Trying to get my iTunes music from my Mac to the Instinct has been very frustrating; I got a few dozen songs transferred when I was using the original 2gb card (via SyncTunes), but album and artist identifiers were about 70% messed up, and albums that did show up only played songs in alphabetical order. Then when I switched to an 8gb card, music basically wouldn't work at all; got the 'maximum number of songs exceeded' message, in spite of the fact that I just duplicated everything from the 2gb card. Like I said, frustrating.
Finally figured it out, and, for those who don't mind jumping through some hoops, here's what worked for me to get the Instinct music player working properly; my Instinct now shows all artists and albums, and the songs play in the proper order. Warning: if you ever wanted proof that the Instinct is not an iPhone, this will do it for you. None of this seamless, plug-n-play crap. Uh-uh. You're gonna have to work for your music. The key is to have something else to do while the Mac is working on your music; at roughly one minute per song, you don't want to just be staring at the screen waiting.
Basically, what you're going to do is to convert your iTunes music from the 'm4a' format to 'mp3', then add 'id tags' so that your Instinct knows who the artist and album are. Here's the drill:
1. On your Mac desktop, create a new folder (File>'New Folder'). Name it something catchy like 'Converted Music'. This folder will be used for all the albums you will convert to mp3 format.
2. Download the free application 'Switch' from
http://www.nch.com.au/switch/index.html.
3. In your Mac's Finder, locate your 'iTunes Music' folder (In the Finder, 'GO'>Home>Music>iTunes Music). In that i'Tunes Music' folder you'll see all your music is arranged by artist; inside all of the artist folders are the individual album folders. This step is just to get you familiar with how the folder hierarchy works.
4. Open the 'Switch' application. At the top of the Switch window you'll see 'Add Folder'. Clicking on 'Add Folder' will open a 'Locate Folder' window. Within that window, maneuver to the 'iTunes Music' folder that you looked at in the Finder. Find an album that you want to put on your Instinct (remember, the albums are inside the artist folders), and click on 'Choose' at the bottom of the 'Locate Folder' window. In a second you'll see all the songs within the album you've chosen show up in the 'Switch Sound File Converter' window. Toward the bottom of the Switch window you'll see 'Output Format' and a popup bar next to it. Click on the bar and choose 'mp3'.
5. Now you have to tell Switch that you want your new MP3 files to be kept in that 'Converted Music' folder that you made a few minutes ago. At the bottom of the Switch window, click on the 'Browse' button; that will open up the 'Locate Output Folder' window. Maneuver to, and click on, your 'Converted Music' folder so that it's highlighted. At the bottom of this window, click on 'New Folder', and name the folder with the name of the artist of the songs you're converting; you'll see a new folder has been created with, no surprise, the artist's name. This folder is now highlighted. Click on 'New Folder' again, and give that folder the name of the album. Now click on the highlighted 'Choose' button.
6. At the bottom of the Switch window you'll now see the 'Output Folder' box filled in with a path that goes something like this: /Users/Your name/Desktop/Converted Music/Artist Name/Album Name. Double-check that the 'Output Format is 'mp3', and on your keyboard click 'command-A' (Apple-A); this selects all the songs in the album, and they're all highlighted. Click on 'Convert' in the bottom right of the window. A 'Saving Audio File' window will come up; it will take roughly a minute per song to convert your songs to mp3. You can go get a cup of coffee if you want.
7. When Switch is finished converting, all of your songs in the Switch window will have a green checkmark next to them. Cool. You can quit 'Switch', or just hit 'Remove All' to remove this list of songs, so you're ready for the next album a little later.
8. Now you need to add 'tags' so that your Instinct can put together the songs with the album and artist. Download the application 'MP3 IDX3', currently available at
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/5840/mp3-id3x. It's an $18 shareware program, so if you use it, pay for it. Once you see how nicely your music shows up on your Instinct, you'll be happy to pay a crummy $18.
9. In the Finder, double-check that your newly converted songs are in your 'Converted Music' folder, and that they all end in '.mp3'. If they're not in the 'Converted Music' folder, you've converted and saved them to the wrong place; you need help learning how to maneuver within your Mac. Once you've verified that yes, they are there, open up 'MP3 IDX3', and click on the maneuvering bar in the upper left hand part of the window. Once again, you'll need to maneuver, this time to the album that's in your 'Converted Music' folder. Once you've clicked on that album, all the songs within will show up in the MP3 IDX3 list window. There's another bar at the top of the MP3 IDX3 window. Make sure it says 'Tag'. It does? Ok, now click on the first song in your album. Immediately, a whole bunch of bars show up: 'Title', 'Artist', 'Album', etc. In 'Title', it should say the name of the song. In the list window, click on another song; 'Title' should show that song now. Good.
10. Now you're going to have MP3 IDX3 identify all of the songs as belonging to the same album and artist. Do 'command-A' again, which will select all the songs in the list. You'll notice that 'Title' is now blank, because all of the songs don't have the same name. But they do have the same artist and album names, so click in 'Artist' and type in the artist's name. Do the same for the album name. You'll notice that 'Global' is checked on both 'Artist' and 'Album'. This will apply the artist and album names to all of the songs. Click on the highlighted 'Save' button, and 'OK'. Bink, in just a few seconds the job is done. Go on back to the Finder.
11. Go to your 'Converted Music' folder, open up your newly converted and tagged album. In the list of songs, MP3 IDX3 may have stuck a 'temp' file. No idea why it's there, but go ahead and drag the temp file (and ONLY the temp file) into the trash.
12. Remove the microSD card from your Instinct, put it in its adapter (which came with the phone), insert it into your USB card reader (uh, if you don't have one, it's time for a trip to Best Buy), and connect it to your Mac. A 'NO NAME' icon will show up. Open it, and you'll see a 'music' folder. If you've already tried to put music on your Instinct, but the player hasn't worked properly, I'd trash everything within the 'music' folder. You want it empty, so that the music player can start fresh with just your newly converted (and properly 'tagged') music. Then just go back to your 'Converted Music' folder, drag the <artist name> folder into the 'music' folder in the 'NO NAME' disk. Check to see that yes, within that <artist> folder there's an <album name> folder, and your songs are inside there.
13. That's it. Close any windows that are open in 'NO NAME', Select 'NO NAME' (its name is highlighted), and, on your keyboard, command-E, which 'ejects' 'NO NAME' (NEVER just unplug the card reader without 'ejecting' it). Disconnect your card reader, and put the microSD card back into your Instinct. Wake up the phone, go to 'Music'. If the Instinct reports that it can't see or scan the card, not to worry: turn the phone completely off then back on again, and it will scan properly. Now when you go to 'Music', then 'My Music', you'll be able to see your artist, album, and the song list will not be alphabetic, but arranged properly. Suh-weet.
Ok, you say, this is ridiculous. I just spent 40 minutes getting one album onto my phone. Yeah, I told you it wasn't an iPhone. But once you've done it a couple of times it goes pretty fast. And you don't have to do the card removal/replacement for every album. Once you've verified that it worked for one album, do a bunch of 'em. You can put as many albums in the 'Converted Music' folder as you want, then drag them all to the 'NO NAME' at once. And realize that you can put as many albums as you want into one artist's folder; you just want a different folder for each artist and each album (actually, the Instinct probably doesn't care, because it's using the ID tags that you installed with 'MP3 IDX'; but having an artist/album hierarchy makes it much easier on you, when you want to make future changes).
Once you've successfully moved your albums to the phone, I recommend making yet another folder on your Mac, maybe titled 'Samsung Music', and putting all of the folders from 'Converted Music' there. Every time you finish a converting session, move the converted folders to 'Samsung Music'. You'll want to permanently keep this 'Samsung Music' folder on your Mac in case you ever lose your phone or its micro-SD card; you sure don't want to do all of the converting over again. But leave the now-empty 'Converted Music' folder around, to use for the next conversion session.
Oh, and you can also use the MP3 IDX app to add cover art; but c'mon, who really needs cover art?
Good luck, and have fun. You're now an official propellor-head.
And finally, I used OS 10.4.11 for this procedure. Should be the same for 10.5, though.
p.s. Ok, just realized that, if you have the latest software upgrade on your Instinct, you don't need the card reader, you can use the phone/USB cable that comes with the phone. It's pretty slow compared to the card reader, but if you're only transferring one or two albums it's probably easier than using the reader.
Ok, really finally, don't use any diacritical marks in the naming of your artist or album folders. José González, for instance, has two accents in his name. If they're used in the name of the artist folder, the music player won't even look for his music. Strangely enough, accent marks are ok to use when naming the artist in MP3 IDX, and, if used, show up in the music player 'Artist' list. Weird.
