[classact]

Can someone please help me get a handle on organizing my music? I'm a businessman who just has so much time for listening to music, let alone wrestling with organizing it.

When I go to 7digital and buy songs and use their Download Manager, I end up with the songs in subfolders based on artist and then album. Which is fine for me, or seems to be so in theory.

But then, if I want to choose some songs from various albums and put them into one "playlist", well, I have to learn to use playlists. I see that one can do that on the desktop computer with, say, Windows Media Player (I'm on an XP PC), and copy those to the device. (I'm using a 9930 phone and a PB, though my primary concern is the phone here -- well, I'd like to think both work similarly).

I currently use FileScout and TOMPlayer on the phone, which also create playlists, though I think using WMP on the desktop will just be easier. For the PB I have Neutron, though I may never use it.

I want to be able to sometimes:

1. Just play the contents of a folder.

2. Play the contents of multiple folders, sometimes in series and sometimes shuffled. (Some of the "music" folders are meditation music or training audios that I wouldn't want shuffled with the songs.)

3. Easily add to the folders and add new folders -- at which point I guess I have to either add those songs to the given playlists or just create new replacement playlists (which I'm guessing is easier).

I'm not sure at which point I should just replace playlists, and at what point I should even just replace the given folders and playlist on the phone and PB.

I've seen posts about manually editing the properties for album, artist, etc. I absolutely do not have time for that kind of thing. I barely have time to type this post. I just want to have music, and have a reasonable amount of capability to group what I want to listen to, add to it when I have a few minutes now and then, and plop the new content/changes onto the phone and the PB.

I'm sure there are syncing apps, but I'm not sure I want to get that carried away -- I'm guessing they can easily become more unwieldy than I'd like. I'm never buying or downloading songs right to the phone or PB. They always get downloaded to the desktop first, and from there I copy them to the phone and PB.

I know this is novice stuff I'm asking, but I'm thinking there has to be a simpler way to do this -- and half my challenge is just having a straightforward method rather than still trying to "figure one out".

Thanks very much!

[classact]

Well, my apologies to the forum community. I see as of this moment as I type this 134 views and 0 replies. Obviously, I've wasted people's time, and I genuinely apologize for that. I assume it's just not the kind of thing that's easy to address, or that it's something I should be able to easily figure out on my own -- or every case is unique. I'm not sure, but clearly it's not a sensible thing that I asked (lengthy as my post was, no less).

Having thought about it further, it seems I need to:

- organize my music in folders on the desktop as I choose: in the subfolders for artist and album the way they come from 7digital, and in sections that allow me to create "recursive" playlists including all songs in a given group of folders/subfolders

- copy that to my phone and PB

- use FileScout to create playlists on the phone

- copy those playlists to the PB

- redo things on the desktop when I add songs, and replace things on the phone and PB accordingly

I guess.

The only other thing I can think of is to learn how to create playlists with Windows Media Player, to save that one step. And maybe learn how to add songs to existing playlists.

Just sharing my thought process here in case anyone else can benefit from it.

[Roo Zilla]

If I had to go through all that, I'd either stop listening to music, or get an iPod.

[classact]

Well, I've gradually figured out on my own (thank-you-very-much) that just using the native files/folders navigator and music player in BB7 is the simplest approach of all. Even lets me choose between playing an individual song or the whole folder. If I want to shuffle, then I can get into playlists. Otherwise, this is all that's needed, and it does about as good as anything could.

But I realize I'm the last one on the planet to figure that out. (And everyone here wanted me to figure it out on my own. Thanks. I feel proud of myself now.)

:-)