How do I keep podcasts from showing up in the "Songs" section of my iPod?

July 26, 2006 9:36 PM

How do I keep podcasts from showing up in the "Songs" section of my iPod?

Dude, they are not songs.

posted by exceptinsects to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I made an smart playlist that excludes podcasts, and use that instead of library to load into my shuffle, and to use with party shuffle mode.
posted by zabuni at 9:45 PM on July 26, 2006

Response by poster: I should have said that I have the new 30GB iPod (formerly video, now just regular) and I do want to have the podcasts on it.

I just want them to stay in their proper place!
(Yes, I am a librarian.)
posted by exceptinsects at 10:24 PM on July 26, 2006

Right-click smart list icon for your list, select "Edit Smart List", create a new filter by selecting "Podcast" and then set that to "Is False"
posted by TheDonF at 10:58 PM on July 26, 2006

Best answer: I don't think there's a way to do it, but I'll see if I can help with the clarification to avoid any more responses that don't really answer the question.

exceptinsects wants podcasts on the iPod, but doesn't want to see them when browsing through music, in the "Songs" menu. Podcasts should only show up under the "Podcasts" menu, since that's what they are.

My personal solution is to browse by genre, but that might not be ideal for exceptinsects. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a better solution.
posted by Acetylene at 11:22 PM on July 26, 2006

Most podcasts I download don't automatically come with a podcast identifier; some aren't really podcasts (like MeFi Music, which I still want to sort on download into a separate playlist).

I police them about once a week by sorting by date added then selecting all the ones I want in a particular (smart) playlist and then Get Info| and changing grouping to Podcast (or Music Podcast, or MeFi Music, etc). Then they just group themselves automagically.
posted by sagwalla at 11:49 PM on July 26, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks, Acetylene, that's exactly what I meant.
posted by exceptinsects at 10:27 AM on July 27, 2006

I Nth the "you're fucked" sense. You could come up with some kind of app that ran on your machine and aggregated your downloaded podcasts into something that it then served to iTunes as an Official Podcast (I've seen some mention of people doing this with scripts for things their radio application records) but shy of that there seems no way to shove things into that menu system on the iPod. It's annoying.
posted by phearlez at 5:06 PM on July 27, 2006

Response by poster: Huh. Oh well.

The old version of iTunes didn't put the podcasts in the main library, so I've just gotten used to having them separate, but the new iTunes has everything all together and it offends my sense of order.

At least the iPod does put them in the "Podcasts" folder--I just wish they weren't in both places.

Thanks for your help, anyway.
posted by exceptinsects at 5:30 PM on July 27, 2006