Album Artist

I noticed that iTunes 7 has implemented a new column:
Album Artist
This is very helpful to me, because I listen to dance music CDs which are compiled by a DJ out of music from various artists. However, I prefer to file the Album by the DJ rather than the individual track artists. So Album Artist is a welcome addition.
My question, however, has to do with how this works on the iPod. I have imported a mixed CD into iTunes, and placed the Album Artist name into the tags for the tracks on that CD.
Next I loaded those tracks into the iPod.
To find music in the iPod, I want to go to the Album Artist and then find the album. But on the iPod, it only shows Artist.
So how would I find my CD by Album Artist on the iPod? Or is this not possible?

Apple, please create an ipod update to allow people to browse by Album Artist soon.
Or better still an update that, for any albums where album artist has been amended, the artist for each individual tracks is overridden when browsing by artist. That way any albums that the aritst has done collaborations on are listed just as the main artist when browsing, and then the album isnt split up and disjointed when browsing by artist.
I assume that you are in the process of doing this already but we can't wait. Come on make it your prime focus for the ipod software update to version 1.3
Aadding album artist was brilliant. Allowing your customers to actually use it would be genius.
P4 Windows 2000
P4 Windows 2000

Similar Messages

CD imported to wrong folder organization Album/Artist instead of Artist/Alb

I imported (ripped) a CD and the folder convention iTunes created in my music library was like this:
AlbumName/ArtistName
instead of
ArtistName/AlbumName
How could this happen. I have ripped hundreds of CD's and this is the first time it has happened. I am letting iTuned organize my files.
Any clues?
Thanks!

Actually I know exactlty what bae77345 is referring to, because I am running into the same problem. Thus my search in the forums.
Usually Ive had no problem in importing a song into iTunes, and changing the song IN iTunes to read as follows.
Name of Song: DAYS `EUREKA OPENING MIX`
Artist: Anime
Album : Eureka seveN OST 1
Album artist: FLOW
And the Windown path would look like this
C:\Documents and Settings\Varxtis\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Anime\Eureka seveN OST 1\1-01 DAYS `EUREKA OPENING MIX`.mp3
Notice It goes Artist>Album>Song Title
Album Artist would not even be part of the path, which is exactly what I want.
but now it shows
C:\Documents and Settings\Varxtis\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\FLOW\Eureka seveN OST 1\1-01 DAYS `EUREKA OPENING MIX`.mp3
Which goes AlbumArtist>Album>Song Title. it doesn't even include the artist as part of the path. How annoying.
It makes a HUGE difference to me because I need everything in "iTunes Music" library in windows to be pathed as Artist>Album: Song Title. I use a different MP3 Player so, it's almost impossible to have half one way (those that have albumartist) and half another (those that don't) BTW, Sorry apple. . .no Offense. I've had and loved an iPod. . . but it died and I got this as a gift.
I never changed any settings, and quite honestly it's been about a month since I had to update my MP3 player music (thus noticing the problem). So, there HAS to be a reason for it to change. And more importantly, a way to change it back.
Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP

Tagging Artists /// Album Artist

Friends,
happy new year everyone.
I've never understood the difference between the tagging options artists and *album artists* which are listed in windows folder options.
Apparently iTunes does not recognize any difference, since it uses the default option *artist album* when I import a Cd into iTunes and when it's me taggign the album, whether I tag the option artists or album artist, iTunes lists the albumm together with the right artists correctly, regardless of which option I chose.
Can I anybody confirm whether tagging one thing or another (or both) is actually the same?
Or, on the contrary, if I have done wrong so far and I should tag both boxes?
Thanks in advance
Beppe

Check my previous post. If you treat Album Artist the way you've been looking at Artist this should sort things out. It's tragic bc it will take a long time to switch that over.
Album Artist is usually labeled the same as Artist bc n artist is susually on 100% of their songs. This however changes on an album where that artist allows another artist to feature without them. The result is a Herbie Hancock song, without Herbie on it, instead his featured Christina Aguilera.
Now.... If you were to search for Christina, you'd never get this one song as a result Your way. BUT if the Album artist remains Herbie, and the Artist is Christina, it'll sort better.

Strange album artist problem

On some songs, every time I play them my iTunes decides its fun to change the album artist for me. I don't know where its getting this information or why, but its really weird and messing up my organization.
two examples:
Every time I play "Day 'n' Nite (Crookers Remix)" by "Kid Cudi" it changes the album artist field from "Kid Cudi" to "Kid Cudi vs Crookers" witch moves the song into its own section away from the rest of the album. (I got this song through the iTunes store)
Another example is any time i play any song on the hypnotica album by benny benassi, it changes the album artist to benny benassi & the biz, moving that song away from the album. (I imported this album to my iTunes from the retail CD)
Any help is appreciated! thank you!
Message was edited by: Kalafalas246

Answered in your duplicate thread.
tt2

"Sort Artist" does not work on iPod / How to sort by album artist

I have many albums in my music collection that contain songs by different artists. In iTunes, I have set all these songs to the same "Sort Artist" so that they all appear under the same artist's name (the album artist's name).
However, when I sync my iPod, the "Sort Artist" settings don't carry over. For example, a compilation album with 10 songs by 10 different artists would show up under one single artist in iTunes (per my sort artist settings), but on the iPod the songs show up under 10 different artists. Is there any way to fix this problem? I basically want to sort my music by album artist, instead of just the artist.
The strange part is when I browse my iPod on my computer, the compilation albums are properly sorted under one artist, but it's still wrong when I browse on the iPod itself.

It could be that you have inadvertently imported these CDs into iTunes as part of a compilation. If so, the artists won't show in the artists menu on the iPod.
To check, highlight the tracks on one of the offending artists CDs in iTunes, right click and select "get info". This brings up a multiple song info window, and from there you can check if you have 'yes' in the box marked "part of a compilation".
If you have, select 'no' instead and click 'ok'. Do this with any CD that has this issue. This will alter the info in iTunes, and you should then connect your iPod and synchronize the changes.
The problem arises because the information contained on the Gracenote CD Data Base (where iTunes gets all it's album/artist/track info from), is sometimes incorrect. It can show CDs as compilations when in fact they are not.
You should also check that the songs have album name info in their ID tags.
See: Some songs don't show under artist on my iPod.
Once you add a second album name for that artist even for a single song, ALL the rest of the songs should now show up under that artist, even those without album names.
Providing the spelling for the artists is exactly the same of course.

Help! Need my Album- Artist Organization Back

OK, this is similar to one other post but that solution won't work. Here's what happend:
1) I had a nicely built music library stored under My Music. This was created over years using Windows Media Player and other software. The organization of folders was by general Artist Name then by Album with all songs for each album in that album's folder.
2) This allowed me to easily access music from Windows Media Player and from my Slim Devices Slim Server.
3) I am using ITunes now and was happily using Add Folders because I wanted to just have one music library that all software accessed.
4) The other day I got ahead of myself and in ITunes made the horrible mistake of checking "Let Itunes Keep Folders Organized." This then hosed the entire setup by reorganizing all my folders first by artist then by album. So for any one artist it might have five or six albums under that folder.
5) Now in my non-Itunes software the libraries are a complete mess.
HELP! I've tried to go back to Windows Media Player and get it to reorganize back to the ALBUM then ARTIST scheme. That seems to have worked for most of the straighforward albums but not for compilations and a bunch of random songs.
I do not have a backup of my original scheme, or at least one that's recent enough to be worth using.
I need things back in ALBUM->MUSIC order to that I can access my music correctly from non-itunes software/devices.
I know Apple is god and can do no wrong but I can't understand why there is not an option that one can set how one wants one's music hierchy to be. I can only surmise that this is an attempt to mess up how other software works with the library. It would be an incredibly useful addition to the software. As it stands now I feel like I'm back in the late 80's with software manufacturers using cheap tricks to mess up each other's products. Also, checking Let Itunes Organize Folders should generate a huge warning of what's about to happen and the text with that option should be clarified because it now implies that organization will be album->artist not artist->album.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

Hotspot never worked with the unlimited plan, you had to drop it and go with one of their former plans to get it. Is it possible you hacked your iPhone to get it previously and the update has cleared that hack.
You will have to jailbreak to get it if you aren't going to go with the shared plan. But if you are a heavy user of it you will be throttled to about 200k once you hit 3 GB. This will probably alert AT&T to the fact you are in violation of their terms.

Changing Browser to Album Artist?

Hello,
I've got iTunes 7 on my PC and have a question about Browsing by Album Artist:
Can I change the "browser" (turn-on-and-off-able bit at the top of the main song selecty window) to work off "Album artist" instead of/as well as Artist?
Just to fill in what I already know, and to help people who are confused or stuck with iTunes organising things into folders where they don't want them stored...
I have worked out so far that I can fill in Artist and album artist (as I always did in WMP to keep things organised) so I can put Various Artists or the DJ/Compiler/Record Label in Album Artist, and the actual Artist in the Artist hole.
I also noticed that I need to check "Compliation" to make it store it in my HDD under Album artist so it doesn't confuse the **** out of me by spreading everything around into individual song artist directories and stuffing me live when DJing and looking for a particular "record" using Atomix Virtual DJ (which goes by the file structure in windows).
In the main window view I can sort all music by album artist by clicking on that title in the complete song list of all music, (and it being a "compilation").
Also in the big CD cover browsing view (which is nice btw!) it sorts by album artist. Yay! Marvellous!
However, because I have loads of CDs, sometimes if I'm not having a browse and want to go straight to a CD I'd like to be able to use the 1st or 2nd browser view. If I want a Blue Note Compilation, Various Artists, any of my soundtrack albums, or DJ/Record label compilations I have to scroll all the way up and down the long list. If for example I wanna listen to "Keep it solid Steel" by Mr. Scruff, if I choose him in the artist box it won't have anything off that album as it's a compilation by him, and will only show his own songs. WMP will go by Album Artist (even though it actually says Artist in the left Colum on the new WMP11 beta), but I'd rather use iTunes as it seems faster and nicer generally (and has useful things like the backup option). If iTunes does this it'll definitely be my media player of choice.
If this isn't possible, any chance of iTunes 8 being able to select what options you can sort by at the top of the browser?
The only way I've found is to type "Various", "Warp", "Blue Note", etc. in the search box
It seems very frustrating to me if you can't, especially since like all media players iTunes comes with "Genre" which seems far less useful amongst the widely varying crossover artists, styles, and vibes, that music comes in! Can anyone tell me if Lamb are Dance, Drum n' bass, Jazz n Bass, Electronica, Trip-Hop, Hip-hop, Trance, Soul, Pop, Alternative Pop, Jazz? Heck, today I discovered a handful of new musical genres including "Wonky Trance" and "Clown Step"! (see wikipedia if you don't believe me!)
Cheers,
Me
Custom P4 3.0GHz Windows XP 3Gb RAM, 500GB HDD, FX5900 Ultra, M-Audio Delta 1010LT, flashing lights, extra cooling fans to suck more dust in! ;o)

Bollocks! No, it doesn't work nicely as they all appear in the wrong track order! Doh!
I noticed other people have brought this up before in the forum.
I sent a feedback to Apple. Here it is for those of you having the same problem, or who agree, or who don't understand what I'm on about:
Hello,
I've just changed to using iTunes a few weeks ago as it has some nicer user functions (was previously using windows media player) and it's making me very frustrated...
I store all my albums (well over 10,000 tunes I've collected for YEARS on CD!) by the way they come on the CD; by Track Artist for the Artist and Album Artist for the Album artist. Normally for e.g. Michael Jackson, Artist and Album Artist will be the same. For compilation/DJ mix ablums this means the Album Artist will be Various Artists, the DJ/Production Crew, or Record label as applicable. If, for example, I want to listen to my Jazzanova Remixes album I can sort by album artist, choose Jazzanova, and get all the tunes on that album, whilst artist points out who each individual track is by (that Jazzanova remixed). Likewise, if I scroll to "various artists" in album artist I'll get compilation albums, or a particular DJ/collective such as by Mr. Scruff, Blue Note records compilations, etc., etc.
Also this applies to artists where the album may be one artist, but each song artist may be that artist + another, e.g. Artist being Eminem & Dr Dre, Eminem & Dido, Eminem (feat. Joe Bloggs), etc., whilst the Album remains filed under the "Album Artist" of Eminem so I don't get millions of "X with/featuring Y" artists and spreading my albums out in a big mess.
The problem of iTunes filing them in different artist folders for each track on that album on my harddrive can be overcome by making them a "compilation", then it seems to store in Compilation instead.
However, it seems to insist on filing secondarily by artist, not track number/and album, when album artist is selected. This then messes the list up completely as, if I use the artists "Coldcut" as an example, when I go to Coldcut as an album artist it displays the beginning of the "Journeys by DJ" album by coldcut (album artist) from "track artists" alphabetically A->C until it gets to the Coldcut songs on it, then has a completely different coldcut album (Sound Mirrors) of which all tracks are written by Coldcut and the album artist is Coldcut, then finishes the "Journeys by DJ" album by coldcut with the rest of the track artists from Coldcut->Z!
The only way around this seems to be to file by album, then scroll all the way through loads of tunes to get to that particular album, defeating the idea of an easily organised music collection!
This problem is made worse by the fact if I have "browse by compilations" on to help, and use the browser at the top, Artist only chooses by track artist. I then need to go to Compilations and (assuming I remember it's called "Journeys by DJ" since I can't go straight to Compilation Artist) click on the album, from a list of all my "various artist" and DJ/remix/record label compilations.
At this point it gets worse as having chosen the album (for the sake of this example "Journeys by DJ" by Coldcut) all the tracks then appear in track artist alphabetical order since it's either still being browsed by Album Artist as I would have had my records diplayed by that to begin with and it sorts secondarily by track Artist. Alternatively it could be sorted by (track) "Artist" since I'd browsing by compilation. Regardless since I would have narrowed it down to one album with the browser function so "album artist" will all be the same for all tracks, it makes no difference - it is going to be listed alphabetically by track artist.
This means therefore, that unless the album is alphabetically sorted by artist to begin with it comes up in the wrong order!!! Therefore when you play your lovely expertly DJ mixed compiation you bought on CD all the crossfades between tracks don't happen as the album's in the wrong order!!!
You can get around this by then clicking displaying "Track number" too. This seems silly though as normally in a normal view it already shows them at the front of the track listing. You therefore have to have them displayed twice, and then after going into compilations, choosing the album, you then have to sort by track number each time! If you do this, whenever you go back to the rest of your albums they then have all the track 1's first, then all the track 2's, and again you have to change what you sort by (Album Artist or Artist) to make them sensible again!
As you can imagine this is a pain! It happens with all my Various Artist albums, and various other DJ artists such as Mr. Scruff, and soundtrack albums, or record label compilations too!
The obvious possible answers to this problem are:
a) when sorting by the column "Album Artist" make it search secondarily, after Album Artist, by album then track number, then finally "(track) Artist" after that (in case there are no track numbers!).
b) make "artist" in the browser search by "Album Artist" not artist. This is what Windows Media Player does (even though it actually says "Artist" in the broswer), and goes by track "Artist" if there is nothing in the "Album Artist" tag field. it will then search by album and track number, but not Album artist followed by Artist. The browser could also be set to search in both Artist and Album Artist fields to save me having to go through all my 40+ compilations to find an album I know is by coldcut or Mr Scruff. If it did I could just turn "Browse by Compilation" off in preferences and get the same effect. Regardless to stop the wrong ordering it needs to not organise by Artist secondarily if I have it organised by album artist.
Whether the "Artist" in the broswer does Artist/Album Artist/or both could be set in preferences? Also this could change it to file in folders on the harddrive by Album Artist too. I'd far rather have my Coldcut, Jazzanova, & Mr. Scruff, etc. albums in Coldcut, Jazzanova, & Mr. Scruff directories, so when I browse my harddrive it's obvious who they are by rather than apparently being by "Compilation"!
Regardless iTunes should try to put things in the library view in order of Album and track number as much as possible when I have it organised by Album Artist. As mentioned I had been using WMP 10 & 11 beta until recently, but I changed as iTunes seems to work faster and smoother, and has the handy backup feature and seemless playback so I made the shift. The seamless playback made me instantly go to try DJ mix albums to hear them seamless, hence why I became frustrated very quickly!
Also I intend to get a Mac as my next computer so I won't have the option of WMP!
Another thing I noticed was the "Remember position" tag under the "get info" section when you have multiple selections. I wondered if this could change the order it plays them in but didn't seem to do anthing and can't find mention of it in the help or on the forum! What's that for?
If I'm being stupid and there's an easy way to make it work let me know, but I've tried as many things as I can think of, but I think it's reasonable not to have to keep changing the way everything is displayed in the library view to find an album and play it in the right order. I want it to work like the pile of CDs on my shelves and appear as I got them in the record store! If not Microsoft might have finally made something that seems to work in a more user friendly way than Apple, and that can't be right!
...as you can see I also pointed out that it might be nice to be able to get iTunes to file my Mr. Scruff, Coldcut, Jazzanova, etc. compilation/DJ albums on my hard drive by the Artist who released them (or by "various artists"); the same place I'd find them in the record shop I bought them from, and the main name on the album cover of the CD!
I DJ too (using Virtual DJ) and hence DO care about where I find these files on my hard drive, and would like to be able to find them based on the Album Artist! Also when I copy tunes over to my MP3 player, again I want them filed like the CDs I bought them on! I'm not just wingeing about this point for no reason. Obviously you don't care where they actually are stored on your HDD if it's only ever iTunes you play files with, and own an iPod where it automatically copies files for you, but it makes a big difference to me!

Chose wrong Album-Artist option when prompted

When I put a CD into my computer it occasionally asks me to select from a list of Album-Artist pairings. On a recent CD, I chose one of three options listed, but the song list is incorrect (has duplicate song titles, rearranged song order, etc.). When I stopped the import and put the CD back in, it remembered my selection and no longer prompted me to choose, instead auto-selecting the one I had incorrectly chosen before.
Any advise?

None of here work for Apple so if you a 'when' question contact them.

Album Artist...Broken

This isn't a question per se, and I'm not looking for any responses. I just want Apple iTunes + iPod developers to know that the Album Artist criteria for songs in iTunes messes with the ordering of the songs on the iPod (but not in iTunes). For example, if I have a CD by "John Doe Band" and the album is called "Album" and each song has an appropriately labeled track number, but two of the songs (songs 2 and 11, let's say) have listed "John Doe" under Album Artist and all the rest of the songs have this field blank, then those two songs will be the first two songs on the iPod under "Artists" --> "John Doe Band" --> "Album" instead of being in track order.
I spent an hour once trying to figure out why iTunes is listing the tracks of a CD in order but not my iPod. I saw that the track numbers were all correct, and there were no misspellings of the artist name or album name. Somehow Album Artist (a field I care not about) was only filled in in the two songs that continually appeared at the top of the list on the iPod.
If Apple could fix it so that "Album Artist" has no bearing on the ordering on the iPod that would be great.

no idea, this is the only sorting field giving me problems. It's clearly acting like the entire album is done by the artist on the first track. I have the same playlist in wmp, but I don't have any problems sorting by track artist. I'm too ticked off to try anymore. I have just accepted that this playlist will never work in itunes... It won't even sort the field correctly in the main music section where everything is. It still puts all the artists in the albums like they're just one artist. I guess I better restore the album artists slot and be done with it. all the other sort fields work just fine. There is clearly a link between artist and album that I can't see or it won't show me. What a piece of junk!

How to sort songs by Album artist and song number?

System: +OS X 10.5 updated to 10.5.2 . iTunes 7.6+
I have a CD "+Cafe Del Mar - Volume 01+". Added songs to Library. Every track has different Artist. So, I have 12 songs with individual Name and Artist. Then have put value "+Volume 01+" as Album in File Info and Album Artist as "+Cafe Del Mar+". This way songs are automatically grouped together whenever I sort my library by Album or Album Artist.
Unfortunately in latter case (sorting by Album Artist) iTunes uses Artist field instead of Song Number within the Album to sort tracks. Here are links to screenshots I made to show what we are talking about here:
Sorting by Album: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/7783/picture1qj6.jpg
Sorting by Album Artist: http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/4199/picture2uo9.jpg
How can I fix it and make iTunes to sort by Track Number within the same album even if I sort things by Album Artist?
Thanks.

From MacOSHints:
How to use iTunes 7 new Album Artist field
Mon, Sep 18 '06 at 7:30AM PDT • Submitted by stevebr
iTunes 7 thinks of an album by a performer (call the performer XYZ), where one or more tracks are by "XYZ featuring ABC" or "XYZ and ABC," as separate albums. In the past, the only workaround was to set the album as a compilation to avoid this, but this is an incomplete solution, and it had the side effect of the album not being classified or filed properly.
Enter the "Album Artist" tag in iTunes 7. Set this tag (via Get Info with all all tracks of the album selected) to the main artist's name, and the album will be unified.

ITunes deletes symlinked folder on Album Artist rename

Hello community,
I experience a very strange behavior of iTunes in combination with Symlinked folders. I use Windows 7 and my folder structure is listed below. I have a Laptop with a 256GB SSD and instead DVD-Drive a 640GB SATA drive.
Drive layout:
C: System (Windows Drive)
D: UserProfile (also symlinked to D:\Username
E: Media
My iTunes DB is about 170GB large including media of all kind. I spread the iTunes Media subfolders among several drive, because I want iTunes to start up very fast, but playing music and syncing my iPhone would not benefit from the fast SSD Drive so I don't want to waste the valuable fast space.
Now when I change the Album Artist of an album iTunes kills/deletes my Music symlink folder after completing the first rename and show the rest of the album as missing files (with the ! in front)
I have discovered that this only happens when iTunes tries to rename/move folders like it does if the Album artist is changed.
I have already tried restricting the permission to the symlinked folder to read even with deny write permissions, but it manages to delete the folder everytime.
I have used a folder junction instead also. All without joy.
The owner of the folder is the Administrators group which my user is a member of. There are several reason I cannot work a a regular user and I do not want to change that.
So did anyone experience this and knows why this is the case? I would be glad to know. Thanks for everybody investing a thought
Sorry for this text monster, but this really bugs me.
Best regards Bruce
P.S. Maybe Apple will here my whining and look into this behavior also.
+Directory of C:\Users\Username\Music (actually D:\Username\Music)+
+2010-09-28 13:12 <DIR> .+
+2010-09-28 13:12 <DIR> ..+
+2010-09-27 16:43 <SYMLINKD> iTunes [d:\iTunes]+
+0 File(s) 0 bytes+
+3 Dir(s) 146,808,844,288 bytes free+
+C:\Users\Username\Music>dir itunes+
+Volume in drive C has no label.+
+Volume Serial Number is B022-C44F+
+Directory of C:\Users\Username\Music\itunes+
+2010-10-02 23:41 <DIR> .+
+2010-10-02 23:41 <DIR> ..+
+2010-10-02 23:41 <DIR> Album Artwork+
+2010-10-02 23:41 1,007,616 iTunes Library Extras.itdb+
+2010-10-02 18:33 72,208,384 iTunes Library Genius.itdb+
+2010-10-02 23:32 5,963,887 iTunes Library.itl+
+2010-10-02 23:30 29,777,149 iTunes Library.xml+
+2010-10-02 23:29 <DIR> iTunes Media+
+2010-09-27 16:45 <DIR> Previous iTunes Libraries+
+4 File(s) 108,957,036 bytes+
+5 Dir(s) 146,808,844,288 bytes free+
+C:\Users\Username\Music>dir "itunes\iTunes Media"+
+Volume in drive C has no label.+
+Volume Serial Number is B022-C44F+
+Directory of C:\Users\Username\Music\itunes\iTunes Media+
+2010-10-02 23:29 <DIR> .+
+2010-10-02 23:29 <DIR> ..+
+2010-09-27 16:07 <SYMLINKD> Audiobooks [e:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Audiobook+
s]
+2010-09-27 16:03 <DIR> Automatically Add to iTunes+
+2010-10-02 21:53 <DIR> Downloads+
+2010-10-02 23:14 <DIR> Mobile Applications+
+This folder gets deleted.+
+2010-10-02 23:29 <SYMLINKD> Music [e:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music]+
+2010-09-27 16:08 <SYMLINKD> Podcasts [e:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Podcasts]+
+2010-09-27 16:03 <DIR> Ringtones+
+2010-09-27 16:09 <SYMLINKD> TV Shows [e:\iTunes\iTunes Media\TV Shows]+

Hi, welcome to Apple Discussions.
iTunes and symlinks don't play nicely... They work OK as long as iTunes is only reading data but get all confused when iTunes tries to write back. I recommend you just put the whole library on a drive big enough to hold it all in one go.
tt2

Remote app shows 'album artist' instead of 'artist'...

for a normal cd, i have stored the 'artist' name in the 'artist' field and also in the 'album-artist' field.
for a compilation cd, i have stored the 'artist' of a song in the 'artist field'. the 'album-artist' field contains the information 'various artists'.
having done this, remote app 3 shows
the 'album artist' field in the normal list of songs, this means i see 'various artists' instead of the name of the artist (see 1)
in the 'next up' list the information for the same song is shown correctly (see 2)
it seems to me that there is something wrong.
or i misunderstand the meaning of the 'artist album' field.
i do hope, somebody can explain it to me, or apple sees the error and fixes it.
greez.

i found the solution in the german macuser forum.
obviously i had tagged my mp3 not to the recommended standard.
if you have a compilation, the albumartist field MUST be blank, instead you can mark it as a compilation.
this solved my problem.

Keep album stacked together by album artist, in a library sorted by artist?

I have my iTunes library sorted after “Artist”. Which gives me nothing but trouble with collections or collaborations.
So what I would like to do is have iTunes to ignore the default or general sorting by “Artist”. And instead sort only this album by “Album Artist”.
I have 12 songs with the same album title, same genre, same album artist but with different song names and artist.
But regardless of how I try to tell iTunes that it has to sort this one by album artist and not the artist, it never does.
I have tried at select all the 12 songs, get info. Write the same Albums Artist, the same Album Title and leave the Artist blank. And I choose sort by Album Artist and under option I choose part of a collection.
But this isn’t working for me, As soon I go back to my library, which sorted by Artist. The albums is still spread all over the place.
HOW DO I KEEP THESE 12 SONGS STACKED TOGETHER, without having to chance the Artist to Various Artists and write each individual artist to the song title?
Which in my opinion is the wrong and oldschool approach.

Yes, I have just checked and rechecked it again. I have set an Album Artist value for each songs and the album in general. And even if i add the Album by Artist to my list view and sort after that. It still acts up. It can't for some reason keep the correct collections together, eventhough they are set as a collection in options.
But i don't really, keeping collections together didn't used to be a problem before. But i will keep trying some different things. But it's pretty annoying, that iTunes has such trouble with this.
I really have a pretty tighty library, everything is named and set up correctly (haha, or apparently not).
But thanks for the help.

Problem with Composer info/Album Artist/ tags & duplicate albums

I recently re-organized my iTunes library, which is on a network drive in my home. Since everything had gotten moved to new directories, I deleted all the songs from my iTunes library and re-imported everything. I've never been much of a playlist person, nor did I do any ratings of songs, so I saw this as a reasonable solution.
Everything seemed fine -- Some artwork went missing after I imported everything, probably because iTunes no longer sells a few of the albums I have? Not really sure, but I fixed that, and then noticed that a few of my albums were showing up with duplicates in Cover flow & Grid view. More specifically, I found several albums with "Album Artist" info for the first two tracks of the album, and then nothing in that field for the rest of the tracks. Likewise, there would be composer info for ONLY the first two songs, and none for the rest.
What would cause this? Does iTunes supply composer info? I'm not even sure where it's coming from, but now that I notice it, it's bugging me that several of my albums don't have any info in this field. Album Artist is easy enough to fix, but I'm not sure how to fix the composer field. Does Genius change or import any info for these fields? I did notice this right after I ran Genius, and when I ran Genius, I did lose my internet connection in the middle of it downloading info, and had to restore it.
Most of my CD's were ripped using Exact Audio Copy, and track info came from it's built-in freeDB utility. I just find it really odd that I've got a couple dozen albums like this, out of about 12,000 songs, and only the first 2 tracks of each album have Composer and Album Artist info.
Any ideas how to fix this?

Welcome to AD!
I think WMP did this to random tracks in my library. Nicely filling in Album Artist & Compser on some tracks, and removing the track x of y info (the y went missing) and putting weird '0000 0A540 0000 ....'comments in the comment field.
Interesting that it only happened on the first 2 tracks of these albums - it was completely random on my files.
iTunes doesn't update track info from the internet, but WMP does. I rarely use WMP and it happened right after a WMP update. I have since turned off the option for WMP to get info from the internet.
Anyway....to fix the Cover flow & Grid views in iTunes, you have to make the Album Artist field match.
Select all the tracks from a CD, right-click > Get Info.
Answer yes , you want to edit multiple items.
Type in the Album Artist field. You can do the Composer field while you're at it, assuming you like having that info there.
Maybe there is some MP3 tag editor that would be faster, but that's the only way to do it in itunes.
Or perhaps you have backups that don't have this mess in the tags.

MediaSource sub-windows for Album/Artist/Genre have gone

My wife's Zen Micro (2--02) doesn't seem able to have its music organised by Creative MediaSource Explorer.
I'm sure that MediaSource used to display not only the tracks but had little sub-windows where you could select Album, Artist or Genre and get all the tracks associated with your choice.
However, all that I get now is a list of filenames. OK, I can click on these to get the next folder level which seems to be the album name, then further click to get to the track(s).
What I can't do is get the thing to list all tracks or all albums or all genres. It's just hopeless.
MediaSource, as I say, used to show little sub-windows when I had my Zen Xtra but now my wife's Zen Micro's been added and everything upgraded, these sub-windows for Album and Artist do not appear as they do in the illustration with the blurb...not even with my Zen Xtra.
Further, the Zen Micro doesn't seem to have a list of selected tracks like my Xtra does. The help files seem to refer to one but I'm blowed if I can find it, either via my PC or via the player's own display.
How do you see what's coming up next to play?
Everything's upgraded to the latest using Auto update and I re-loaded the f/w.
Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong, please?

In the bar above the list of tracks there should be a Find box. Next to this is a View button, next to that is a small downward triangle which, when clicked, allows you to select Genre, Album, Artist. Play around with those 2 buttons and you should be able to get back the view you want.
To view the selected tracks click on View in the menu bar and then choose Now Playing Window.
PB
Message Edited by PeeBee on 07-8-2005 04:47 AM

Album Artist

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