Cover flow - Sort by Album/Year?

I love the cover flow feature on my iPhone but I am disappointed that it sorts based on Artist name. Is there a setting to make Cover flow - Sort by Album/Year?

Sorry, no such setting.

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Send your feedback to Apple if you want Cover Flow sorted by Album

I know this is a hot topic, but I really would prefer to have Cover Flow sorted per Album rather than per Artist. I don't buy the same album for each artist so I think Cover Flow should be per Album, it just makes sense.
As there's no real way around it and if you agree send your feedback to Apple so at least they know it's something people want and maybe they'll work on a way to fix it for us.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html

I would support an option to sort by album or artist but if it were only 1 way, i'd like it to be by artist. Assuming the fix the compilation problem, I want the coverflow to work like going to a 'record' store so that i can easily go artist by artist and each artists albums are sorted together. compilations would either be grouped together at the end or under various artists ( but each album would appear once). I know my collection way better by artist than i do by album name.

Cover Flow Sorting Issue - Workaround

Here is a temporary solution to the Cover Flow view & the Album Art Grouping view.
As many of you know the sorting by 'Album' or 'Album by Artist' or 'Album by Year' in the above mentioned views is not correctly prioritized.
The issue stems from the fact that the sort algorithm prioritized 'Artist' over the expected logic implied by grouping by the sort field name. So if a single album contains tracks all by different artists, you will get a Album Cover for each artist NOT each album.
To get around this (until Apple fixes it) use the 'Album Artist' field (which is usually, but not always, empty) and set this field to a common value for an entire album — such as 'Various Artists.' When doing so, the logic will still sort on the Artist Name first, but will group the entire album together.
If Sorting by "Album by Year" then the only hitch to this method is if you have two or more albums with the same & progressive title (see example below.) Then the album will sort in order of the Artist name of the 1st track of the album. — This probably will affect nearly zero of the the iTunes population though.
e.g. The album sort order will be:
Album: "Music 02" 1st track Artist: "Astro"
Album: "Music 03" 1st track Artist: "Terra"
Album: "Music 01" 1st track Artist: "Viggio"
Once again just set each album with a common "Album Artist" descriptor. I use "Various Artists"
-Alan
Note: Also there is a new field in the info tags for each song called 'Album Artist.'
AlBook, TiBook, iMac, iBook Mac OS X (10.4.5) Corporate / mixed environment / multiple networks.

Hi,
just change the switch Compilation to true for all songs in the album and it works too.

Cover Flow Sorting

Is there any way to change the cover flow from sorting by artist to sorting by album? Sorting by artist, in my opinion, is pointless in cover flow.

Frisbey wrote:
Is there any way to change the cover flow from sorting by artist to sorting by album? Sorting by artist, in my opinion, is pointless in cover flow.
Really? That's how my CDs & vinyl are ordered. The iPod Cover Flow order is Album by Artist - there are no options to change this. If you want a pure alphabetical album order just use the album menu.
tt2

In Cover Flow, a compilation album shows different covers for each song. How do I make it show one cover for the whole album?

In Cover Flow, a compilation album shows different covers for each song. How do I make it show one cover for the whole album?

Also in the first page of Get Info for all tracks set the Album Artist to be Various Artists.
If you select all the tracks and right click to get info then you can do all the tracks in one go

Is there a way of making my iPod's "cover flow" sort in the same way the software can . Artist -- Album by Year . It only seems to do Artist -- by Alphabetical Album . I want it look like it does on the PC .

Is there a way to make the "cover flow" on the iPod match the sort style that I use on the software . I go with Artist -- Album by Release Year . But the ipod seems to only do Artist -- Alphabetical by Album , and then there are a handful of albums oddly out of place . Can it be done ?

Ottonomy, here's what to do.
Connect your iPhone to your computer and open the iPhone's playlist in an iTunes window. Copy/Paste the entire playlist into a new(!) playlist in iTunes, not on your iPhone. Then resort the playlist. After you sort it, Copy/Paste it to a new(!) playlist on your iPhone. Now delete the old playlist on your iPhone and rename the new playlist the name you want it to be (probably the same name as the old playlist).
The downside to this method is that you have to do it every time you add a song to the playlist. Unfortunately, I don't think there's another way.

Cover Flow bug? Albums out of alphabetical artist order

Can somebody tell me why certain albums are placed all the way at the end, when viewing Cover Flow on my iPhone?
For example, Jay-Z's Black Album shows up as the very last album... instead of next to other Jay-Z albums I have.
This doesn't happen in iTunes Cover Flow - only when using Cover Flow on my iPhone.
There is nothing wrong with my tags or artist input, or anything - the Black Album is still listed under Jay-Z albums when you touch his name... It's just that when viewing it in Cover Flow, it's out of order. As if instead of Jay-Z, the artist was like 999 (past 3 Doors Down, 3OH!3, etc). The VERY last album.
This has happened to other albums too.
Anybody????

OMG I FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT! It took me hours to figure out how to fix it and it'll take me another couple of hours to make sure the way it sorts it stays consistent, BUT I FINALLY GOT IT! It was secretly sorting it under Sort Album, which was hidden to me and so it sorted it under the origional album name and not what I'd tried to make it. I don't get what the difference is between Sort Album and asking it to sort my albums in alphabetical order, but OH WELL. This has been plauging my iPod for years and I finally figured it out! A million thanks!

Cover Flow sorting is wacky (not a compilations issue).

I just purchased a 120GB Classic with the hope that I'd be able to browse my collection of music by album artist. After all but giving up hope, it looks like Cover Flow is almost doing it (on purpose or not, I don't know).
Here's the issue: I tag my .mp3s so that on tracks with multiple artists, they're separated by a "/" -- so, for example, on my Aesop Rock album, "None Shall Pass", track 6 has an artist field of, "Aesop Rock/Breeze Brewin/Cage". I always include the artist in the artist field before I put any of the guest artists.
When I sync this to my iPod, the Cover Flow only shows this as one album (there are four tracks scattered throughout the album with different artists). If Cover Flow was sorting purely by artist, it would have multiple covers. So I'm thinking that I figured out a way to get what I want.
Except the iPod seems to randomly decide which albums it wants to treat this way -- some, such as the Kid Rock album "Cocky" (the one with "Picture" with Sheryl Crow"), are shown as two separate albums in Cover Flow. This doesn't make any sense to me.
All the "sort" fields are blank for all the files, so that can't be what's doing it. If I go under the Artist menu, it shows all the artists just as they're written in the tags.
So what's the deal here? How does Cover Flow really work?
[EDIT] Nevermind, I figured it out. Apparently when you sort by artist, it will give me all the songs with just the artist, and then give me the songs with that artist and any other artist (the slash comes after all the letters alphabetically). So if the artist has more than one album, it doesn't group them together by album.
I guess the "sort field" is the only way to fix it for now.
Message was edited by: Psyact

Using the sort field to try to force things together doesn't quite work, and certainly not when the album artist has more than one album with guests. I think you'll also find there are some enumeration issues in the album menu which may cause the wrong cover to be displayed as you progress through the library. See my recent post on Grouping Tracks Into Albums for a somewhat long, but hopefully comprehensive, exposition of the issues.
tt2

Need help please: cover flow sort order logic

hi community,
is there a official document / specification from apple where the sort order and the settings of the corresponding tags (album, album artist, compilation on/off) of the cover flow is described?
AA)
i use diffent ipods. earlier versions diplayed in coverflow:
1) sorted by artist for compilation = off, following
2) sorted by album for compilation = on
this was fine for me.
BB)
now on my nano 5g order is as following:
- only 1 list: sorted by artist with all compilations listed in
does anybody know how i can set up the nano to display the cover flow like AA)?
best regards
gef_audio

s there a official document / specification from apple
If there is, it would be in Apple's Knowledge Base or iPod nano (5th generation) - User Guide.

Ipod nano - cover flow sort order nano 5th gen

hi community,
i'm using different ipods (3rd gen, 4th gen, 5th gen, nano) and i love tagging my mp3s (artist, album, _but not_ album artist)
the sorting in cover flow for my ipod (3rd, 4th gen, touch, _but not 5th gen_) is fine for me: first regular albums then compilations.
with the nano 5th generation sorting is as follows: regular album + compilations mixed - base is artist name ( not fine for me ).
what i want is: first regular albums, than compilations (analogue ipod nano 4th). workaround for this should be: setting of album artist.
my question: do i have to setup my album artist for the desired sort order in nano 5th, and how will be the sort order in cover flow for the future? (e.g. nano 6th gen., + followers (because i don't want to reset my tags weeks later once again ....)
thanks for your reply.
best regards
itunes_gef

Hi Damon et al:
I agree with you that you shouldn't have to screw around with the file names. The iPod should allow you to sort in a variety of ways (e.g. any of the fields in the MP3 metadata, and in forward or reverse order). I'm going to keep checking back on this thread to see if more information comes out of it, but it looks to me like a flaw in the iPod OS, not a user-education issue.
Cheers,
bkengland
P.S. One would hope that the Apple program managers look at these threads for RFE ideas!
iPod Nano Other OS

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

Cover Flow of compilation albums not quite right on iPod Classic

Okay, so after receiving my new iPod classic 80gb the other day, I decided to go through and fix up a lot of my albums in iTunes to display properly in Cover Flow. I have lots of Various Artists albums and have marked all tracks in each album as part of a compilation so that they show up correctly in iTunes 7.4.1.2. Now, when I'm scrolling through Cover Flow within iTunes, these albums appear correctly as 1 entry of "Album Name", and then "Various Artists" underneath that.
However, when I move these tracks over to my iPod and then go to Cover Flow, it looks like instead of using "Various Artists" as the listed artist, it uses the artist of the first track on the album. So, for example, if track 1 were "Board Bangers - Cause the Beat's Hot", it would show "Board Bangers" instead of "Various Artists" as the album artist. However, if I click the middle button to "flip" the cover over to see the tracks, it correctly lists all the tracks for the album (even though it only lists the song titles and not the track artist).
Also, in iTunes, Cover Flow is sorted by album name, whereas on my iPod, Cover Flow is sorted by artist. I'm not sure if that's something I can change in the settings somewhere -- obviously, until this compilation CD "bug" is fixed, I'd rather sort by album name since I haven't memorized the artist of the first track for each disc, hehe.
Has anyone else experienced this or know of a fix for either of these issues?
Thanks,
Rob

You r not alone Rob! I just posted the same complain in a previous thread...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1121028&tstart=0
yeah..i just hope this whole Coverflow problem,along with the ridiculously slow menu response is fixed b4 my 14 days return period is up, if not...this iPOD is going back and am going back to my iPod Photo!

Cover Flow sorting options

Currently it appears that Cover Flow is sorting by Album Artist, this is a problem because I have lots of compilations. I want it to sort by Album, does anyone know how to change this?

windows itunes:
- select all songs from compilation
- right click, then select 'get info'
- click 'sorting' tab
- select 'Sort Artist' and put e.g. 'Various', or whatever you want

Cover Flow Sort Problem To Do With Compilations?

Hi,
I just had a thought. Do you think the problem we're having with Cover Flow on the iPod Nano is to do with "Part of a compilation" not being ticked in iTunes?
If you bought one movie soundtrack Album that has a different Artist for each track, should "Part of a compilation" be ticked in iTunes, even if you've set the Album Artist to "Various Artists"?

No. does not help. The Compilations-Checkmark brings the files in a folder and not one level up. So the iTunes folder is a little cleaned up.
mk

From Cover Flow repeat / play album only?

Is there a way to have iTunes play/repeat just an album when selected via Cover Flow?
(It's probably just me not seeing the option.)
When one selects an album via 'Grid View -> Albums' only that album and its songs get selected. That's exactly what I'd like to have when selecting the album via Cover Flow.
However if that an album is selected via Cover Flow, this album and all songs following are listed.
Playing the album ends up playing everything... Yet I'd only like to repeat-play that album.
Checking/Unchecking all songs individually (even via shift-cmd) to select just the album songs for play is not my idea of a good solution.

There are two ways I know, but one is clunky and the other could be very time-consuming to set up.
1) Make sure all the tracks in your library are unchecked. Then, check only the tracks in the album you want to play. You can use Uncheck All to do the first part, and then select the album tracks, right-click on one of them and click Check Selected. Or you can click the checkmarks on individually. Then, if you select the first album track and click Play iTunes will play through all the tracks that are checked and then stop. I haven't tried doing this with repeat, but it should repeatedly play the album tracks in sequence.
2) You could build a playlist for every album you want to play through. Then, to play the album play the playlist.
Unfortunately, iTunes does not provide a "play album" control. Perhaps Apple sees playing albums through in this manner like CDs or (worse) vinyl LPs as hopelessly 20th Century and something to be discouraged?

Cover flow - Sort by Album/Year?

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