[sra]

Is there any way to control the hierarchy by which iTunes (and the iPod) sort tracks? It seems to treat the "song title" as most important, while for most classical music this is pretty low in priority ("2nd movement" isn't too helpful).

What I'd like is to organize the display to sort first by genre ("Chamber music" - "opera" - "Orchestral" - "Piano" etc.), then within genre to sort by Composer, and within Composer to sort by Album title, then (finally) song name.

Is there any way to accomplish this? With over 5,000 tracks on my iPod, it's kind of hard to find anything with the scheme they seem to impose on you, motivated by the pop music world I guess.

[bmedina]

Yeah, sorting isn't all that flexible. The best you can get is using the browse feature of both iTunes and the iPod.

In iTunes, go into the preferences and make sure "Show genre while browsing" is checked. Then in the main iTunes window, get into browse mode (the top right button). You'll be able to pick a genre in the first column. Then go into Edit->View Options and make sure "Composer" selected. If you click on the Composer column, it will sort everything by the Composer's name. Click on it again to reverse the order.

On the iPod, the options aren't as good. Probably the easiest is to Browse by Composer. Then when you select a composer, all the related albums will be shown alphabetically.

[Toyin]

The iPod sorts exactly as iTunes is set up. I have several playlists sorted by different methods (date added, artist, last played...etc). I always make sure that these lists are still sorted the way I want them before I sync the iPod.

I've got about 5000 songs on my iPod as well and playlists (especially smart playlists) are a most to listen to the music I want to, when I want to.

Correction : a must to listen to the music I want to..