Artist then year of albums

I reeeeeeeeeealy want to be able to have my Artists sorted alphebetically then the Albums of that artist to be listed by the year they were released. Instead it will only allow me to have the albums listed alphebetically too. Thats just dumb. I searched for 2 hours for a way to change that but theres nothing. Is there anyway for me to have the albums listed by the year they were released for each individual artist??

.... yes, and then? Here I'll give an example:
I'll use Green Day
Their album "Nimrod" was released in 1997
Their newer album "American Idiot" was released in 2004
If I sort by Artist, I want the songs in "Nimrod" to be listed first, because it was released first. However this is not the case; instead it sorts the albums alphebetically, so the "American Idiot" songs come first. I don't want that. Since "Nimrod" came first, I want that to be first.
But thats not it. I want them to be grouped with the same artist. Not only THAT, but I want all of my artists listed alphebetically. Another example
NOT THIS:
Fall Out Boy: Infinity On High (2007)
Fall Out Boy: Take This to your Grave (2003)
Green Day: American Idiot (2004)
Green Day: Nimrod (1997)
NOT THIS because the artists are listed alphebetically, but the albums are too. The albums need to be listed according to year like this:
LIKE THIS:
Fall Out Boy: Take This to your Grave (2003)
Fall Out Boy: Infinity On High (2007)
Green Day: Nimrod (1997)
Green Day: American Idiot (2004)
So how do I do THAT?

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ITunes 11 [Songs view] - Sort on artist, then year

I just downloaded iTunes 11 and there seem to be some features missing compared to iTunes 10. One of the most important issues is that in the "Songs" view, I cannot seem to sort on (1) Artist and (2) Album year. It seems that iTunes is automatically sorting as (1) Artist, (2) Album name alphabetically. For example, for Norah Jones, first the album Little Broken Hearts (2012) is displayed, and after that the album Not Too Late (2007). Does anyone know if this can still be done in iTunes 11 or is the feature missing completely? Interestingly enough, in the "Albums" view, there is an option to sort by Artist, then Year (view --> view options).
Another issue, which I believe has been adressed in other topics as well, is the complete missing of albumart in the "Songs" view. Consequently, this was also the place in iTunes 10 where you could choose to sort on Arist/Year. I really hope that Apple puts this feature back in iTunes 11 as soon as possible.

Yep, I'm seeing the same thing. Just downloaded iTunes 11 and now I can't sort albums by year in the "Artists" view. I used to prefix all my album mp3 tag names with the year number to work around this, but removed it when Apple added the Artist/Year sort. Now it's gone. Yay!
A note: you can use the free mp3tag.de software to insert your year tag into your album titles using regular expressions. If there doesn't seem to be any obvious solution to sorting by Artist/Album/Year in the next couple days, then I'll post here with some tips if anyone is interested.

Sorting albums by artist then year

I have a bunch of albums imported into my itunes but I have problems sorting them the way I want it.
I want it to be sorted first by artist then by year so I have all the albums from 1 artist together in the order they was released
Now itunes sort by artist then album name
How is that changed?

Click on the Album column header. It will change to Album by Artist, then Album by Year.
This will sort all the songs by Artist and then Year.

Is there a way to sort in iTunes 1st by artist then year?

Right now when I sort by artist the albums or songs go into alphabetical order. When this happens I get new albums or songs mixed with old ones. I want my permanent sorting to be in “artist” order then inside each artist the sort to be by “year”. Then I would like this same set up to load to my iPod.
This seems simple but I can't fine how to do this. Can anyone tell me how to do this if it is possible?
HP Windows XP
HP Windows XP
HP Windows XP

Sorry, but it's not possible.
B-rock

In song view, order by artist then album year?

Is there a way, in Songs View, to order the songs first alphebetically by artist and then chronologically by album year? The default for Songs View is alphabetically by artist and then alphabetically by album title. Can this be changed? I'm using 11 for Windows but would switch to any version that supported this. Thanks for any help!

Clicking on the heading of the Album column cycles through three options:
Album
Album by Artist
Album by Artist/Year
The last of these should meet your needs, I actually use a different approach which is to define the Sort Album value for every album to be "<sort artist name> yyyymmdd", where the latter part is the date of release (or, for some live albums, recording date). This has the advantage of listing albums in "correct" chronological order even in cases where an artist has multiple releases in a single calendar year.

Printing List of Artists then Albums

Some time ago, I was able to obtain a nice list from iTunes of artists, followed by their albums.   I am using iTunes 11 under OS 10.6.8, and I suspect this was an earlier version of iTunes. The format was:
Artist Name
     Album 1
     Album 2
     Album 3
Next Artist Name
     Album 1
     Album 2
No songs. No time length. Nothing else.
This gave me a nice compact listing.
When I go to File/Print and select "Album List", then "List of Albums", I get way more information than I need, plus each artist is repeated over and over again, with lots of room between each line.   The result is far too large an output.
I suspect I exported something before, perhaps to Word or Excel. But the Export option appears to have been removed from iTunes 11.
Anyone have any ideas how to get what I am looking for?

As I see it you have a few possible options…
See if dougscripts can help http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=makeatextlist (there probably are other scripts on there that may help - search for 'export' on the site - some others are mentioned at Parsing iTunes XML).
Parse the .xml into the fields you desire (probably via a Python script or similar). I suspect there will be something around if you are willing to search & try running them. This should give the best output but may take some work.
Parse the output of a directory listing (assuming iTunes manages the location of the media), the next commands will create a list based on the folder structure of the iTunes Library - it does not list compilations correctly, you will need to handle them separately. This may not be what you want, especially if you want a subset of the library.
cd ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music/Music
find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -exec find {} -type d -mindepth 1 \; | sed -e 's|./||' -e 's|/|    |'
NOTE: You may need to provide a different path to the music folder, mine has been migrated over many years & may not be the same as yours (drag & drop to get the Terminal to auto fill correcting any spaces in the path).
It outputs like …
A Tribe Called Quest    The Anthology
Add N to (X)    Add Insult to Injury
Add N to (X)    Avant Hard
In short it finds folders one level deep, then inside those find the next folder names and parse out the leading './' and convert the next slash to 4 spaces.
You may want to change the spaces to commas so you can import to a spreadsheet, however that will need careful handling when Albums or Artists contain commas.
This next one is cleaner, again run it from inside the music folder
cd ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music/Music
ls */ | sed -e '/^$/d' -e 's/$.*[^/\:]$$/     \1/'   -e 's|\/\:||'
It looks more like your original aim
Orbital
     Blue Album
     In Sides
     Orbital II
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
     Peel Sessions 1979-1983
Hope that's some food for thought.

With IOS 7, the coverflow screen sorts strictly by album title. How do I get sorting by artist then by title, the way it was in IOS 6 and earlier?

There seems to be no way in IOS 7 to see a list of the album titles for an artist. The "coverflow" screen sorts just by album title, without regard for Artist, where in IOS 6 and before it sorted by artist (primary key) and then album title (secondary key).
Also, in IOS 6 and before, under the Artist search, selecting an Artist gave you a list of the album titles for that artist, then you could select the album you were interested in (or wanted to shuffle play). But in IOS 7, the Artist search gives you a list of ALLsongs for that Artist. There is no overview list of just album titles, and no way to shuffle just one album from that screen. Both IOS 6 and 7 allow one to shuffle all songs for the Artist.
How do I get back the Artist/Abums sorting or grouping, either ijn Coverflow or in the Artist search?
Thanks,
Rainer in Waltham

The large text size makes your post almost impossible to read.
Excessive use of bold or capitals (also) makes posts difficult to read.
You can drag most of the column headings left or right, or right-click on the header to turn columns on or off.
Once you've used File > Display Duplicates or Shift > File > Display Exact Duplicates you can use File > Display All or the Display All button at the bottom of the list to restore the display.
For general advice on organising your library see this article on Grouping tracks into albums.
tt2

Can you sort albums by release date, rather than year, in album view?

I love the new album view in iTunes 11, but the only problem I have with it is sometimes albums are in the wrong order.
For example, last year Green Day released a trilogy of albums called ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! but since they were released in the same year, they're ordered as ¡Dos!, ¡Tré, ¡Uno! when sorted by artist and then year which really doesn't sit right with me.
In short, the sorting options for albums view are very limited, is there any way to extend them?
Also I'm aware that I could, as a cheap fix, change the sorting in album to the release date backwards, but I'd rather not do that as it would make it a bit more troublesome for me to navigate my albums on my iPhone.
Thanks!

I agree that Apple should improve the year field to be an actual date.
I am not 100% happy doing this, but when you have multiple albums from a single artist for the same release year, a temporary solution is to chage the album title by adding an outline type letter before album titles for that year, so that they appear in the correct order:
David Bowie
1977
a. Low
David Bowie
1977
b. "Heroes"
etc
This could help in the short term until Apple changes that field.

How do I sort by Artist and Year?

I want to sort 1st by Artist then I want my tracks sorted by Year. I have only been able to do one or the other but not both at the same time. Does anyone know how to do this?Thanks, Robert

Hi, Robert.
As Dave says iTunes doesn't allow "dual" sorting but there is a workaround of sorts that you may find useful.
First create a Smart Playlist for the artist in question.
When you view that playlist in iTunes, make sure the Year column is being displayed (iTunes View menu > View Options > check Year).
In the main display you can now click on the Year column heading to sort the contents of that playlist by year.

ITunes 12: use 'Artist' name in "Artists view" rather than 'Album Artist'?

I.e. if I have an album with artist name X and album artist name Y it seems to sort by Y (the album artist name) in "Artists" view (i.e. the one with the pictures on the left)…is there a way to make it use the artist name (X) instead?
Say artist is "Johann Sebastian Bach", and album artist is "Sviatoslav Richter" (i.e. performer), I would rather it came in under "Johann Sebastian Bach" in the artists view, rather than "Sviatoslav Richter".
…the obvious solution is to switch X with Y, while laborious it does work, however, the problem is then when you have an album were a performer plays a bunch of different composers, this messes things up (breaks up the album in "Albums" and just makes a mess in general)…
In "Songs" view you can just switch between "Use Album Artists" and normal Artists…but in "Artists" view there appears to be no such setting and it seems Album Artist overrides Artist...

.

Shuffling When Playing in Artist, Song, Genre or Album Mode

Is there any way to shuffle songs when playing from the Artist, Song, Genre or Album modes? Or does shuffle only apply to playlists?
Thanks for the help?

Make sure your shuffle setting is set to songs. Then select any artist/album/genre, hit play and the songs within that category are shuffled.
For instance, set shuffle to songs, select artist, select (say) The Beatles, select all, press play and all The Beatles songs are shuffled.

HT4236 I've run out of room on my hard drive. I bought an external drive and exported all my albums to the external drive then deleted the albums from iPhoto. I want to sync both from my ext drive and new albums in iPhoto. No dice. Help!

I've run out of room on my hard drive. I bought an external drive and exported all my albums to the external drive then deleted the albums from iPhoto. I want to sync both from my ext drive and new albums in iPhoto. My photos on the devices get wiped out when I sync to iPhoto since I deleted all the albums. But when I sync to my hard drive (where I maintained the album structure) the photos are copied to my iPad but lose all the hierarchy and folder structure. Now I have to scroll through thousands of photos to try to find the one I'm looking for. Before I sync any more devices I want to know the following: 1) can I restore the album structure on my iPad by using the photo cache? 2) is there a way to sync both new iPhoto albums AND pictures in the folders in my hard drive? And 3) how can I keep the photo hierarchy structure from my hard drive intact on my devices?

TigerMom28 wrote:
I've run out of room on my hard drive. I bought an external drive and exported all my albums to the external drive then deleted the albums from iPhoto.
Don't do that.
Copy /Photos/Photo library/ to the external.
Hold Option and launch iPhoto.
Select Choose library and select the Photo library you copied to the external.

I just noticed that all my calendar events (other then yearly recurring) past the last 30 days are no longer on my calendar. Is there a way to retrieve them or are they lost? I need them for my business!!

I just noticed that all my calendar events past the last 30 days are no longer on my calendar,(other then yearly recurring) . Is there a way to retrieve them or are they lost? I need them for my business!!

Thanks for your reply. I did this and the events have not been restored. I am clouding between my iPhone and iPad and changed the settings on both devices. Do I need to power on and off?

How to import a album with multiple artists in the one album?

How do I import a album with multiple artists as the one album. Everytime I try to do this it does not collate it into one album, the other artists come up seperatley, also if this is possible can you set so that it works automatically everytime?
Hope someone can help.
Cheers,
Fuzzi G.

Generally all you need to do is fill in an appropriate Album Artist. For more details see my article on Grouping Tracks Into Albums, in particular the topic One album, too many covers.
tt2

How do you make it so that the ipod will play all the different artists featured in an album when you click that album to play?

How do you make it so that the ipod will play all the different artists featured in an album when you click that album to play? At the moment, each artist in the album is being separated and I can't play them together. For example, to play the Halo 2 Soundtrack, Hoobastank, Breaking Benjamin, Nile Rodgers, etc. are some of the artists featured. However, in the Albums category, they are each separate choices. I want to play them all together, but can't. Is there a way to do that?

It sounds like the album metadata is incorrect, or differs from song to song in iTunes. Albums with various artists will play properly assuming all the songs are tagged with the same identical album name, as well as the track number. For the Halo 2 Soundtrack, metadata should look like this:
Song: <Song Title>
Artist: <Song Artist>
Album: Halo 2, Vol. 1 (Original Soundtrack)
Genre: Soundtrack
I had a similar problem with my imported Cowboy Bebop albums and the mixture of artists/album names. Once I adjusted the metadata, all of them play in the correct order just by selecting the Album from the available list or in Coverflow.

Artist then year of albums

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