Album by Year sorting?

Hello, I'm pretty specific about the organization of my albums and prefer them to be alphabetical by artist > album in the order of release. I'm aware and very grateful for iTunes' "Album by Year" sorting option, but have run into one issue--when an artist releases multiple albums in the same year, those become sorted by alphabetical order. To be specific, I've run into this problem with a couple artists before but the worst offender is Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, who has released 6 albums in 2009.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a workaround to sort these albums that all came out in the same year by their release order? It's nitpicky, but I'd like to have them in release order (down to the month of necessary, in this case) if possible.
Thanks for your help.

LHHJ wrote:
Does anyone have any suggestions for a workaround to sort these albums that all came out in the same year by their release order? It's nitpicky, but I'd like to have them in release order (down to the month of necessary, in this case) if possible.
see if this post by TT2 offers a solution.
good luck !

Similar Messages

How do I sort by artist, by album, by year

In iTunes 10, I sorted everything by artist, by album, by year (release date). I can't do that in iTunes 11 or I can't figure out how to do it. Grrrrrrrr Why do they break things?

Cpel1000 wrote:
Very simply (I just figured it out with a little help, so I'll pass it on to you)...Simply go to the VIEW option on the menu bar (show Menu Bar if not showing from upper left corner) and select VIEW OPTIONS and then select Artist in the 1st box, and YEAR in the 2nd. That will do it! Easy enough, new iTunes 11 is fantastic.
That doesn't work. Checking those boxes just determines the columns that will appear. The sort order is determined by the pop up at the top. And with that you choose only a single criteria for sorting.

Album By Year -- and month? (Sorting when an artist has 2 albums in 1 year)

I love having my music collection sorted by Artist and within Artist by Album by Year. This effectively presents each artists' entire catalogue as a set, with each album in the order of release date. Perfect.
But what if an artist releases more than one album or single in a year?
Then the sorting of Album by Year breaks down.
Two albums in the same year appear to iTunes to have been released at exactly the same time. iTunes gives up, looks at the two albums' titles, and sorts them in alphabetical order. That's kind of lame.
Is there some way to specify the year AND MONTH of release?
I tried adding a decimal to the year field, figuring that would at least be close enough to get them in chronological order, but it won't accept more than 4 digits.
The obvious workaround is to rename the albums, for example rename the second album with a "Z" so it will be forced into second place when iTunes gives up and goes alphabetical. Or, use entirely fake years. But neither workaround is proper.
Is there any legitimate way to tell iTunes what to do?
Gateway NX250X Windows XP Pro

Hi, Will.
But neither workaround is proper.
Indeed.
Is there any legitimate way to tell iTunes what to do?
Unfortunately, as far as I know there is not so your workarounds seem like the best way of dealing with the situation - it's either that or eliminating artists who release more than one record in any given year from your Library. ; - )
All I can suggest is you go to the man and let him know what you'd like to see in a future version of iTunes: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Track sorting in iTunes 9 -- Album by Artist and Album by Year mix disc #s

Here's a weird one I just noticed: on iTunes 8, if you selected to sort by Album, Album by Artist, or Album by Year, the tracks within each album would be sorted properly (all songs from disc 1 in order, followed by all songs from disc 2 in order, etc.).
On iTunes 9, this works fine for Album sort, but if you choose Album by Artist or Album by Year, it essentially ignores the disc numbers and sorts everything by track number (all track #1's, regardless of disc, followed by all track #2's).
Has anyone else noticed this? I'm using iTunes 9 for 64-bit Vista. Is there any work-around or way to get things sorting properly?

I am having the same problem! I just got off the phone with Apple Care and they were of little help. First, he denied ever hearing of this issue on a Mac (as I use) saying it was only an issue for PC users. I am proof that you are wrong, sir. Second, he denied that it was a bug and said Apple is not treating this as a bug (great...). He says it happened because the multi-disc import occurred in iTunes 8. I know this is incorrect because these same discs were imported using iTunes 7 and made the jump to iTunes 8 without a problem. They are in total denial on this one!
Ultimately, he said to try re-importing my entire library. This will be a huge pain as I have over 25k songs! So, if anyone tries this, please let us know if it works. I tried deleting just the single multi-disc album and then re-"Add to Library" with no luck, so I doubt blowing up my entire library would have a different result. Their other "solution" was to completely uninstall iTunes, then download and reinstall and re-import. This seems like a lot of work with no guarantee of success.
How disappointing!

Sorting Individual Artists by Album by Year

I have a question about how to define how iTunes should sort songs. Currently, I use GRID VIEW to sort songs by artist, giving me the following view:
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o151/AndrewG17/Picture2-2.png
Then I have the next section organized with GRID VIEW as well, giving me the following view:
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o151/AndrewG17/Picture1-2.png
My question is when in this view, how do I tell iTunes to organize every one of these grids, which is the entire works of a particular artist, by ALBUM BY YEAR in an ascending fashion. You will notice that the second picture is organized in this fashion already, but if I were to return to the grid of artists and click on the same artist again it would revert to the following view:
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o151/AndrewG17/Picture3-2.png
As you can see this is not the same view at all, and it is quite frustrating to CONSTANTLY have to tell iTunes to sort the artists by ALBUM BY YEAR. Is there someway I can have iTunes automatically define sorting in this way? Interesting enough not every artist will be sorted in the same fashion as this one (the third picture), indicating to me that there is some way to set the presets for sorting. However, in no case will the sorting technique that I indicate be "saved" for the next time I open that artist. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated and thank you for your time.

Use the "Option" key when clicking on a sort button in grid view to get additional options.

Sorting Albums by Year

When sorting albums by year, albums with the oldest title go first. That's ridiculous because an album never could have been released before the latest title has been released. Sorting albums by the latest title track would make more sense...

I think the distinction is about which "year" is used to sort compilations/anthologies when different tracks have different dates. I suspect iTunes uses the year of the first track of the album rather than the latest value across all tracks which might make better sense. iTunes supports only the single year value rather than extended year & time (date) for the original recording & the release in question. Including these would enable iTunes to sort correctly when an artist releases more than one album in the same year.
tt2

Sorting albums by year doesn't work properly in new iTunes 11.

Sorting albums by year doesn't work properly in new iTunes 11.
See the screenshots below.
There's a kind of albums. Double CD in one set. Queen "The Works" 1984, for example.
First CD is the original release and the second one is bonus CD for the original album's reissue in 2011.
iTunes 10 took year info from track 1 of CD1 for "sort album by year" function.
But new iTunes 11 takes the highest value of year in the album's track list.
Same things with additional bonus tracks for the album's reissues.
See the screenshot of Madonna "Like a Virgin" 1984 album.
So my collection is in a huge mess after last update to iTunes 11.
It's a big problem. And must be solved to the next update.

I noticed this too, and I think it gets even more complicated when you think about the difference between how you want Re-releases to be ordered: based upon the intial release year (like you have described above), and Compilations or Greatest Hits: where you want them to be sorted by when the albums were actually released. iTunes 11 seems to just grab the date of the most recently released song on an album. This worked fine for 2/3 of my Compilation albums, because they just happened to be released the same year as the latest song on each album.
Compilation example (released: 2003, latest song on album: 1969):
This is what I submitted to Apple as feedback:
This issue is actually aimed at iTunes 11, but 10.6.3 is the most recent version number I could select in the drop-down menu.
As with normal albums, iTunes 11 puts a release year next to "Various Artists" in Albums > Expanded View (and also in the Songs and Genre Tabs). However, iTunes seems to produce this number by looking for the last released song on the album. This has worked fine for 2/3 of my compilations, but the third one is a 60s compilation released in 2003. It displays "1969" next to "Various Artists" and there are no tags available in Get Info to change this. This also happens to greatest hits collections.
When selecting View > View Options > "Artist" then "Year" in Album view, and View > View Options > "Year" in Artist and Genre view, the above issue causes compilations, greatest hits collections, and re-releases (Although users may want re-releases to be listed in order of original release) to be sorted in the wrong order.
Considering iTunes 11 has added this feature (in previous iTunes versions, "Year" would only appear next to individual tracks), it is a shame an "Album Year" or "Sort Album Year" hasn't been added to the Get Info options.
As is, the only solution I can think of is to change all track years to the release year of the album.
I imagine this might be a bit of an edge case, and not something the majority of iTunes users would care about, but then again, I could imagine a fair number of musicphiles wanting control over this metadata.
Message was edited by: folo1988, info added.

Cover Flow & Album by Artist / Album by Year

I've been playing with V7 for a few hours now and Cover Flow seems pretty good.
I generally don't like to mess with the sort order of my 15,000 odd database: I like things to be: sorted by Artist, and within artist by album (either alphabetically or by year). Ideally with compilations at the end of the list.
I seem to be able to achieve this using using 'Album' heading - which toggles between album, album-by-artist and album-by-year.
My only 'problem' is that in the Cover Flow view, whilst the ordering is great and I can easily navigate sequentially using the cursor keys, typing a character on the keyboard jumps to the first album with that letter - not the first artist which is what I want.
Am I missing something (or perhaps just want too much without having to keep re-ordering things)?
Any ideas...?
iMac (power PC) Mac OS X (10.4.7)

It doesn't seem like it sorts by field or any particular order. It more looks like it sorts by free text, the first match, whatever it is, comes first. That means you'll have to write letters until your lettercombination forms a word/name/album etc that can be found anywhere.
Sitara

Album by Year in Grid View

Ok, I know that clicking on the 'Album' column you can cycle through various sort options to get to 'Album by Year', but after quitting and restarting iTunes, it forgets that I wanted to sort by album year and reverts to sorting by track number!
I'm using 8.2.1 by the way, in grid view, grouped by Artists. I want to be able to click on an artist and see their albums sorted by year.
Anyone else having this problem?
Message was edited by: thezookeepersboy

thezookeepersboy wrote:
I'm using 8.2.1 by the way, in grid view, grouped by Artists. I want to be able to click on an artist and see their albums sorted by year.
When you click on the Album button in grid view, hold down the control key to get the other options.

Album by Year

I cannot get the plain "Album" sort option in iTunes. It changed itself to "album by year" and is sorting most all of my albums out of order and really messing with compilations. I have tried changing the field through the view menu and by clicking on the heading and changing it back to "album", no luck. Even non-compilation albums that were downloaded through iTunes now have out of order track listings. I have searched the discussions, and have tried all of the obvious solutions. How do I get the plain vanilla "album" sort field back?
Thanks for your help.

The normal way to do it is to click on the column header until it says "Album". If that's not working, something's gotten corrupted somewhere.

Album by Artist Sort Column

If you are trying to sort using the ALBUM column, and it appears as
ALBUM BY ARTIST, which mine did, you will notice that compilation
albums will scatter throughout the column. The album will not be
grouped as it should be like a normal album.
here's a little nested egg i came across tonight to help.
click on the column title, where it says, ALBUM BY ARTIST (it may
read differently per user) and you'll notice the title and sort parameters
change to ALBUM BY YEAR and just plain ol' ALBUM.
worked for me and i hope it helps someone else.

Thank you Fizzlestix for posting your discovery about changing the type of sorting done in the Album column! One of the first things I noticed about v. 7 was a different column heading in my music Library ('Album by Year') and I could not get the thing to sort albums in any way that was meaningful to me. (The column header remained 'Album' in all of my playlists and continued to sort alpha order which is all that I need.) A long search in the iTunes Help didn't turn up anything helpful (not unusual).
I should have turned to this discussion forum sooner.
I have other questions now that I will soon be posting here.
Thanks again.
Roger C.

Itunes now shows "album by year" - how do I get back to just "album" ??

my itunes library shows track name, artist, track #, time, year,and used to just show the album name. I know I can sort by clicking on either artist, album, etc. now, suddenly, instead of "album", it shows the heading "album by year" and I can't get it back to the other way. I've repeatedly checked "album" in view, and preferences, etc. there's not even a category choice of "album by year" but it won't go away !! any ideas on how I can get rid of this, and get back to just sorting by album name ??
I'm fairly new to itunes and ipod, so please forgive me if this is a really dumb (ignorant) question ! thanks for your help !!

Click on the word "Album" several times, until you see the option you want.

Organizing with "Album by Year"

I've found the sorting method of "Album by Year" very useful in organizing my albums chronologically. However:
The Times They Are A-Changin' and Another side of Bob Dylan were both released in 1964. Although "Another side" was released second, it is listed above "Times" in alphabetical order.
Any tricks to move that album down a notch and keep my chronology going?

Not that I have found I am afraid.
The next level of sorting is album title, so the only way I can see is to put a character in front of the Album title to influence the sort order.
Putting a space character in front of "Times they are a changing" might force it to the top and is not too intrusive. Worth a go anyway. I am sure you know that you can use Get Info on multiple tracks so you can do the whole album in one go.

Burning MP3 CD by 'Album by Year'

I can burn an MP3 CD with folders for each album. However, the album/folder order is alphabetical. I tried burning by 'Album by Year' a new feature in iTunes 7 however it does not create the folders necessary for easy navigation on a car MP3 player.
Any ideas?

Hi
All my tracks are MP3.
In List View, I do not have an Album column I have an Album by Artist column. If I click on this column the albums look right in the playlist on the screen but when I burn to the CD the tracks are not in one folder per album instead they seem to be in folders per Artist then Album, which as one of the albums is a compilation has created about 30 folders.
If I switch on the 'Sort by Album' column it burns the disc as I expected.

Albums=Albums by Year?

Alright, iTunes has managed to officially confuse me. I checked that I wanted the "Albums" listed as a way to sort my music and somehow iTunes now translates that as "Albums by Year", which is completely different. Is this a new iTunes quirk or can it be modified? It doesn't make any sense, as the check box in the View Options only says "Albums".
Thanks in advance!

Nea,
If you continue to click the "Album" tab in your iTunes window, you will notice that it will cycle through three different sort types: Album by Artist, Album by Year, and just plain ol' Album.
Keep clicking it until you get to the one you want. Good luck!

Album by Year sorting?

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