Discount Shopping Advice And Resources

If you’ve been trying to figure out how to upload music to your new iPod nano, don’t worry. We’ll have you playing great songs on your iPod nano in no time. Of course, you might not be so interested in music. But maybe you bought your nanos to play videos or games. Well, good news! Once you’re uploading music to your nano you’ll know how to upload all the other goodies too.

1) Get the music onto your hard drive

Most of us start out with our iPods by loading up the CDs we’ve collected over the years, so let’s start there. Copy the files from your CDs onto your computer’s hard disk so it’ll be available to your iPod manager. Note: If you use iTunes and have “Copy files to iTunes music folder” selected, you can skip copying the files to the PC — just having the CD in your computer’s CD drive will be enough.

2) Import the music into the iPod manager of your choice

An “iPod manager” handles moving files to and from the iPod. For most of us, Apple’s free iTunes software fills the bill. But, there are other choices if you decide you don’t like iTunes. If you’re new to iPods I suggest you start with iTunes.

It’s important to know that you can download music from any vendor (Amazon, eMusic, etc) and still use iTunes to move files around. You don’t have to buy from the iTunes store unless you want to.

Quick tip: If you want iTunes to put a copy of the file in the main iTunes library directory, choose Edit, Preferences, Advanced from the menu and click the “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library.” I like to do this to make it easy to find my music files. I know that music files anywhere else on my hard drive aren’t part of the iTunes library and can safely be deleted.

Wherever you got your music from, once it’s on your computer you can import it into iTunes. You have a couple options. One way is to select (from the top menu) File, Add Folder to Library, and find the folder holding your music. Click “OK” and iTunes will now show the music in the Library music list. Another way is to use the Control & O keys. Navigate to the files’ location and click on the files you want to add.

3) Connect up the iPod

You probably already did this, but just in case: connect your iPod nano to your computer with the the USB cable that came with your nano. You’ll know the connection’s successful when the left-hand menu in iTunes shows your iPod.

Next you need to decide if you want to let iTunes handle synchronizing with your iPod or if you want to handle things manually. I like the “manually manage” approach — it lets me decide which files to move to my nano. It also lets me synch up different computers to just one iPod.

4) Finally! Start uploading music to your nano

Are you going to let iTunes manage the uploads? If so, you’re ready to start. Click your iPod’s icon, select “Sync” in the lower right corner, and iTunes handles the rest.

If you want to manage uploading manually, click your iPod’s icon, select the “Manually manage music and videos” checkbox on the iTunes screen. (Don’t worry, this is a one-time setup step — you won’t have to do it again.) Now all you have to do is select the music (or play lists) you want from your iTunes library and drag it onto the iPod icon.

5) Eject your iPod safely

Always, always, always click the eject button on the lower-right corner of the iTunes screen. Don’t risk corrupting your iPod files.

6) Time for more music!

If you’ve followed these steps you know how to upload music to your nano. Time to download more games, videos, books, and music for your nano. See my web site for suggestions of where to find great downloads for reasonable prices.

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