"artists" vs "compilations"

Good day! Some of my music, by a single artist, shows up in my iPod in the "compilations" segment of my music files but not in the "artist" segment, where I would prefer to find these selection. How may I move artists from these albums into my "artists" sector?
thank you in advance for your response...

If the tracks are ticked in the Get Info>Info tab of iTunes as part of a compilation, they will not appear under Artist on the iPod. Highlight a song in iTunes that you know is not appearing correctly on your iPod. Right click on it and choose Get Info and click the Info tab (alternatively choose Get Info from the File menu), if "Part of a Compilation" is marked untick it and afterwards update your iPod, you should find it now appears as normal.
To change multiple items such as all the songs in an album, click on the first track in your album to highlight it, hold down the shift key and click on the last. Right click anywhere in the selection and choose Get Info, when you are asked if you want to edit multiple items say yes. The compilations setting is in the "Options" tab, untick it and the change will be applied to the whole selection at once.

Similar Messages

Music app shows unknown artist for compilation albums

I just submitted a bug report to Apple, though I can't believe I am the only person with this issue.
Since iOS7 (I am currently on iOS7.0.4) I have noticed that the music app (along with many many other issues) will no longer display the artist for compilation albums that I have. In iTunes the artist on the compilation is clearly defined but in iOS7 the Music app simply states "unknown artist".
Surely I am not the only one with this issue?

I am very annoyed by this bug too, I have a lot of compilation albums and soundtracks with lots of differents artists, and my library is super organized in iTunes, with the “Album artist” field empty and the “Part of a compilation” checkbox enabled, and it shows the compilations as a “Various Artists” album.
But when I tried to download through iTunes Match in my iPhone 5C some few songs from those albums today, I found out that the music app has this bug that makes almost all of the compilation albums appear within this “UNKNOWN ARTIST” category under the artists tab.
It is very annoying and I hope Apple fixes this, cuz it is driving me crazy.

IPad music app does not show track artists in compilations

Hello community,
i have a problem with my iPad's music app. When browsing compilations, it does not show the artist of each track like my iPhone does. Both devices are sync'ed with the same iTunes library, and the 'Part of a compilation' flag is set correctly to the corresponding tracks.
Please let me illustrate the problem with a few screenshots.
The iPhone shows this compilation correctly as 'Various Artists' and thus displays the track's artists in each line below:
In contrast, the iPad's music app does not seem to identify the compilation correctly. The artist is not shown as "Various Artists" like on the iPhone, but the artists of the first track is wrongly used instead. Furthermore, the artist of each track is not shown in the list on the right side:
The setting "Sort album by artist" is turned on on both devices.
Any ideas what could be wrong?
Thank you!

It's not you, it's the iPad's iOS. The Music app in iOS 5 for the iPad is horrendous with several UI fails:
- No category for Compilations
- Incorrect/ Missing Artist for Compilations
- No lyrics
- No indication of track number within a group of tracks (e.g. "18 of 37")
- Sporadic indication of which track is playing while looking at a list
Hopefully these things get corrected in iOS 6, but for now you'll have to bear with it. You can voice your concern here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

Nano 5G displaying wrong artist for compilations

Just got a Nano 5G and have begun transferring several compilation albums over. I'm anal about tags and all of the tracks have been marked as a Compilation in iTunes and the Album Artist is tagged as "Various Artists". Secondly, the compilation setting is enabled on the Nano and the album is grouped as it should be. The compilations have a different artist for each song and that's what tagged in the Artist field.
It shows the exact same artist for all of the songs, even though each song is tagged with a unique artist. I've verified that all the tags are correct and marked as a Compilation with iTunes, MP3tag, and SharePod.
How it Looks in iTunes:
Creed - Higher
Chris Cornell - Can't Change Me
Blink 182 - What's My Age Again
Lit - Zip Lock
Epidemic - Walk Away
Here's how it looks when played on the Nano:
Epidemic - Higher
Epidemic - Can't Change Me
Epidemic - What's My Age Again
Epidemic - Zip Lock
Epidemic - Walk Away
Tried restoring the Nano firmware (1.02) and that didn't work. It's just an issue/bug with compilations, as my individual albums all display properly.
Most compilations are just a collection of my favorite songs, and are fairly large (200-300 tracks). Could that be the problem?
Any other ideas?
Message was edited by: Brimstone13

Did you ever solve this?
I have exactly the same problem - the tracks are correctly tagged and displayed in itunes, but when synced to the ipod nano 5g, any compilations seem to get assigned a random artist from my music collection when displayed on the ipod.
I have tried everything I can think of: restoring firmware, renaming artist of compilations to "assorted artists" etc; but still the same problem.

Turned "Sort by Album Artist" off on iPod Touch 5th Gen so individual artists on compilation albums will show up separately under "Artists" with no succuss. This worked perfectly on my Ipod Touch 4th Gen. Any Advice?

I have a 5th Gen iPod Touch. It is running the latest iOS, and iTunes has the latest update. I have many compilation albums that I imported from CD. I want the individual artists and their associated song(s) to show up under "Artists." I have turned off "Sort by Album Artist" in Settings. This worked perfectly on my 4th Gen Touch. Each artist from a compilation would show up under "Artists" with the correct song(s) showing, while still showing the whole compilation under "Albums." Now, on my 5th Gen Touch, when I try to look at an artist from a compilation under "Artists," I get one of the following: the correct artist and song, an incorrect artist and song, or an incorrect artist with the entire compilation album showing up. Is this a bug in the new iOS 7, or am I doing something wrong? Anyone else with this problem? Any advice?

I have the same problem and I have been really trying hard to find a solution. No success.
My main problem is this: For example: Top Gun soundtrack - I look at Kenny Loggins under artists and I see his albums and songs, plus the 2 songs from top gun. Then when I look at Miami Sound Machine (also on top gun cd) under artist, I see correct albums from Miami sound machine, but under the top gun soundtrack, it shows the 2 kenny loggins songs instead. then if I look at another artist from top gun cd, it continues to show the kenny loggins songs. It doesn't matter which songs i look at, but the first one i start with will always show up on the others. Funny thing is, if I click on the song, the correct song plays, it just says it is the kenny loggins song!!! ha ha. Been dealing with this for over a year now. Pretty aggravating. Happens whether I have compilations checked or unchecked on settings. I have over 50 compilation albums and some are checked, some aren't...they all behave this way.
On Mac, itunes (v 12) it all shows up correctly and works fine. I have become an expert on ID tags and am very thorough with my tagging. HAND TAGGING, not some program that does it for you...they are never correct. I match all my tag info with the info in the iTunes store for each album so it is sure to match. Has taken a long, long, long time.
Love iTunes match, but this one issue is a real pain. Anyone with any ideas, I'd love to hear them! Thanks!

Artists and Compilations and AppleTV, oh my!

Hopefully this is an easy one: I've got Compilation albums with many different artists. In iTunes, I have Checked "Compilation" and none of the artists appear in the "Artists" view. I can not get this same behavior in the Apple TV though. All of the artists show up individually and I seem to have thousands of separate artists listings.
Is there any way to have the Apple TV use a "Compilation" function like iTunes? I'm pretty sure I was able to do this in an older version of the Apple TV software, but I can't figure it out using the newest version.
Thanks,

Matt Larson2 wrote:
Hopefully this is an easy one: I've got Compilation albums with many different artists. In iTunes, I have Checked "Compilation" and none of the artists appear in the "Artists" view. I can not get this same behavior in the Apple TV though. All of the artists show up individually and I seem to have thousands of separate artists listings.
Is there any way to have the Apple TV use a "Compilation" function like iTunes? I'm pretty sure I was able to do this in an older version of the Apple TV software, but I can't figure it out using the newest version.
it works like that for me. none of the artists in my compilations show up in my artist list on appletv.
sounds like you, and the other poster in this thread have tagging issues.

View individual artists in compilation albums?

Hello,
I have an issue that has been bugging me for a while. I can't seem to set up my music collection so that when opening a compilation album on my ipad it shows a list of songs on the compilation album along with the artist of each song.
In itunes on my computer it displays as expected - the song name appears with the artist below it in the compilations album. See below:
When synced to my ipad and clicking on the same compilation album it displays without the artist name. See below:
Note also that the album artist name below the album thumbnail is one of the track artists.
The settings for this album in itunes on my mac are:
Each song has their artist name and song name completed.
Album artist is left blank
Compilation is ticked.
This results in the correct display in itunes on the computer, but not on the ipad.
Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks for any help

Typically, after posting my question I stumbled across a solution that almost solves my problem, but not completely.
I completely closed the music app on the ipad then reopened it and all the artists did appear under their track names in compilations.
I have added various artists under the album artist too.
The only problem that remains is rather than displaying "Various Artists" under the thumbnail in picture 2 above, it shows a random artist name.
Does anyone else have this problem? Any suggestions?

Artist in compilations changed itself to 'Various'

Hi
When I originally loaded compilations onto my Pc, the artist was listed as 'Various' and the song title was listed in the format 'artist/song'. I went through all of these albums and cut+pasted the artist into the artist column so they were listed correctly.
Now all of a sudden (possibly since an upgrade?) the files are all listing the artist as 'Various' and the artist info is back in the song title. iTunes itself still has the correct info until I play the song or look at it in iTunes at which point iTunes picks up the info in the file.
A - How did this happen and can I stop it?
and
B - Is there a way of getting iTunes to update the files with the info it has so I don't have to go and edit hundreds of files?
Thanks for any help
Dan

You have one or more read-only calendars in the left sidebar—generally, these are subscribed calendars—and one or more of them is selected. More than one of your calendars in this list is enabled, and you're seeing many events from separate calendars in a single view.
Remember that visually, all of these calendar views are layered. The one selected in the sidebar should be the one you want to enter data into. If a read-only is selected, the disallow message will appear.

IPod not listing artist from compilation album

I have had my experience w/ Apple products and iPods before and this has NEVER happened to me ever. I just got a new-ish iPod classic from someone else and when I synced all my music from my iTunes to my iPod, ONE of the artists is NOT listed under "artists". I then proceeded to find the artist using other methods, such as albums, and I found the album, however, underneath it it said "Various artists". I then checked "various artists" under artists and I didn't find that either. Everything is perfect on my iTunes though... the band and songs are listed in alphabetical order like they normally should and nothing is missing. But it's just when I go to my iPod to look for that particular band I don't even see the name!
Anyone know what's going on? I checked and looked for everything several times; I know I don't have bad eyesight lol.
Message was edited by: Host <changed title for clarity>

It could be that you have imported this CD into iTunes as part of a compilation. If so, the artist won't show in the artists menu on the iPod.
To check, highlight the tracks on the CD in iTunes, right click and select "get info". This brings up a song info window, and by selecting "options" 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.

Artists on compilations

Is there any way of searching on my ipod classic by artist those that are part of compilation albums?

While what Jeff has said is true, it actually applies when the artist in question only appears on compilation albums. If however, the same artist has an album of their own on the iPod, then when you search under artist, the tracks from the compilation albums will also be listed.
For instance, I have tracks by an artist called "Underworld" on five different compilation albums, but I don't have any of their own albums on my iPod. Therefore, the artist "Underworld" does not appear under artists. But, for the artist "Electribe 101", I have have three tracks on three different compilation albums and one album of their own (Electribal Memories, 12 tracks). If I search under artists, when I get to "Electribe 101", I find all 15 tracks by them listed as four separate albums. If I dig down into any compilation album it will list only the tracks by "Electribe 101".
If it really is that important to you to have all artists listed under artists, you could to create a one-track album (like a CD single, for instance) for any artist who only appears on compilations. But quite frankly, sorting out who needs doing and who doesn't would be a huge amount of work for very little return. I accept this minor limitation of the iPod and enjoy what it can do!
Regards,

How do I get my 'Compilations' storage folder to match the view by artist list in the library?

When I view by Artist in the iTunes library, I have a 'compilations' section that contains soundtracks, etc. The weird thing is that when buying and or importing cds of this nature, it categorizes on my hard drive differently. I have 30 albums in my folder (in iTunes media) - which is correct, they are all soundtracks or various artist albums. But in the actually iTunes library it only shows 3. And thi sis something that changed at some point (im pretty are) when updating iTunes itself. It used to have them all. Can't figure out how to fix it. I know there is that 'part of a compilation' tag but for the life of me I cannot get it to 'accept' that something iss and then move it to the corresponding folder.

I was looking for this and found the answer by playing with smart lists...
1. File > New > Smart Playlist...
2. (Under watch the following rule) change the Artist to 'Compilation'. The condition will be set to 'is true' by default.
Thats it! the new smart playlist should appear under your other playlists with a cog icon (like other smart playlists) - this will display all those albums that don't appear under compilations when browsing by artist.
Hope this helps!

7 good reasons, why artist=album name is not the solution for compilations

Hi,
in this forum everytime the compilations-problem is discussed, somebody comes up with the solution to fill the album-name into the artist name field and to set the song-title name to "Artist / Song-Title". This might help with the cover-flow issue but does have the following downsides:
7 good reasons, why artist=album name is no alternative for compilations
========================================================================
1) It messes up the artist search.
2) Unability to turn the display of artists on compilations on or off on demand without changing all the tags
3) The mp3 tags are not used in the standard way
4) "Artist / Song-Title" as song-title name is often too long to display
5) The album name appears twice in the song information display when the song is playing (as the artist name and as the album name)
6) This is not consistent with how it works in iTunes
7) People owning a lot of compilations are forced to do A LOT of manual changes only to "fix it" back when (hopefully soon) a new firmware fixing this issue arrives
I already posted this as an answer in another thread but I thought it might be helpful to discuss this in an own thread. What do you think about the reasons? Can you add additional reasons?
If Apple really left out the compilations-flag on purpose (see http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5401783#5401783) we might need some good arguments to bring it back in.
Best regards, Jens

Yes, I agree with your list. I also think it is inconceivable that Apple simply forgot to add the compilations feature. There obviously has to be a good reason for this. However, I haven't got a clue what that reason might be.

ITunes Changing Tag Info (Compilations/Various Artists/"The")

This is driving me crazy.
Compilations
I change my tags to make sure songs do not have a check in the box marked "compilations", yet they are still moved there in their own section on my artist panel right beneath "All Artists" in it's own group called "Compilations". I cannot get them out of there despite the check box being empty.
Various Artists
Songs keep being moved back to this category over and over. I make sure that the field in the tag that says Various Artists is removed, both in the main song info section as well as in the Sorting tab of the tag. The song will go where it belongs and the next time I open iTunes, it is back in it's own section on artist panel called Various Artists. Compilation box is also unchecked.
"The"
I do not want my artist panel to ever show "The" before an artists name (The Police, The Beatles, etc.), so I change the tags both in the main and sorting tabs. I do this for songs I have imported from various MP3 collections, CD's and songs purchased straight from iTunes store. When I make the changes, they work fine...for a while, then, next thing I know I have 4 songs on my iPhone by The Police and 2 by Police in a different artist block
It really is making me nuts. Is there some setting in the menu I am missing that will make iTunes leave my tags alone? I have looked and come up empty. Any help would sure be appreciated. Thank you - Bob

Go to iTunes > Preferences > Store and turn off
Show iTunes in the Cloud purchases
Share details about your library with Apple
On any iOS device go to Settings > Music and turn off
Show All Music
Close and reopen iTunes and/or reset any device and you should see your version of the metadata for each track rather than the original store data, if not your changes should revert as you play through content.
tt2

Why can i not make a compilation (Also adding artwork sometimes doesn't work)

Has anyone experienced this issue? I am on itunes 12.1.1.4 windows (64bt).
When making compilations (grouping songs together as one album) i found some would work and at others times others wouldn't, i found this with the artwork too.
It seemed random at first and i couldn't find a solution. BUT!! I am here to report after many hours, i found the fix.
The trouble lies with the length of the album name, not sure if it also lies with song names too and artist names ect.
But for me, i was in albums section and fed up with seeing 40 or so songs which belonged to the same Album all on there own when they should be together. Also having no artwork. For though's that dont know how to solve this!
Select the songs you would like to bring together as one (compilation)
Select the first, hold shift and select the last.
Right click and select get info.
In the first column under details scroll to the bottom and tick the box that says
ALBUM IS A COMPILATION OF SONGS BY VARIOUS ARTIST.
In my experience this would not work all the time. so this brings me back to my original point. Reduce the size of the name of the album, this has to be done on all the songs which you can do manually, where they are originally stored in windows file. There is many tutorials online for this so i wont go into detail.
(you will have to delete songs/albums from itunes and then after fix re-link in to itunes)
Also my advice which is what i did because i didn't want to do them one by one, is to find a program that does it automatically. there's many out there that are free to try or just free. But anyway i hope this helps others.. As soon as i reduced the ALBUM name size.. compilation worked as normal, and so did Album artwork..
TIP: Find album art work you want, download and save to desktop or a folder you can find easily, right click album in itunes, select get info, artwork column and add artwork...(this of course is if itunes doesnt do the job for you) ENJOY..PEACE

I suspect that your suggestion to "reduce the size of the name of the album" is actually ensuring that the album name is identical for every track. iTunes is somewhat sensitive to non-obvious variations in some of its metadata values (suggestions include trailing spaces, inclusion of non-printing characters, etc.) - this seems to be more pronounced in iTunes 12 than in earlier releases. Another way to do the same thing is a add a dummy character such as "x" at the start of the common album name; if this then groups the tracks correctly, then edit it again to remove the dummy character and restore the correct name. I have album names in my library that are over 100 characters long without issues. I can't find a reference to an actual maximum length - I'm sure that there is one, though its possible that this is more a limitation of the embedded properties of media files in Windows rather than an inherent limitation of iTunes. Your suggestion to "Reduce the size of the name of the album, this has to be done on all the songs which you can do manually, where they are originally stored in windows file." is OK as long as you do so before adding the songs to your iTunes library. If you do so afterwards you may end up with apparent inconsistencies - iTunes will only update what you see when you play any songs that had their metadata edited directly in the media files.
You can achieve the same result by editing fields within iTunes - just select all the tracks that should be part of the album you're interested in (use Shift-Click to select contiguous tracks, Ctrl-Click for those that are not), then right-click > Get Info. Sometimes you'll see an obvious mis-match of values if iTunes displays "Mixed" in grey text in the Album field - in this case you can just type in the correct value and it will update all the tracks. Otherwise use the "prepend a dummy character" method as above to enforce identical values.
In general, compilation albums (i.e., those containing tracks by several different artists) will be grouped correctly in iTunes if:
the Album value is identical, and the "Part of a Compilation" flag is set for all tracks, or
the Album value and the Album Artist value are identical for all tracks
The "Part of a Compilation" flag is really only necessary for older models of iPod that don't recognize the Album Artist tag - the second option above gives some additional flexibility, in that you can decide how you want to label the "collection of artists" responsible for the album (if you leave Album Artist blank and set the "Part of a Compilation" flag then iTunes will automatically list it as being by "Various Artists") and you can also set the Sort Album Artist value. As an example of the latter, I prefer to sort the classical albums in my library by composer rather than artist; I have a number of albums that contain several works by the same composer but performed by different orchestras/conductors/soloists. Using the second approach listed above, I can:
set the Artist value on individual tracks to the correct value - this will not be a common value for all the tracks making up the album
set the Album Artist to "Various Artists"
set the Sort Album Artist to the name of the composer - so, for an album collecting several works by Beethoven, this would be set to "Beethoven, Ludvig van" and would be listed along with other recordings of Beethoven's works.
Two other consequences of the alternative approaches to tagging compilations:
using the "Part of a Compilation" flag:
all compilations will appear at the end of an artist-sorted list of albums
if you have configured iTunes to manage your media folders, the songs from each compilation will be stored in iTunes Media\Music\Compilations\album_title
using the Album Artist method:
compilations will be sorted based on the Album Artist (or, if set, Sort Album Artist) value - so if you set the Album Artist to "Various Artists" and leave the Sort Album Artist blank, these will be sorted with the V's - in my case, such compilations sit between Van der Graaf Generator and Suzanne Vega (sorted, of course, as "Vega, Suzanne")
if you have configured iTunes to manage your media folders, the songs from each compilation will be stored in iTunes Media\Music\album_artist\album_title

Problem sorting by Artist in grid view using Itunes 8

I have a lot of albums that contain various artist and i set up the info in each with the correct artist name and "various artist" as the album artist. In itunes 8 when i use grid view and use show by artist it displays by album artist putting all the albums by "various artist" in one grid. It's correct in list and cover flow view. How can i set the grid view to display by the artist of the song and not the album. (ex. Soundtrack from the motion picture Tropic Thunder: Display "U Can't Touch This" under MC Hammer instead of Various Artist)

Actually, the grid view should be using the Album Artist tag. When the Album Artist tag was added in iTunes 7.0, the intent was to allow users to properly tag songs based on the artist and any guest artists. For instance, on Luther Vandross’ album +Give Me The Reason+ Track 6, “There’s Nothing Better Than Love” is a duet. Therefore, while the Artist tag for the rest of the tracks should be ‘Luther Vandross’, the correct tag content for Track 6 is ‘Luther Vandross duet with Greory Hines’. Without having ‘Luther Vandross’ in all the Album Artist tags for all 9 album tracks, iTunes would split the album as if there are two albums of the same name by different artists.
The other situation are producer-driven albums like Quincy Jones’ +The Dude+ or +Back On The Block+ . These are not compilations, as you described, because the songs were produced for the albums and Quincy Jones, although not a performer on any of the tracks, is the album artist. The exception is soundtracks that are compilations of songs typically produced for a given film. Like the situation you describe, each track has a different artist, so by having ‘Quincy Jones’ in the Album Artist tag for each track, iTunes maintains the integrity of the album and keeps the tracks properly grouped.
(Now if Apple would only acknowledge and fix the persistent bug that does not carry these grouping and sorting features over to the user’s music folder when they have enabled “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” in iTunes’ preferences.)
The situation you are specifically referencing is that of tagging compilations—albums that consist of tracks by various artists where there is no actual album artist—but you have used the Album Artist tag effectively forcing iTunes to see them as single artist albums. I also tag compilations—e.g., Various Artists (Hip Hop), Various Artists (Jazz), Various Artists (R&B), Various Artists (Soundtrack), etc.—, so I understand what you have done. Unfortunately, the fix for forcing the grid view to recognize individual artists in compilations may require you to clear out the Album Artist tag on all of your compilation album tracks forcing iTunes to revert to the Artist tag in place of the Album Artist tag.
What I would suggest is clearing the Album Artist tag of just one compilation and seeing what happens. If the album appears under “Unknown Artist”, or some other generic listing, in the grid view then iTunes only recognizes the Album Artist tag and I am at a loss as to what you could do. If it works as you hope, then you can go ahead an clear out the Album Artist field on the rest of your compilation albums.
The downside of clearing the Album Artist field is that iTunes will revert to its pre-version 7 habits and break up the albums; that is, a compilation with 12 tracks by 12 different artists will appear in the various views as 12 different albums albeit with the same name and cover art. To keep the tracks properly grouped in other views, you will need to mark all of the tracks from the compilation albums as “Part of a compilation” in the info dialog.

"artists" vs "compilations"

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