Coverflow sort order on iPod

I cannot work out why:
1 - coverflow displays in a different order to Albums on the iPod
2 - and in a different order in Coverflow on the PC to Coverflow on the iPod.
Any suggestions? Is it possible to specify the sort field in coverflow?

The iPod appears to groups albums by looking at the Artist field rather than Album Artist. As I recall the first couple of revisions of iTunes 7 did this as well but it got fixed pretty quickly. Nothing has so far changed with the iPod Classic in this respect. It causes problems in Cover Flow and when selecting albums from the Artist menu. In general I've noticed that for Cover Flow if you only have one album by an artist then tracks on the album that feature guests may not cause multiple covers provided the tag lists the principal artist before the guests. If you have two or more albums & guests are involved then multiple covers for the same album seems inevitable. Workarounds are moving the guest info. into the track title or changing the Sort Artist to Album Artist when there are guests on a track. I prefer this second method even though it can create duplicate listings in the artist menu as a side effect - hopefully it will be easier to undo should they get around to fixing the firmware to group on album artist.
The other Cover Flow gotcha is that all tracks with the same album title get returned (irespective of artist) when you select an album with a given title - this is most obvious with Greatest Hits albums where you will see all the tracks from all the Greatest Hits albums listed together when you select any one of them. Workarounds are to rename affected albums in some fashion, e.g. *Album - Album Artist* , change the Sort Album value for each one or add differing numbers of trailing spaces to different albums
tt2

Similar Messages

160Gb iPod Classic - Coverflow Sort order

I have posted a similar forum topic on iLounge and I am really surprised at the lack of response and given that this issue may/must affect the iPhone and Touch that more people are not discussing it.
My problem is this, I have purchased a 160Gb Classic and have found no way to replicate in iTunes the sort order that Coverflow uses within the iPod.
Some have said that that the iPod coverflow sort order is Album by Artist (separating compilations) but using this method of sorting the coverflow within iTunes although comes close does not replicate what the iPod is doing with it's sorting of coverflow.
So.
Can anyone tell me if anyone / Apple have produced some documentation on how they currently and plan to expose tagging with iPods? I don't mind re-tagging my tracks again if necessary but want to be sure that I am not wasting my time.
Do Apple intend to allow Coverflow to have the sort basis used by Coverflow to be chosen within the iPod? The 'Album Artist' tag would make more sense to me than the current method being used.
The greatest strength that the iPod and iTunes has in my opinion is the ability to sort very large databases of music and allow singular tracks to be found quickly, the issue described above with Coverflow does not mean the end of the world but is concerning that Apple have allowed what appears to be a flawed product and methodology through their usually very high standards.

In iTunes the coverflow view can be reordered by selecting a column heading to sort by - there is no ONE coverflow order. The iPod coverflow view corresponds to the ordering Album by Artist in ascending mode. In addition, the various versions of the firmware up to V1.03 fail to correctly gather albums via the Album Artist field although iTunes does. This can cause duplicate albums to appear when one principal artist has more than one album and some of the tracks feature guest artists. This behaviour can currently be corrected by setting the Sort Artist field in affected tracks to the value of the album's Artist. Hopefully a future firware update will correfct this. Another minor glitch is that the album will be credited to the artists that feature on the first track rather than the Album Artist. (V1.03 corrects this for Compilations only.)
Another bug/feature means that where the same album title is used by more than one artist, both albums will feature all the tracks from both albums and the wrong artwork may be displayed. This also happens in iTunes. The workaround is to give each album a unique title by, for example, appending or prepending the name of the artist.
tt2

Sort Order in Ipod

I have had an IPod Classic 5th 30G for many years but still bugged by the same issue locating things.
Mostly I listen to classical music so an Album Name might have two symphonies and 8 tracks in all.
I would like my search to go something like:
Genre > Symphonies > Mozart > (then select from my custom playlist Symphony 1 or Symphony 2)
But the Ipod will do something like:
Genre > Symphonies > Mozart > (Album Name) > (Conductor) > All
I am able to set up the proper sorts in iTunes but not in the iPod
Bob

Maybe your view options got reset? Go to view, view options, and see if Album Artist is checked. If so, uncheck?
I have a related question:
I just finished reinstalling my entire database from an external harddrive.
It used to be that -- in the album column -- for example
'64 Meet the Beatles
would appear before an album without the apostrophe and numbers, i.e.,
Beatles Assorted
is now listed before '64 Meet the Beatles.
Is there any way to get iTunes to list albums the old way?

Differences in sort order between iTunes and iPod

Can someone explain how the sort order of artists / albums works? It seems that it is different between iTunes and the iPod. In iTunes (7.3.1) I can enter data in the fields for Artist, Album Artist, Sort Artist and Sort Album Artist. When I get the tracks to appear in the order I want in iTunes, it doesn’t seem to transfer across to my iPod. I know there are some differences in how the sort order works in both, but how is it different?
John.
Dell 5150 Windows XP

ou must have an older iPod.
I believe the new sort order only works on the new iPods (Nano and Video)

Change sort order of Podcasts on iPod?

In iTunes, my podcasts are sorted in ascending order according by the Release Date field. I've also made sure that the different parts of a certain podcast episode has proper Track Numbers.
However, on my 5.5G iPod, the podcasts are sorted in a descending order (newest first) which plays everything backwards (i.e. a podcast with 4 parts play's part 4 first).
How can I change the sort order of my podcasts on my iPod?
I've noticed that even if all my podcasts have been given Track Numbers (usually 1-4 per episode), when they play on my iPod, it says "1 of 1" instead of "1 of 4" etc. Why is that?
Also, the most annoying thing is that after a podcast has played, I'm thrown out back to the main Podcast Menu. I then have to go back into Podcasts, choose the Podcast folder and then choose the next podcast to listen to. Very weird behavior.
My iPod is set to automatically sync with iTunes, so I can't change anything in iPod playlists in iTunes

i discovered this completely by accident.
connect your iPod to your computer.
click the podcast bit of your iPod on the left hand side. (so it brings up which podcasts you have on your iPod)
you can then click 'release date' to change the order from either newest or oldest first.
unfortunately you can only do this for your entire podcast collection. i subscribe to some audiobook podcasts, and for some reason the episodes seem to have been released with the earlier episodes on later dates, meaning listening to the sequentially would mean listening to them backwards, but otherwise this works perfectly.
hope that helps.

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

Sort order differs on iPod

I've just replaced my G2 iPod with a 60GB 5G iPod. The song sort order on the 'standard' playlists like 'Songs" (as opposed to the playlists I create myself) have a different sort order from how they're displayed in iTunes. For example, I sort 'Recently Added' by date with the most recent at the top, on the iPod they are sorted alphabetically even though the iPod playlist in Tunes has them sorted by date. has anyone else experienced this or is there a setting for altering the sort order on the iPod that I haven't discovered?
TIA

I think that is basic sorting for the iPod. For example if you have an album of songs but no track number noted for each song they will show up in the album section but be listed alphabetically where if they have track #'s then they will be listed in tract # order.
I hope this answers your question.

IPod classic - sort order of podcasts

I have a new iPod Classic 160 GB. Love it so far, but it has one annoying thing. In iTunes, I have my podcasts sorted from oldest to newest. There are some podcasts, like news and training podcasts that need to be listened from oldest to newest or the content gets confusing when listening out of order. When I sync podcasts to my iPod, it refuses to sort from oldest to newest (even though when I look at the sort order of my iPod in iTunes it does show the order correct, just not on the actual iPod). So when I start a podcast, it automatically plays going from newest to oldest, which is not what I want. Any way I can change that?

This drives me crazy as well. I hope they fix this in a firmware update.

Alphabetize Song Title Sort Order Under Genre on iPod

Here is the general idea of what I am trying to do on the iPod. When viewing songs on the iPod, if I select Genre from the main menu, I cannot find a way to display all the song titles in a selected genre in alphabetical order. This can be done easily with the songs in iTunes on the laptop or desktop but seemingly not in the iPod. There is no big problem if you have only a handful of songs in any one genre but if you have several hundred songs in a particular genre and titles do not display in alphabetical order, then finding a desired song is very time consuming and necessitates scrolling through the entire list. Is there a way to alphabetize the song title sort order within Genre on the iPod?

Get external hard drive. Backup all your music files and wipeout iTunes from computer. The. Reinstall and update version if necessary. The. Connect external hard drive and set hard drive folder at default in iTunes preferences. Transfer music to library and when prompted hit automatic organizing z
. Should take care of your problem

Can I determined sorting order audiobooks on my 4th Gen. Ipod Nano ?

Why aren't audiobooks listed on ipod nano 4th generation the same order as they are in itunes?
I have an audio book on several CD's that I copied into my Itunes library. I have already gone into the track information and set them all to audiobook. On my Ipod (Nano 4th Generation) they are listed by the track name (Chapter name). Which means during playback they are out of order. However, in Itunes on my Mac they are listed under the name of the book and the chapters are in the right sequence.
I haven't read any solutions for how to change the sorting order of audiobooks on the Ipod Nano 4th Generation. (I'd be interested in a solution to this problem on other Ipods. Like Ipod Nano 1st Generation and Ipod shuffle 4th Generation)

Did you already load the audiobook manually (by dragging it to the shuffle)? To confirm that the audiobook is on the shuffle...
Select the shuffle in the iTunes sidebar. If the sidebar (along left side of window) is not visible, from the menu bar, under View, select Show Sidebar.
Click the small triangle to the left of the shuffle name (in the sidebar) to drop down its content list, indented below the shuffle. Click on Audiobooks there. To the right, your audiobook(s) should be listed.
NOTE: if you don't see Audiobooks on the content list, there are no audiobooks on the shuffle.
When you turn ON the shuffle, you are playing from the default All Songs list. Audiobooks (and podcasts) do not play from the All Songs list. You need to use VoiceOver to select the audiobook from the playlist menu. This document explains how to set up and use VoiceOver on your shuffle
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4322

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.

Coverflow sorting issues

Bear with me on this one....I have an extensive Itune library mostly sorted in albums listing. Just upgraded to a 80gb Classic which obviously has Coverflow. Noted that when looking through Artist lists some artistes which I knew I had loaded were not there but did appear in Coverflow.....at end of the list after XYZ....established that what had hapened was that when I had originally burnt the CD to Itunes I had the 'compilations box' ticked and these were the albums that had found their way out of sequence....OK. Today I decided that to get it organised I would move the 'said' albums to their respective Artist folders in my Itunes folder and then make sure that Itunes could find the tracks.....done that and then cleaned off ipod, and reloaded...guess what.....no change. Can someone throw some light no this as I was convincved that my 'tinkering' today would sort it out

Did you unset the Compilations flag before/after moving the files around? The organisation of tracks in iTunes & on the iPod is not related to the location of the phyisical files.
*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 or put the tracks in their normal order. 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*
For true compilations, where each track is by a different artist, the answer is to set the compilation flag to true and enable the iTunes preference to *Group compilations when browsing*. Otherwise tracks which list guest artists will be treated as separate items. Filling in the Album Artist field is enough to link things in iTunes. Sadly, however, the iPod ignores the Album Artist field when grouping albums so this is only a partial solution. 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

Sort Order of All Unplayed Episodes

The sort order of all unplayed episodes is from Newest to Oldest, which is backwards for me.
Why would I listen to the Newest episode first? It completely breaks any chronology of the podcasts!
I found that you can change this for individual podcasts if you find the details by clicking on the podcast title to open its preferences, but the big list does not have the option.
Please, give me the option to ORDER THE UNPLAYED EPISODES OLDEST AT TOP TO NEWEST AT BOTTOM!
Thanks, in advance.

Tom Peterson wrote:
This did the trick for me, Harry. Thanks!
I was surprised to see you can/must set this on a podcast-by-podcast basis, but it is hard to argue with having finer control. Oldest to newest seems like a slightly more logical default, but that may just be personal preference.
Not to split off in a new direction, but if I then subscribe to a podcast in Podcasts app that I already subscribe to in iTunes, is it recommended I turn off syncing between iTunes and my iPhone for that podcast? Or will this question basically go away when iOS 6.0 is released?
Do the Podcasts app and the Music/iPod app share podcast files? Or will they be duplicated on my iPhone?
Tom
The podcasts will duplicate themselves on your device. I turned off podcast syncing on my devices. But the weird thing is that when I sync, podcasts then copy themselves to my iTunes library. Either sync or don't, but don't copy to both.

How do you change the sort order of mp3 songs?

I have transfered MP3 files from my PC to itunes & iPod and created my own compilation albums for some of my favourite artists. However I would like to change the order of the songs but I dont know how to do this. I cant see what itunes or the ipod is using to determine the sort order!
thanks
Tom

tinny's advice will work if you gave them an album name and they are actually listed in your library as an album. (Under Get Info, just tell it track 1 of 10, 2 of 10, etc.)
IF you created a playlist for the album, click on the column for the track numbers and then click and drag the songs into the order you want.

Bug: iOS 5 and iTunes 10.5 podcast smart playlist sort order and how to fix.

There seems to be a bug in iOS 5 and iTunes 10.5 involving the sort order of a smart playlist of podcasts. I created such a playlist and sorted by release date on iTunes but I noticed it had a different sort order on the iPod Touch.
After playing around with it a bit I found that the only way to preserve the sort order that I have in iTunes on the iPod Touch is to uncheck "Live Updating" in the smart playlist.

Confirming this incredibly annoying bug. Basic list sorting not working... real bottom shelf work apple.
workaround update: limit to must be turned on, set it to an absurdly high number if you don't want to actually limit the playlist, then one of the sortby options in that submenu will work. The live update checkbox is irrelevant from experimentation.
This workaround does NOT fix the fundamental problem: sort order from itunes in smart playlists is not being synced and preserved in ios5 devices.
This is the latest in a long string of debacles which is making me seriously consider swapping to debian stable. (snow leopard to lion was a severe downgrade in performance for anyone doing heavy multitasking.. scheduling is FUBAR... when a command option escape beachballs on a brand new core 17 machine, your OS has serious problems with nice levels)

Coverflow sort order on iPod

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