The question asked today is a very good one. There have been many attempts to make a good user friendly program to get mp3 files off your ipod with ease.

The Question: How do i get songs that are on my ipod into my music library on itunes?

In answer to the question there are lots of different ways about doing this. First off we do not cover how to do this with a MC or a MAC formatted ipod. To do this go here and download Senuti, I have heard nothing but good things about this program. One way is just to find all your hidden files on your iPod through Windows explorer and copy and paste them to your hardrive. Many people would consider this to be the hardway but the steps you take to do this actually help you understand more about Windows and about mp3 files, so I suggest using that tutorial, which is the second if you scroll down.

TUTORIAL #1 - The Easy Way

The first tutoral consists of using a program called Ephpod which can be downloaded from here. Download whichever version suites your version of Windows. I downloaded 2.77 and it worked with my 5th Generation ipod. Once it is downloaded install it. Once installed run the program and select your iPod when it asks for a disk drive. If it does not show up you may need to follow step 1 of Tutorial #2 directly below this tutorial, for it to show up as a removable disk. First, it will load the database. You may get an error saying “out of memory”; IGNORE this. You will still be able to see all your songs, and you’re really not out of memory - this is a glitch in the program. See for yourself.
Now that your program is open, click on songs or albums or however you want to find your music. This is very similar to the iTunes setup. I have selected Artists -> ALL and under Songs -> ALL, and then selected all of them by holding the SHIFT key, clicking the top song, scrolling to bottom of list and clicking the last song. This selects all the songs.

Once you have highlighted the songs in the big window that you want, right click and click Copy Songs to Directory. Browse to the folder you would like to copy your files to and everything should copy over. If perhaps everything does not copy over or you get an error, you can check out the forums to get help.

This will take a long time, so be prepared. The great thing about this program is that ephpod actually sorts your music by artist while copying the files back to your ipod, which the next tutorial does not. This program actually has lots of other awesome features. Be sure to check them out.

Before we get to the manual way there are some good programs out there that cost money and some that don’t. These include in no specific order:
PodPlus - $15
ipodcopy - $22
Yamipod
Media Monkey
iDump
Sharepod
anapod
There are many more. Just look here

TUTORIAL #2 - The Fun Way!

1. Enable your iPod to act as a disk drive.
To do this plug your iPod into your computer and open iTunes. To enable this method, right click on your iPod icon that is in the left hand column and select iPod options. Once this has been selected you should have a screen that has 2 sets of tabs. The first (top) tab should be set to iPod. The inner (middle) tab should be set on music. If you look on that screen there is a empty box that says ENABLE DISK USE. Click the box and click ok. Once this has been completed we can now close iTunes, (or leave it open). Now go to ‘My Computer’, and see if your iPod is being recognized as a disk drive. Your iPod should fall inline after any extra hardrives or CDroms and should read ‘Removable Disk’. If your iPod is showing up, great! You have completed step 1.

2. Enable Hidden Files
This next step requires us to actully see what is on the iPod through windows explorer. Double click on your iPod icon. Once it’s opened, go to Tools > Folder Options and click the View tab. You’ll see a bunch of different options for the way Windows displays files. In the Hidden files and folders section, select “Show hidden files and folders”, then click OK. Then close that window. Now we are able to view hidden files. If you would like to change your settings back, follow the same steps except choose: Do Not show hidden files and file folders.

3. Now we are ready to go find our music on our iPod.
After hidden files are visible, you should see a new folder in your iPod. The folder name is Ipod_Control, and should look greyed out. Note: All hidden folders are greyed out, in order to distinguish hidden files from non-hidden files. Enter the Ipod_Control folder and click on the Music folder. Here you should see a bunch of folders that have F00, F01, F02, etc… Each folder contains about 50-70 songs. If you click on one of the folders you can open it and see that your music is there. The only problem with this music is that it is all renamed to random letters and numbers which I will get back to. If you want to back up your whole iPod, which is recommended if you have the diskspace, then select all the folders and copy them to a folder on your computer. This will take a little while to do so you may want to do it when you do not need your computer for a while.

To copy the folders we will have to unhide them first. Do that by selecting all of the folders, right clicking them and going to the option ‘Properties’. Make sure read-only and hidden are both NOT clicked to change for all folders, subfolders and files. Once this is done you’ll have all your music. Now if you were to drag all those funny named songs into a media player such as Winamp, you will see Winamp slowly change all the random.mp3 files into the songs you know are there. Winamp knows your music because embedded in the mp3 file is an ID tag, which displays song title, album, artist, and even album art (a tutorial of how to get album art into each mp3.)

4. Get your file names right!
To do this find the folder you copied all of your music to (mine is “iPod music folder” on my desktop). For demonstration purposes I have only copied 1 folder, “F00″, to the directory. The next thing you will need is an awesome program called The GodFather. Once this is downloaded, install it and you will be good to go. Open The Godfather and first click on the subfolder option at the bottom left hand corner and browse to the folder with your mp3’s. The Godfather program will be used to find the mp3 files and modify them to their correct name from the tags. Once your folder with your music is found, it should go through and search and show all your music files. NOTE: if there are no tags on the mp3’s, The Godfather cannot automatically rename files. Next, click the rename tab above all the mp3 files and it will automatically rename all the files to the tag names.

Click for bigger picture

Voila, all the mp3’s that were stuck on your iPod are now on your computer. Now if you have made it this far, congrats. It is a long process, but once you know how an mp3 file works, it is not that difficult.

Nathan you got a Free Song on the Way!

Thanks for the pic Engadget