Compilations and Album Artists...

I give up. Apple just can't seem to decide how the heck it wants to organize albums.
They ad an "Album Artist" that is useless. In iTunes it is great for DJ mixes. You can have each track and its artist labeled correctly and then group them all under the DJ's name as the album artist. Or be able to leave all those "featuring so-n-so" tags as is and assign one artist as the album artist. Great, love it. Works in iTunes.
But the iPod touch hasn't a clue. It displays all the artists names but then groups them with the album artist. Meaning you get artists out of alphabetical order mixed throughout the list. Really confusing the shortcut slider on the right side.
But if you switch to coverflow mode it groups everything just fine. But you can only browse so long before it crashes.
I'm just asking for some consistency. Don't get me started on the fact that my Apple TV has its own rules about how to sort compilations that are different from the touch and iTunes. Aren't the same people writing this software?

I don't see that problem with mine. Maybe it's just me, but I kinda like the sort of the whole thing.
I have a bunch of compilations (Soundtracks to movies and such). I just list the Album Artist as "Various Artists", then individually put the artist down. That way if I want all the songs by the individual artist, I can look for that, if I want multiple songs by the different artists, I can just search by Album.
How long does it take before your CoverFlow crashes?

Similar Messages

Compilations and various artists- Playing order on iPod

Hi everyone.
I have a two-fold problem with my iPod Classic 160 GB:
I have several compilations of various artists that I grouped by "Artist"- being the title of the album (so it will show up in Albums), and the "Album Artists" being the names of the respective various artists. It plays fine- i.e. in the correct order in my iTunes when my iPod is connected to my Mac, but when I play it on my iPod (not connected to my Mac), my iPod plays the songs in alphabetical order by artists.
The other problem I have is that I have several albums in which artists cover other artists. I entered the "Artist" as the artist covering the tunes (for instance Richard Cheese)- so that it shows up under Artist in my iPod setlist, and the "Album Artist" as the original artists of the songs. Again- no problem in iTunes when iPod is connected- correct order. On my iPod, it alphabetizes the songs based on artist.
Is there any way to fix that so that, under both circumstances, the songs play in the correct order, while still being able to search "Artist" as the artist covering other artists and "Album" by the name of the compilation?
Thanks in advance for any info, and hopefully the questions made sense

Artist should be the name of the recording artist of each track. *Album Artist* should have the same for a whole album, so a compilation album typically records the *Album Artist* as *Various Artists*. Most iPods group tracks on Artist instead of Album Artist which causes problems when you have guest or featured artists... All this and more explained fully at http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp
tt2

Compilations and albums?

Hello,
can anyone tell me why if I add an album of music to itunes, it separates into several different albums please? I tick 'compliation' and that makes no diference at all. I've tried and tried but nothing stops it happening. I just want the album to appear as I import it, in one compilation album with different composers, orchestras and artists.
Eddie

then where it says 'album artist' put the name of the artist who wrote the song.
The *Album Artist* field is designed for the artist who is doing the album, not the writer.
do that for each song and then they should all go into one album
Yes. You can slect all the songs on a single album and add the info to all teh songs at one time.
Then you are assured it is the same for all items selected.

Itunes 11 Book author and Album artist sort problems

(I've changed the name here, to protect the innocent and avoid comments about my taste. I shall call him 'Fred Anydude' )
I have an ebook by 'Fred Anydude'. He appears in book view under the [Authors section] in the right place i.e. with those Authors whose last name begins with 'A', (because the sort artist field has been set up as 'Anydude, Fred'.)
Then I acquire a music album, also by Fred Anydude (Hey, what can I say, he's talented). The problem is in the music view in the Artist section I expect Fred Anydude, to appear with the other artists beginning with F (as is the convention for music artist sort order), but he doesnt. He's appears with the A's again. The sort artist is blank in the case of the music album and its songs. So I set up the sort artist for the album and its tracks as Fred Anydude. I switch views, to give the opportunity for a refresh, I even restart itunes - Fred Anydude is still being sorted according to his book view sort artist despite what I've set up for his music: Still appearing with the A's
But to confuse matters, under Album view with the Album view sort order set to 'by Artist', the album does appear along with other artists beginning with F.
To make matters worse if I do a search for Fred Anydude, I only get shown the book in the results. The music doesn't even appear.
Is there a fix?

I suppose a better way to differentiate between album artist and artist is to say Track Artist.

Difference between "Artist" and "Album Artist"?

Hi
I'm wondering why in the iTunes browser there is a field for "Album Artist" and a field for "Artist"?
Aren't they referring to the same thing?
Thank you.

No. Some albums have various artists. For example, I have +Satin Doll: Smooth Jazz Plays Duke Ellington+. For album artist, I have "Various," but for each song I have the primary performer of that song as the artist. Album views come up Various, while songs come up with the artist. It's good for grouping tracks. Also, some people like to included featured guests in the Artist field, but having the Album Artist consistent helps with various views in iTunes and on the iPod.

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.

Having downloaded update 10.5, the artists section of my iPod no longer recognises artists who feature on compilation albums. Instead it groups them under the album artist, ie various artists. Any suggestions?

Having downloaded iTunes update 10.5, my iPod no longer recognises in the artists section those artists who feature on various artists' compilation albums. Instead the iPod groups them under various artists, and, if you are looking for a particular artist,who only features on a compilation, you have to remember or search to see which various artist album they feature on - all very frustrating, especially as it worked OK before the update. So far I've not updated any more - so I've not taken 10.5.1 or 10.5.2 because 10.5 caused me so many problems, but I'm wondering if the solution could be in those updates
I've tried amending the iTunes library artist and album artist, and it is possible to get the iPod to recognise the artists, but the downside is that the library then removes the artist from the album, and you then have to play those tracks individually
Has anyone suffered the same problem and, if so, has a solution been found?

Having downloaded iTunes update 10.5, my iPod no longer recognises in the artists section those artists who feature on various artists' compilation albums. Instead the iPod groups them under various artists, and, if you are looking for a particular artist,who only features on a compilation, you have to remember or search to see which various artist album they feature on - all very frustrating, especially as it worked OK before the update. So far I've not updated any more - so I've not taken 10.5.1 or 10.5.2 because 10.5 caused me so many problems, but I'm wondering if the solution could be in those updates
I've tried amending the iTunes library artist and album artist, and it is possible to get the iPod to recognise the artists, but the downside is that the library then removes the artist from the album, and you then have to play those tracks individually
Has anyone suffered the same problem and, if so, has a solution been found?

Itunes has separated my music by album and by artist

how do I get albums all together? I have tried checking the "compilation" box but it has made no difference.

Chris CA wrote:
This is the confusing factor.
iTunes always uses Artist for the folders it is saved to, not Album Artist.
I'm fairly certain when it comes to organizing files, Part of a compilation=Yes puts the album in the Compilations folder and thereafter Album Artist, if set, trumps Artist. If neither are set the value of Unknown Artist is used.
Except for Compilations, whenever Album Artist is blank its value is implied from Artist.
Toggling View > Column Browser > Use Album Artists changes whether the Artists column in the browser shows all the different values of the Artist field or all values of the Album Artist field. It should have no effect on the physical organization of the files.
In a similar fashion View > Column Browser > Group Compilations controls the listing of compilations under a single Compilations artist, or the respective Album Artist of each album, e.g. Various Artists, Original Broadway Cast etc.
tt2

Difference between "Album Artist" and "Artist" in iTunes?

I'm finding that my syncing is affected by my misunderstanding of Artist and Album Artist. CAn someone tell me the way it's supposed to be understood? And if you can, what are the little checkboxes for that are next to the fields?

Let's say you have an album with all the tracks but one by one artist, or a track with an added guest artist. The album is really by the main artist but if you enter a different (even minimally) artist anywhere in the tracks it will split up the album thinking it is two albums with the same name but different artists. Entering a single artist album artist will cause them to group together again but allow you to have variations in the artists for the tracks. Basically it's the same with compilations where all the tracks may have different artists but you want it to group together, so you might enter "various artists" in the album artist field. Another way to deal with this is to check the "compilation" box in "Get Info" but it sounds like this feature isn't present in all media players so people prefer the album artist field for compatibility.
Check marks. Undo a check mark if you want iTunes to keep a track in its database but you don't want it to actually play it. Some people toggle this for holiday music (other, better ways to deal with that) or maybe a track you want to keep an album complete but never really want to hear.

ITunes 12 sorting artists and albums wrong/out of order

Hi,
So I'm using iTunes 12, though this problem occurred with 11 too...
As you can see in the image, I'm using Mac DeMarco as an example, it happens with selected other artists too. I have two albums of his, yet they don't appear together and there are multiple instances of the artist. Even the albums don't appear together. Both of them have the same "Artist" and "Album Artist" information.
Here you can see one instance:
Here's the second instance. Note, the artist appears amongst the "D" artists, after Deftones for some reason, instead of "M" with the other album:
What is going on? Please help.

Enable the Sort Artist and Sort Album Artist columns, chances are that the fields have been set inconsistently.
tt2

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!

Can I use album artist rather than Artist on my iPod160?

The Artist selection on the iPod has its problems as "Album Artist" is not always the same as "Artist". I know I can correct the Cover Flow problems with Artist View by use of the Sort Artist option but I do have a few questions.
I would rather display the Album Artist rather than Artist. Is this possible? I can do it in ITunes but cannot seem to do it on the iPod itself.
Also, is it possible to do mass changes on Sort Artist rather than hit "next", paste the change, etc. Everything I try to mass change, Sort Artist is not an option.

Hi,
Unfortunately, the 'album artist' field is ignored on the iPod (I hope it one day will be 'solved'). If you mark albums with multiple artists as 'compilation', the album artist in iPod coverflow is automatically set to 'various artists'. And I haven't found a way to mass-edit the sort fields either

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.

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.

Remote app shows "album artist" after recent update

In January I updated iTunes 9... to iTunes 10.5.2. The new database shows "artist" same as before.
Then I had to update the remote app on my iPod touch. Now comes the trouble:
instead of showing "artist" as before in older version of remote app, it shows "album artist"
which effectively destroys the organisation principle of all my music file collection (roughly 600 CD).
I am afraid that changing artist and album artist by rewriting all ID tags will not be helpful,
because then the corresponding iTunes database on my mac will show these fields in wrong order.
Do we have any hope for getting fixed this bug in remote app ?
How to deal with this mess of a situation ?

remote app 2.2 was showing 'artist information' in the 'artist field'.
with the release 2.3 the problem with the 'artist field', showing 'album artist information' started, and with the latest version 2.4 this error still exists!
it would be really nice if someone can tell us if this is an error (as i suppose) and will be fixed, or if this is right and why this was done.
maybe some apple people can answer....
thanks.

Compilations and Album Artists...

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