jake14mw said:
The only reason that I was asking about Ipods specifically is because I was under the understanding that the interface was good. It organizes by artist, and shows playlists, etc, right?
The organization is via iTunes. If you have an iTunes library with music you bought or ripped from CD or that you've added w/proper tags (metadata) already, it'll be organized.
If it's just filenames and no tags, I don't know what to say. There was iTunes Match, but I don't know the details.
I used to use a hard drive based 80 gig iPod Classic (still have it) and an earlier b&w click wheel iPod (search https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204217) w/cars that had no USB ports. Used aux in jack or an cars w/o that, cassette adapter or FM transmitter (yuck). That was my means of listening to much of my music.
Almost all of my iTunes library has proper tags and I used to rip from my own CDs. Fortunately, they'd get tagged automatically by iTunes during the ripping process.
Now, the iPod Classic is almost never taken in my car and I listen to a combo of these: AM, FM, XM radio, phone (currently iPhone 8) w/a combo of these: Spotify, Pandora, 1 podcast w/the Overcast app, NPR News app, Apple's music app to listen to a subset of my iTunes music library (I don't subscribe to Apple Music), YouTube to listen to audio of Nightly Business Report. Phone is connected via Bluetooth, not USB.
Previously, my phone had too little storage (64 gigs or less) but now I have an 256 gig iPhone 8, so my entire music library will fit. I need to make changes so that my entire library is synced instead of a subset.
When there wasn't enough storage, I'd just made a couple smart playlists (e.g. my songs that I rated >3 stars, "My Top Rated" (songs I rated 4+ stars), my 3+ star songs that haven't been played in the last 2 weeks (so I could rotate thru my music), song with ___, ___ and ____ artist, etc.). I used to visit places like http://smartplaylists.com/ for smart playlist ideas. A subset of my playlists and smart playlists I'd sync (and leave checked to always sync) w/my phone.
For smaller iPods like an old 4 gig iPod Nano I had, I had no choice but either dumbly fill it up or select certain playlists + smart playlists to sync.
In the past, playlists and smart playlists you could only create and edit on iTunes on the PC and Mac. I don't know if it's still limited to that. In the distant past, the PC/Mac was considered the "oracle", which always contained the truth. iDevices were simply ancillary/satellite devices. You'd always sync to the PC/Mac since that had everything (you couldn't add songs on iDevices before iPhone). If you updated the star rating on a song, you'd want it synced. If you listened to a song, you'd want the last played date update. If you edited playlists or added/removed songs from your library, you'd want your satellite devices to reflect that, etc.
IIRC, an iPhone plugged into the Leaf's USB port will behave like an iPod, besides working w/Pandora on the head unit. I've probably used the USB port for in my Leaf (current and former) for any sort of audio under 10 times, some times just to try it. This spans almost 4.5 years, so you can tell how much I care about that.