# Help transferring songs from old iPod to new iPod



## Indiana627 (Nov 18, 2005)

I just bought my wife a new 8GB Nano to replace her 4 year old 4GB Nano. How do we get all the files off the old Nano and onto the new one? I believe there are more files in her iTunes than will fit on her old 4GB Nano, so there's probably some files on the PC that would need to be added to the new Nano.

Secondly, once her new Nano is all set up, how do I go about making the old Nano my own? What I mean is, how do I delete her songs from it (our music tastes are much different for the most part) and then add my songs? Once I start buying music or ripping my CDs, will all of our songs get thrown into the same iTunes library or can I create a separate iTunes on our PC? 

Thanks.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

Well, I'm not the expert but I'll try. 

If she's bought the songs using the old Nano, in other words they don't exist on the PC, you can sync up the old Nano and right-click its name, then "Transfer purchases." 

Once everything is on the PC, simply connect the new Nano to the same PC and you should be able to drag the music to it. 

As far as resetting the old one for your use, you have two options. If you and your wife want to share the same iTunes account, then you can both play songs from a common library even if they are copy-protected. In this scenario you just delete her songs off and add yours. You can rename her nano from (I'm guessing) "Marion627's Nano" to "Indiana627's Nano" if you want. 

If for some reason you want to have two different iTunes accounts, and I don't know why you would, you can factory-reset her nano, probably there's a setting in iTunes. Then create a new iTunes account for you, be logged into it, and plug the old Nano in.


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## Indiana627 (Nov 18, 2005)

I found this article on Apple's site about how to use multiple iPods with one computer. It talks about setting up separate libraries, which I think is what we'd want to do. Is that different than separate accounts?


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## Herdfan (Mar 18, 2006)

Yes, separate libraries are different than separate accounts.

Separate accounts means that if you have an iPod, music tied to your account can not be shared with her account.

Separate libraries means you the same account used on separate computers. This is our setup. I have a library as do my wife and daughter. I can copy music from her library to my library, but I can only sync my phone with my library.

I have not tried to have separate libraries on one computer, so I can't tell you if it is easy or not. The one easy thing to do would be just put all your music on one library and then each of you have a Playlist. Then just sync that Playlist to the respective iPods.


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## Indiana627 (Nov 18, 2005)

Under her iTunes, she already has about 15-20 Playlists, and I think I may want to create multiple playlists too, so how would that work if we used the same library? Would it be just like Windows file structure?


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## klang (Oct 14, 2003)

Indiana627 said:


> Under her iTunes, she already has about 15-20 Playlists, and I think I may want to create multiple playlists too, so how would that work if we used the same library? Would it be just like Windows file structure?


When you sync in iTunes you can select which playlists you want. I think by default it will attempt to sync everything, just cancel and pick what you want to sync.


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## trh (Nov 3, 2007)

klang said:


> When you sync in iTunes you can select which playlists you want. I think by default it will attempt to sync everything, just cancel and pick what you want to sync.


Exactly. I have over 82gb of music on my iTunes, but have different playlists that I use on three different iPods and one iPad. After you plug your new iPod in, near the top center select Music and uncheck Sync All. The you can select playlist, artist or genres to put on your iPod. My 14-year old has a nano that he also uses on my account. We changed the composer on all his music (none of which I'd ever listen to) to his name, and then made a Smart playlist where any song with his name as the composer is automatically added to his playlist. Works great. iTunes is very flexible.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

klang said:


> When you sync in iTunes you can select which playlists you want. I think by default it will attempt to sync everything, just cancel and pick what you want to sync.


Key-rect! For iPhone and iPad users, you can also select which apps to to which device.

For the Nano being transferred to a 'new' user, yourself!, you might want to "reset" to defaults and build from there.


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## Indiana627 (Nov 18, 2005)

Thanks for all the help. I think I got it all figured out. Just made 2 new playlists named for me and my wife. Then I moved all her existing playlists into the new one I named for her. Now I'll connect the new nano and set it up to only sync from the playlist with her name. Then I'll reset the old nano and then have it only sync to the playlist with my name. Much easier to do once I actually got in there instead of just talking about it.


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## Indiana627 (Nov 18, 2005)

OK, new problem. She had her nano setup to synch the entire music library which is 602 songs. After moving all her existing playlists into the new master "Susan" playlist I created and setting the new nano up to only sync to the Susan playlist, it only comes up with 508 songs. So that means there are 94 songs in the library that she never assigned to a playlist. 

Is there an easy way to identify them so we can make sure they will be put on the new nano?


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## Herdfan (Mar 18, 2006)

Don't remember exactly how to do this in the Windows version, but just go to the library and click the top song and some combination of Shift, CTRL or ALT and the last song. One of those combos should highlight the entire list. Drag it to her playlist. When it asks if you want to copy duplicates, say No.


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## Indiana627 (Nov 18, 2005)

That won't work because the Susan playlist is actually a playlist folder with playlist under it. When I try to drag the songs from the library to the Susan folder it won't let me - a little red circle is displayed. And I don't want to drag all 602 songs to any of her existing 20 playlists because then all 602 songs will be in one playlist which is not what she wants.

Is there any way to identify which songs from the library are not in a playlist? That's all we need to do, then we can create a new playlist to put those songs in.


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## Herdfan (Mar 18, 2006)

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=5353928&postcount=2

This works. I knew there was a way, just couldn't remember it.

You may need to create a Susan Playlist and put all her other playlists in it. Then ask for playlist that "is not" Susan


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

With such a relatively small number of songs, I'd just add all. You'll still have tons of room on the device, unless you have a lot of video or podcasts.


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## Indiana627 (Nov 18, 2005)

Herdfan said:


> http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=5353928&postcount=2
> 
> This works. I knew there was a way, just couldn't remember it.
> 
> You may need to create a Susan Playlist and put all her other playlists in it. Then ask for playlist that "is not" Susan


I figured out this exact thing last night right before bed and am now going to fine tune the smart playlist. Hoping it works as expected.


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## jimmybrant (Feb 22, 2013)

For iPod touch sync with iTunes, please follow these steps:
1.Plug in your iPod touch with the USB cable to you computer.
2. Your iPod touch should appear under Devices in the bar to the left.
3. Go to Music tab, check the box sync all music in the library.
4.Select APPLY and Sync at the lower right corner
5.Wait as the song added to iPod touch,. When done click Eject and unplug your iPod touch.
Or you can transfer songs from old iPod to new iPod directly follow this link: http://www.iphone-mac.com/how-to-transfer-music-from-ipod-to-ipod.html


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## billsharpe (Jan 25, 2007)

Thanks Jimmy for the belated answer to a 2011 post.

Your procedure really doesn't answer the OP's questions, though.


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