Handling the word "The" in Windows Explorer

You just have too much time on your hands.;)
I don't like how Windows does this either, but I just let it go. But for some reason I have a problem where if say I have "The" on an artist, it will be gone on my iPod, or sometimes vise versa. It's really weird. For example, Red Hot Chili Peppers had no "the" on my computer, but on my iPod it did. Really weird.

Ah! Y'see, RHCP would never be a "The" in my current system! :-D

Yes, T&R is superb, especially for that big initial "whipping into shape" of an unruly, dodgily tagged collection; you can alter tags from filenames, alter filenames from tags, etc etc, for multiple files automatically. It saves hours of fiddly work if you're trying to prep your music for an iPod, as I was only recently.

Also, freedb is often inaccurate, but more to the point is inconsistent in formatting. Some people don't know how to use capitals (or, even worse, lower case) and some just can't spell! T&R lets you quickly browse through and nail those problems.

Finally, I have a significant number of single tracks in my collection, mostly recently-released stuff. T&R lets you quickly select all of those and purge their album tags, which removes the hellishly unusable Album listings you can otherwise get on iPod.

You're right, you're right. I really should unplug my ethernet card every now and then and do some real work. ;-)

Sam

PS. Not a huge Eels -fan-, but have you heard "Susan's House"? It's absolute genius. "That must be her sister... right?" :-)

*LOL*... So many gags. Well - T&R is US$25, which I consider really good value. I actually did the bulk of renaming within the trial period, but thought it such an excellent bit of software that I decided to keep it.

The website is: http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

Avoid the "current" version, which is 2.x - you want the "beta", which is 3.x. It's much slicker, and I've found it completely stable. Let me know how you get on? :-)

Sam.

Originally posted by Samwise
1. The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again
2. Who, The - Won't Get Fooled Again
3. Who - Won't Get Fooled Again

I can never decide what I really -should- do... The situation is complicated further by the presence of "quasi-the" bands, like Wiseguys, Eels, Sugarhill Gang...

Anyone else find it annoying that Windows "So good for media" XP won't let you ignore the word "The" at the start of an MP3 filename? Or do I just have too much time on my hands? ;-)

I use option #2. I completely agree it's annoying that you can't have it ignore "The" but I guess I understand why, also. And I completely agree with your assessment of "quasi-the" bands :)

A follow-up question: Do you list individual artists like:
1. Bowie, David
2. David Bowie

I'm inconsistent about this myself.

I'm currently ripping a large CD collection, and am tagging all files (using T&R, which I can't recommend highly enough...I think the unorthodox interface works very well once you get used to it) with the following formats:

Cars, The
Flock of Seagulls, A
Folds, Ben
Folds, Ben - Five
Matthews, Dave - Band
Ross, Diana & The Supremes

I know I am swimming upstream a bit here, as I have to edit most of the tags I get from freedb and CDDB, but I can't abide that 300-artist section of "The Aardvarks...The Zombies" on my iPod.

I say you should put "The Who"