Nokia Music Player and organizing your music and audio

Nokia Music transfer is a terrible component of the PC Suite whose only useful feature may be the ability to create small +eAAC files (supposedly optimized for mobile phones). It can also edit tags, a feature of utmost important for later organization, but fails miserably to be taken seriously at all. These are some strong statements, but I will also show that there is a way out of this mess and it does not involve using the Nokia Music Transfer app, not even the PC Suite.

Music Player on S60 3rd

The application for playing music on Nokia E90 is the Music Player. Unlike the gallery application, which searches ALL folders on the phone's memory and its memory card, including hidden and system/hidden directories and throws all into a mega list of track names, the Music Player is capable of organizing the audio content, be it podcasts, audio books, or music into lists structured by Artists, Albums, Genres, etc... similar to Apple's iPod. The advantage to iPod is that music can be added on any computer. Files can be simply copied, no library or other locked down system is necessary. 

The above makes the following scenario possible:

1. Connect your Nokia via USB cable and switch to Data Transfer Mode (not the PC Suite mode).
   
2. Copy the music, podcasts, audio books into the /Sounds/Digital directory. You can organize your files to your liking into Artist/Album/Track1..n directory structure. All files must be properly tagged for the Music Player app to categorize all properly.
   
3. Disconnect your phone, run the Music Player, go to Library, Update Library and you're set!
   

Tagging: the alpha and omega

Files can be organized in any directory structure: one huge directory, or one folder per artist, whatever. Music player does not care. What it does care about are the tags. Therefore, without proper tags you will be lost. I recommend using a proper tag editor (just google it for your platform) or use iTunes.

HUGE Advantages:

• Absolutely open and cross-platform. Music can be uploaded, synced, exchanged between Mac/PC/Linux/whatever OS without a detriment. All you need to care about is proper tagging and use the Data Transfer Mode. None of this is possible on an iPod where you're locked to your own library for syncing (work-arounds exist, but they are compromises and not subject of this blog).
  
• Unlike on an iPod, you are free to work with your files directly on the phone, move, delete, send them over email, bluetooth, etc. (no restrictions Zune friends).
  

And the Music Transfer app?

You can use it if you wish to rip CD's to the very small "mobile optimized" AAC. I don't recommend making playlists, or tagging as this does not work yet. Select multiple files and choose a genre (some crazy alternative like "General Jazz" for instance) and only a single file changes. Also, there is no way to create your own genres, so to tag something a Podcast is not yet possible.

I will post screenshots when I have time.

Keywords: Organizing, Organization, Management, Manager, Editor, Playing, Music, Player, Nokia S60, Podcasts, Audio books, Audio, iTunes, AAC, M4A