I've got a new iPod touch. How do I transfer songs from my old 'classic' iPod?

Question

So I've got a new iPod touch for Christmas. I want to transfer all the music from my old iPod. I don't store music on my computer, it's just on the iPod. The only solution I can find is to download a program, copy everything from the old one to the computer and then move them to the new one! Seems a lot of work. Is there no official Apple way to just move music across?

Answer 1

Gfanuk wrote:
Sadly my music collection is too big for the iPod so I gave to pick and choose which songs I want on the iPod at any one time.
Ah! Well, here's a tip.
Use Smart Playlists to manage your iPod. This does of course mean using Sync to manage your iPod, but since manually managing is so much hard work, Syncing makes more sense...
By creating Smart Playlists, (which can add and remove songs according to rules you choose) you can create a Playlist which will be ever changing and you could then manage your iPod by Syncing Selected Playlists to it. You can experiment with Smart Playlists inside your iTunes Library without causing any irreversible damage. If you decide that you like - and can work with them, then is the time to start using them on your iPod.
Examples:
Starting with a very basic Smart Playlist: This Playlist would contain all your songs, providing they haven't been played in x days/weeks/months. Look at the following screenshots:
In the shot above, I've created a Smart Playlist with the rule "Playlist is Music". This Playlist will automatically fill with all the songs in my Library, taking up 123.16GB in storage. Now look what happens if I tick the box named "Match only ticked items":
This step was simply to keep my Playlist tidy, i.e. not having music that I don't have on my iPod anyway. Watch what happens though, if I add another rule designed to keep out songs that I've played recently and so don't want to here again for a while:
With this one simple additional rule, my Playlist is reduced from 123GB to just 61.75GB. However, if I only have a 64GB iPod, then even that's too large, so by increasing the number of weeks...
... I reduce the size of the Playlist to a more manageable 51.18GB.
What happens then is that I Sync selected Playlists to my iPod, i.e. this Smart Playlist, which you'll notice I have named "Reduce size Playlist".
I then have 51GB of music on my iPod, which I can then look for (and play) in exactly the same way as before, by Artist, Song, Genre etc.
At the next Sync with your iTunes Library, any songs that have been played recently are removed from the Playlist, while any songs that were last played more than 125 weeks ago are added back to the Playlist and the Playlist on the iPod (and therefore the songs on the iPod) is updated.
Now - that's the basic version. By creating more sophisticated Smart Playlists, you can Sync selected Artists, Albums etc. with your iPod so that any songs that you always want on it are there, while songs you don't cherish so much are only put back on after a while of last playing. For example, you could have five star songs go back on after just two months, four star songs after three months, and so on. If you use Playlists, you can Sync those as well, so that you can play by Playlist if you so wish. You could even keep the Recently Played Playlist on your iPod so that all songs recently played are left on the iPod for two weeks after last being played. If a song gets played again, it stays in the Recently Played Playlist, so it stays on the iPod. But if it doesn't get played for two weeks, it gets removed from the iPod.
If this sounds as though may help you, but you need help with Smart Playlists, you can always ask in this forum.
Gfanuk wrote:
I can see why Apple get such a bad name.
I'm not defending Apple, but it's not always justified.