Compilation Album sorting trick

As you now know, you can group tracks in a compilation and assign an 'album artist' to display the main artist with the album cover. But the compilations sort to the bottom of the library by date. If you want to sort the album by main artist alphabetically amongst your other artists do this: Use 'album artist' to keep the tracks together as before, but change the individual artist of the
First track to begin with your main artist: For example 'Angelo Baldalementi/David Bowie', then select all the tracks and change compilation to 'No'. The album now sorts all the tracks together under the first track by the first track artist when you sort column 'Album'.
If you are as fussy as me, this may help.
One wish for iTunes sorting: A check box for the Artist field that would allow you to sort by artist last name, and not just by total artist name.

Starmac74 wrote:
I recently bought a compilation album from itunes store. My problem is that each song shows up as a seperate album, both in cover flow and when I list by Album. This is very annoying and all the songs has the same Album name.
What do I need to do to make iTunes understand that all songs belong to the same compilation album?
hi marcus,
see this great post by TT2

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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!

Sorting Compilation Albums etc

I want to sort my music by artist, and view each album together.
Where I have a compilation CD, or a CD with a guest artist, if I sort by Artist, I can't see all tracks from the album in the same place.
So I painstakingly entered the "Album Artist" for each album and sorted by this field, as well as marking any such albums as "compilation", and selecting "group compilations when browsing".
No good, my PJ Harvey/Thom Yorke track is listed at the bottom of my PJ Harvey albums and my compilation albums are sorted not by track number, but by artist.
There HAS to be a way around this, surely?

Have you realised that you can select a group of tracks and then use Get Info to edit them all togther, so entering an album artist and setting the compilation flag for a whole CD is not really such a chore.
If you have "Group complilations when browsing checked", the compilation albums should come out right under "Compilations".

Sorting compilation albums

I've downloaded several compilation CDs into the music library on my computer (I have not loaded the library to my ipod yet). They sort fine when I sort them by album, but when I sort them by genre, the compilation albums "break apart." The single artist albums all stay together no matter how I sort the library. I've made sure that all the compilation albums are designated as compilations, and I've even gone in and changed the album artist so that they're not all "various." The weird thing is that not all the compilation albums break apart, only some, and I can't see any difference between the ones that stick together and the ones that don't. Any ideas?

Hey S. Steele,
In the iTunes preferences, on the General tab, is the setting for "Group Compilations when browsing" checked?
If not, does checking this work as you would like?
Hope this helps,
Generik
PowerMac G4/Dell Precision WS 370, XP Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

A question about compilation albums, and how they are sorted...

Hi all,
Right I have loads of one off songs by many artist, or I just have the singles from albums, etc. To save having hundreds of single songs on their own I put them all together in a self-made compilation album with the decade as the album. So I have a 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s album. I also have a Disney album, with all different movies as the artist, I do the same with Musicals. It's just helps with tidying up my library. When I sort by Album I would like the artists to be listed alphabetically, which doesn't always happen. I don't know what to do to make it happen. Especially if I have a full musical soundtrack that has the tracks listed, and I have a few of them. Instead of each artist being separate the tracks are all muddled up and listed numerically. For example the first track of The Book of Mormon is followed by the first track of RENT, then the second tracks come, all the numbered tracks are bundled. I hope that makes sense.
The other issue is when I transfer these songs to my iPhone. I want the album to appear as one album, but I want the artists to be separate. So I want one 'Songs from the Musicals' album but I want to look at artist and see every show listed separately. Again, I hope this makes.
I've seen how to add an 'Album Artist' which I tried, but that just gathers it up all into one artist. So to be clear, I want one album with multiple artists on my iPhone.
If you have any tips or help, it would be greatly appreciated as it's becoming increasingly frustrating trying out different combinations of options to see what might work.
Thank you.

Thanks, if it's a feature of PL/SQL, that will be nice.
But both are bind variables, one is on bind variables peeking and the other is not. it's better for me to keep in mind it has a switch to control the peeking when using bind variables in PL/SQL, as I thought there is no way to avoid peeking when using bind variables...

Album Art Sorting incorrectly in Compilations/Albums iphone Music App listing/tab

Album Art Sorting incorrectly in Compilations/Albums iphone Music App listing/tab
Sounds like a mouthful, but basically im saying that I have a bunch of compilations that when displayed in itunes on my pc,
show the album art which is set for the first track. This is to be expected.
But when i upload the compilations to my iPhone 5, and i open up the Music app and select the compilations tab...
The same compilations show another album art that is actually associated with another track in the compilation.
When i looked for a pattern, i found that it would basically take the album art from the track in the compilation based on the artists name in reverse alphabetical order.
So if i had album art associated with every track in the compilation, normally it would show in the listing the album art of the first track... but now it was actually the album art of the artist name starting closest to the letter z.
I've tested this many times. very annoying. but to explain again...
If i have a compilation containing artists from Coldplay to Ziggy Marley... no matter where in the listing Ziggy Marley is listed first to last... it will display the Album art associated to Ziggy Marley in the List view for the Compilations or Albums tab in the Music app on an iPhone 5.
Normally you would expect it to show the album art associated with the first track in the listing as it does in Itunes so as to keep uniformity between what you upload in iTunes and what you see in the Music app on the iPhone.
THIS IS A BUG APPLE!!!... test it for yourselves... someone broke your db sorting in the new itunes. ITunes 11, with iPhone 5
Please fix!
Thank you kindly...

another note... when i select the album from the list (on the iphone, in the music app) and it slides over to show all tracks in the compilation...
it then shows the proper album art as it should.
Also, when i check cover flow it then shows another incorrect cover?

Cover flow with compilation albums

Hi,
I have three compilation albums on my Ipod 4g that currently mess up the whole cover flow, each artist gets its own album art so I have like 20 albums with one song in it. I looked for a solution but found the same problem posted in 2007 already. Did Apple fix this in Itunes 8 or what can I do to get a nice compilation album. I already tried settings the artist name to Various (worked in Itunes, but not on my Ipod), I tried the sorting things but neither of those worked. Any known solutions so I'm able to use cover flow again?
Thanks!

Did not work for me, I can select this option if I right click a song, but as soon as I select multiple files the option of "part of compilation" is gone? I don't think I'm supposed to select this option for every song, one at a time? Also, should I do this when the songs are already on my Ipod or when they are still on the computer? Thanks for your help!
EDIT: Nevermind, I didn't see the "options" part in your solution. Now it works!
Message was edited by: Gobbomaster

Compilation Albums in Itunes 7.0

A problem I have yet to see on these boards with 7.0
Compilation albums will not display in track order (or play in track order!) Some of them seem to go into artist order on the album and I can't work out what the order is for others - it doesnt play the albums in order either - really annoying on mix albums!! kind of defeats the purpose of gapless playback

right - have made further progress with this issue.
If you have an album freshly ripped that is a compilation it will sort tracks numerically. Once you tell Itunes that it is a compilation though it then will sort by Artist within that compilation. It will no longer sort it in track order even if you uncheck the compilation option!! Further more, when I sort using "Album by Artist" - the albums in question do not stay together but Itunes treats each track as a seperate album with each track sprinkled thru the full list - cannot find a way to resolve this yet though!!!

Compilation albums in iTunes 11

This thread is as a result of a post in December 2012, in another thread ( https://discussions.apple.com/message/20450908#20450908 ) by jacdan. I felt it would be preferable if this discussion was kept separate from the original post.
Until now, iTunes regarded a Compilation Album as one with multiple artists, but the music industry and consequently a lot of the entries on Gracenote regarded an album by a single artist - but with songs from various stages of their career - as a compilation. Looking at the Artist list in iTunes, there was no entry for "Various Artists", and albums were instead listed under "Compilations". This has meant for example, that not only was "Now XX listed under Compilations, but so too was "The Whole Story" by Kate Bush (a compilation of her earlier work). If that was the only album of hers in my Library, her name would not be listed in the Artists section. I also found it necessary to fill in the Album Artist field on Compilation albums with "Various Artist".
With iTunes 11, in the Artists section of the Library, Compilation Albums (by various artists) are now listed under Various Artists. I discovered several albums in my Library that did not have "Various Artists" in the album name field and these were listed under "Compilations" instead. Completeing the Album Artist field has sucessfuly moved those albums to Various Artists. The "Compilations" within the Artists section has now disappeared.
However, what is not quite clear, is when or how albums do get put into the Compilation section. I have experimented with the Kate Bush album, and a Mike & The Mechanics album, to see if I could get them to be entered into the "Compilations" section, but without success.
So perhaps this is actually a fix in iTunes 11. It just remains tro sort out why I cannot get Kate's "The Whole Story" into the Compilations section.
Phil

Hi Steve,
well, currently I still cannot force an album to show in Artists as a Compilation. There certainly appears to be a discrepancy, as you suggested. Here are some screenshots, with odd things happening;
I've tried with the album part set to Compilation, but in these shots, the complete album is set as a Compilation. If I look in songs, there it is, between White Island Fever and Why Don't We Do It In The Road?;
but if I then look under Artists, there is no heading for Compilation albums shown at all (not even the other ones we can see in the first picture);
although, when I first found them, Compilations was shown immediately below All Artists. The Whole Story isn't hiding under Various Artists either;
Even more odd is this, in the songs view:
you'll notice that Get Info (an option I use a lot) is greyed out. I then changed views a few times, without modifying the album in any way. Eventually, after several attempts, when I return to the songs view, I can now use the Get Info...
Just teething problems I'm sure. But I can imagine lots of hysterical posts from users who see Get Info greyed out. I'm sure you've noticed that the OTT posts about the delays in the release of iTunes 11 have now been replaced by yet more hysteria asking to go back to iTunes 10 because they don't like 11.
You couldn't make it up!
Phil

Grouping Compilation albums together

I have a number of different albums that have different artists on them. I want to go in on my iPod and listen to the whole album all the way through, but when I go to it in "albums" it's listed severel different times and each is by a different artist from the album. Is there any way to group it all as one album even though it has more than one artist? I've tried checking the box "part of a compilation" and "sort by album" those don't seem to work. Thoughts and ideas?

Every song on the album needs to be marked as "Part of a compilation" and also, in the Album Artist box, type in "Various Artists". The screenshot below shows the box highlighted when looking at several songs at the same time:
If tyou use Sync to manage your iPod, the next Sync will add that change to it.
If you use Manually Manage, then you will need to remove the album from the iPod first, make the changes in your iTunes Library and then put back the changed version.

1st - itunes downloaded to my ipod albums that are all fractured, compilation albums are seperated.This should not have happened but itunes felt it knew better. I do not like it.

1st - itunes downloaded to my ipod albums that are all fractured, compilation albums are seperated.This should not have happened but itunes felt it knew better. I do not like it.
2nd - While trying to fix it, itunes made all albums and artists unknown
3rd - While trying to get an answer I am unable to contact anyone or even send an email requesting an answer.
4th - While trying to use the "fast lane" i ran into trying to find the product S/N, I went to my account and it was not there. I tried to see it on the back of the Ipod but had to find a magnifying glass to even read it.
5th -- The we will get back to you really ****** me off
6th -- I have wasted 2 hours to fix something that should not have happened and the situation is worse than when i started
7Th --- Itunes management of songs is terrible and there are NO instructions and even worse no support
8th ---- Apple is going down the toilet because the products are good, not great, and the itunes instructions are non existent
9th --- to even suggest i pay for product support is insulting and a sign that apple is desperate
10th -The suggestion for online feedback is this; BE ON-LINE SUPPORT, NOT WHATEVER YOU CONSIDER IT TO BE NOW.

I agree with stevejobsfan - (0123).
However, if what you actually want to do is to fix/sort out your problem, why no try posting a question on that subject?
For starters - you can re-name the tracks in your iTunes library, so it is possible to correct the changes that you must have made that mean that songs are now "unknown artists and albums."

Compilation Albums are not ordered by track order - by alphabet/artist

This is something I just noticed with iTunes that I would like to have fixed if possible. I've ripped a good handful of compilation albums onto my computer, and when I put them into iTunes, and order the songs by album, all of the differing artists on a certain album are in alphabetical order. Meaning, the track order is set not as track 1, track 2, track 3, etc. Instead, it's set up by artist, by alphabet. For example, Animosity will be first, and Zebrahead will be last...and these aren't in the correct order of the album! I don't know if there is a fix for this, but if there is, I would greatly appreciate the help. Thanks.

*HowTo: Grouping Tracks Into Albums*
Excuse the long post, but hopefully covering all the bases (that I can think of) will help you fix the other issues you are likely to run into as you try to organise your iTunes library.
*Use an album friendly view*
iTunes will let you sort music on many columns, some of which are unlikely to group albums together. The most useful order for editing the library is probably *Album by Artist*. If you're not already there, select the list view and click on the column heading for Artist until it reads Album by Artist.
*One cover, too many tracks*
The iPod (and iTunes to a lesser extent) conflates two or more albums with the same title, most obviously with *Greatest Hits*. On the iPod this can result in one album acting as a combination of two or more. Selecting any cover gives all the tracks of all albums with the same title. The workaround for this "Greatest Hits" bug is to give each album a unique title - I tend to go for *Album - Album Artist* as this reads clearly in the iTunes browser. Alternatively you could use the wording as it appears on the cover or append different numbers of spaces for each different album. Somewhat oddly, setting different values for Sort Album doesn't work.
*Album not with others by same artist*
iTunes relies on the Gracenote CDDB database when identifying CD's. This often marks collections or anthologies of an artist's work as a compilation. In iTunes, however, the compilation flag has the logical function of grouping together tracks with the same album name, but different artists on each track, e.g. "Now That's What I Call Metal 666!". These compilations are then all grouped together at the end of cover flow. Most of us however, would expect "Greatest Hits" albums to be listed with the other albums by the same album artist. For albums which are essentially by a single album artist or group it is best to set the appropriate value for the album artist and clear the compilation flag.
*One album, too many covers*
Sadly the iPod ignores the Album Artist field when grouping albums which causes problems when some tracks list guest artists. You can simply mark the entire album as a compilation which seems to be the way iTMS handles it, however that's not an ideal fix. Short of waiting for Apple to address this issue (and as far as I can tell it goes back to the 1st gen. of iPods) we need a workaround. What I do is to put any additional artist info. in square brackets after the song name. E.g. *Track \[Feat. Guest\]* and then set *Artist=Album Artist* for each track. For anthologies where the Album Artist is credited as part of another group, e.g. for Cream tracks on an Eric Clapton anthology, I use *Track \[As Group\]*. For a track where the main Album Artist doesn't receive a credit, e.g. the first track of the Slim Shady LP credited to Jeff Bass, I just set the track name to *Track \[Guest\]* while still setting the artist to the album artist. N.b. I use square brackets to indicate this is not part of the actual song title and also use this style for Mix/Live/Bonus info.
*One album, still too many covers*
iTunes may split albums into two or more sections if some tracks from the album have different values for Artist, Album Artist, Album, No. of Discs or Part of a Compilation. Tiny differences such as trailing spaces, accented characters or variants of symbols can sometimes be quite hard to spot. The iPod is also more sensitive to case variations and may split or reorder an album that looks okay in iTunes. Normally overtyping the desired value for each shared field will complete the grouping of the album into one entity. Occasionally, however, this method seems to fail. When this happens I've found that you can force every field to update properly by adding some extra text - e.g. a trailing X, which once applied seems to complete the joining of the tracks into one album. Once this has happened the extra data can be removed and the album should remain properly grouped.
*Tried that, there are STILL too many covers!*
The Sort Artist, Sort Album & Sort Album Artist fields can be used to override the normal sort order. For example iTunes automatically drops leading articles (a/an/the) so "The Beatles" are arranged under "B" instead of "T". Occasionally different tracks from the same album can have different values in these sort fields which can also break up the grouping. Making the sort columns visible in iTunes can help with spotting & correcting such problems.
*One cover for multi-disc album*
Multi-disc albums are often listed as *Album (CD1)* for CD 1, *Album (CD2)* for CD 2 etc. To display these properly using just one cover, each disc should have the correct *Disc X of Y* values set, and then the entire album should be given the single title Album. Being somewhat obsessive I also renumber the tracks sequentially, working backwards from the last track (so that no two tracks ever have the same number) until I reach disc 1. BTW You can still give the individual discs different artwork should it be relevant so that the correct artwork will be displayed as the album progresses.
*One artist, many names*
With some artists, particularly classical composers, you should be aware of alternative representations of their names. E.g. 2Pac vs. Tupac. The menus will work best if for each artist you standardise on just one form of their name. E.g. make a choice between Mozart, W.A. Mozart or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and then apply it consistently. For classical music I tend also to use the Composer as the Artist & Album Artist and either discard the performer details or place these into the Comments field.
tt2

How to show one album art image for a compilation album in cover flow view?

I just finished getting album art for my entire music collection. Now I go to the Cover Flow view or the Album view and individual songs in compilation albums each have their own album art instead of being grouped together under the same album art. For instance I have a "Buddha Bar" Album with various artists. Instead of having one image for the album, each artist has his or her own image (all the same Buddha Bar album art). So a compilation CD with various artists ends up having 15 images instead of one image in the Album art or Cover Flow view which makes it harder to look through my albums. Does anybody know if it is possible to change this?
Imac PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

iTunes doesn't have the ability to do what you want, i.e. to define multiple separated values in a field and then have the item show up when looking at a selection based on each of those values. "Bob Dylan", "The Band" and "Bob Dylan & The Band" are three distinct values that can't be linked together. Sort values can change where in a list things are displayed but shouldn't be used to attempt to merge different values as results are undefined and unpredictable.
tt2

[solved] ncmpcpp - album sort?

Have recently set up a headless server for my multimedia needs. Since I control it via ssh I had to install a console music player and have decided on mpd/ncmpcpp. One thing that bugs me is that the Media Library sorts with Artist as the first criteria. Even in the 2-column view where Album takes precedence, it is still Album (sorted by artist), which is kind of silly since I can get that already in the 3 column view. And so it is difficult to access my albums which are compilations of many artists. Is there any way I can have "Album" and see all the songs in that album in the next column?
Or failing which are there any other console players I can use?
Last edited by stryder (2011-08-13 13:12:00)

stryder wrote:
And so it is difficult to access my albums which are compilations of many artists. Is there any way I can have "Album" and see all the songs in that album in the next column?
Or failing which are there any other console players I can use?
Thats what the albumartist tag is for. And ncmpcpp supports this one just fine. just add tag "albumartist = Soundtrack" (for example) on those albums.
to make ncmpcpp sort media library using this tag, hit ` and then A for albumartist.
**edit** also make sure, to add the albumartist tag to the supported ones in mpd.conf
Last edited by Rasi (2011-08-13 08:24:50)

Album sorting question

I just got the classic and I love it so far. I've managed to sort most of my albums the way I want. I am bugged by one thing, though. When I'm browsing by Artist and click the artist name it will bring up all the albums by that particular artist. However, when I click an artists name that only has one album it goes straight to the track listing. Is there a way to have it display the album first? As though that artist had multiple albums...
Thanks

That's how it works in mine (iTunes verions 10.1 on windows 7). My albums are listed in alphabetical artist order, with compilation albums being listed as being by 'various artists'.
For the individual tracks for the album do you have 'part of a compilation' ticked when in 'get info' (bottom right of the info tab when viewing a single track, middle of the options tab when viewing multiple tracks) ?

Compilation Album sorting trick

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