal if I could simply
> copy the directory tree from Windows or Linux, but that does not appear
> to be an option with existing players. Most of my files are things like
> symphonies where tracks must be played in the original sequence, and
> some means of enforcing this is an absolute requirement.

My Creative Zen Micro sorts the music (within whatever other grouping I
have specified) by the %tracknumber% tag. I'm a bit disappointed that it
doesn't support the %discnumber% tag, though.

It helps to have a good tagging program with which to tag your MP3's.
I use MP3Tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/).

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