more than 1 ipod ?

[vbactivist]

My husband has an ipod. We are consdiering getting a second one to download audiobooks to. Won't both ipods end up with all the same stuff on them? I thought there was something about it reloading everysong on your computer everytime you add a new one? I hope I am explaining this correctly. Help!

[Drummer's Wife]

You can set up different itunes accounts, plus name each ipod something different and make separate libraries of musics/videos/apps/audiobooks.

We have 4 ipods, and while we can sync them to have the same stuff, we don't.

Not sure if any of that helps.

[rhiOrion]

You can set up the ipod so it doesn't automatically sync with your computer. Then you just add exactly what you want to add.

I have an iPod and DH has a Sansa. We both keep our own music on our player. Then we have another Sansa that we put a mix of his music and my music on, and we use that for car trips together. (We got the two Sansas as part of a Woot bag of crap, so they were practically free!)

[Arduinna]

You don't need separate accounts. Just manually decide which artists, albums and playlists to sync on each device. Alternatively you can set up separate libraries if you don't want to see each others playlists or music.

[Irishmommy]

Dd2 is about to buy an iPod, so this thread is really timely. How do you do all of the above (separate names/accounts, etc.).

Thanks!

[rhiOrion]

It's been a while since I've done it, and I just reformatted my hard drive so I haven't downloaded iTunes and can't check, but I think there is just a checkbox that says "automatically sync iPod with iTunes?" or something to that effect. So you'll want it to be checked whichever way indicates that you do NOT want it to automatically sync. If your iPod would hold all of the music on your computer and you want it to automatically add any music that you add to your computer to your iPod then you could leave it checked to sync, but I've never wanted it to do that. My iPod is only 2 gigs, and my music is more like 8 gigs, so auto-syncing just doesn't make sense.

You don't have to have separate accounts... if you have all your music in one iTunes it'll work just fine, too. Or if you have two different computers with music on them, then that's fine as well.

Once you've gotten rid of it syncing automatically here's how it'll work.

You'll open iTunes, and then connect your iPod to your computer. Your iPod will then show up as a folder in your iTunes.

At that point you can drag and drop songs from your music library into that iPod folder. Or you can drag and drop whole playlists into that folder.

So, I could make a playlist that says "Rhi's Music" and move all the music I want on the iPod into that playlist. Then I could make one that says "DH's Music" and put all of the music he wants on the iPod into that playlist. Then I could move both of those playlists into the iPod folder.

The benefit of doing it that way, if you guys don't necessarily like the same music, is that you can always choose to listen to music just from your own playlist.

Another way that could be used is for different types of music. For instance, I'm going to make several playlists for my labor. So maybe I'll make a playlist that is "slow" and one that is "fast" and one that is "relaxing"... I'll move all of those playlists into my iPod folder, and then I can choose which one I want to listen to.

Or for the OP, if they wanted to put audio books on one iPod, but those audio books are separated into multiple files, then you could make a playlist that says "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" or whatever, and move all the files for that book into that playlist. And do the same for all the other books. Then move those playlists to the iPod. It would also work to separate music from books, if you have both.

Hope that helps. It's not as confusing as I just made it sound, I'm sure.

[Irishmommy]

That's a great help for me, thank you!

[vbactivist]

thanks you!!! I KNEW there must be a way, but didn't know how. I appreciate everyone's help

[Irishmommy]

Dd got her iPod today, so we followed your directions, they worked great.

But she can't find what she did with mine!