Each song shows as a separate album

I have added albums from CDs. Each song shows as a separate album. I would like to consolidate the tracks into the album so i can play the entire album.
Thanks

THis suggestion is very helpful. I was able to correct the problem in most cases. However, as I went through the list, I discovered that in the case of two albums, James Taylor's Greatest Hits and Billie Holiday's Greatest hits, each individual song from one album has been combined with an individual song from the other. In other words, there are multiple 2 song albums containing 1 song from each album.
Is there any way to separate these and then re-combine them?

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HT1351 When I import cds to itunes the albums do not contain all songs. If there are multiple artists or a duet, each song shows up as an album.

When I import cds to itunes, the albums do not contain all songs. If there is a duet, each duet is listed as a separate album.
As an example," Genius Loves Company" or "Tuskegee" each are listed as many albums---each album has a separate song.
I spoke to Apple Help and they were of some help, but did not answer the question.

Unfortunately you've discovered too late how important it is to maintain an up-to-date backup of your iTunes library (and all other data of value). You could, before wiping the drive, have considered making use of a commercial data recovery service that could (albeit at considerable cost) have extracted your library from the hard disk, even if virus infected.
In the absence of that option, you will need to restore the content of your library from its original sources:
Depending on your location, you may be able to re-download any iTunes Store purchases that are still available on the Store
Likewise, most digital purchases from Amazon (including auto-rip copies of purchased CDs) should be available from the Amazon Cloud and via the Amazon Music application - the same may be true of other commercial sources for digital downloads
Content imported from your CDs will have to imported again
The specific situation that you describe regarding the music imported from your friend's external HDD suggests that either the source is badly organized and/or originates from a source other than iTunes (other media players may use alternative tags for information like artist, title, album, etc. that are not wholly consistent with how iTunes handle these). Without details of the issues you're seeing it is difficult to suggest a remedy other than going through the media album-by-album, track-by-track, and correcting the inconsistencies.
In the absence of a backup or access to the original library data there is no option other than painstakingly recreating your library as described above. As you do so, you'll now realize how important creating and maintaining backups are - in my case I have at all times three separate duplicates of my library, in two different locations, where none is ever more than a week old compared to the content of my master library.

How do i stop each song getting up under seperate album covers?

hello, I want to load all my mp3s (about 500) onto my itunes, but everytime i do this, each song comes up under individual album covers, how can I put all the songs under just one album cover or no album at all? i dont want to have 500 different albums i have to scroll through everyday! 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 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.
*Missing artist or 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*. If the album is not a compilation however, any tracks which list guest artists may 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 that this is information about the track as distinct from the 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

When copying a CD, some of the songs are copied as separate albums. How do I get them all into one album?

When copying some cd's into itunes folder on my computer, some of the songs are copied as separate albums. Please could someone advise how I bring the songs together as one album?

Hello - thx for reply.
However, the Steve Maguire article is from 2010. Has Apple a simple solution now eg some way of dragging individual songs to one album cover? I'm not very I.T. literate

HT1751 how do i move songs that are in separate albums into the same album?

how do i move songs that are in separate albums into the same album?

Of course it should, but if it doesn't do you want fix it or leave it broken? iTunes draws on the CDDB database for track details. That database is incomplete, contains errors, and isn't explicitly designed to be "iTunes friendly". If you download an album from the iTunes store then the tracks should normally be grouped together, although there are ways of sorting the Songs view that will always break things up. If you purchase from Amazon, elsewhere, or rip your CDs then you may sometimes need to make a minor update to the tags to tidy things up. Which workaroud is needed depends on context, but the most common one of setting an Album Artist takes a few seconds.
tt2

Showing as 2 Separate Albums

I have a 2CD set that I've imported into itunes that is showing up as 2 separate albums (1 for each cd). Obviously I want this to show up (in grid and coverflow view) as a single album.
*So - I've done the following:*
In list view I highlighted all of the tracks from the 2 Cd's. > Getinfo > replaced (overwrote) the Artist Name and Album Name - entered blanks in all other fields (except 2 cd set). Saved settings.
iTunes still shows the 2 discs as separate albums.
*Possible Red Herring:*
One of the tracks on the second cd originally credited 2 artists (Bob Dylan feat Ralph Stanley) rather than 1 (Bob Dylan) so when the first cd was originally imported it recognised the artist as Bob Dylan, while the second cd was listed as Various Artists. Also the 2 discs were titled Disc 1 and Disc 2 - so itunes would (i presume) have thought they were different albums.
After the Getinfo change described above, however, all tracks are now credited to Bob Dylan (and both discs confirm Bob Dylan as the artist) and both titles are the same.
So I then deleted the album from itunes thinking to re-import it but this time to change the Artist Name and Album Title before importing so it would be imported with consistent titles. However, when I tried to do this itunes remembered what I'd previously changed the album title to and already inserted that. I continued with the import and, of course, same result ie 2 separate albums.
However, that itunes remembered the changes i made suggests that it holds quite a bit of data that I can't get to. Could it be that somewhere it still thinks that the albums are individually titled disc1 and disc2 and I need to reset this info somehow?
Any help or suggestions much appreciated - Thanks

Thanks Guys - greatly appreciate your assistance....
Indeed Polydorus's article was very thorough - but i worked my way through it.
No joy at first but it pointed me to the AlbumArtist Field and i thought i'd just give it a try.
Hey Presto by putting the artist name in there it joined the album together.
Got a horrible feeling I should have known that all along - now i look at it it seems obvious.
Really appreciate your time - Thanks!

I downloaded some music but there's two copies of each song showing up on the phone but not on itunes or anywhere else.

I recently downloaded songs off of itunes on my computer. usually i don't do this because i think its a pain in the *** to connect my iphone to the computer but since i had recently updated it with icloud and the new ios software i figured i could do it just this once. well anyways i downloaded some songs on the PC i have and everything was going well up until i was about to connect the iphone to sync the songs. for some reason i remembered about icloud and i looked up the songs on my phone and sure enough there they were i clicked on them to see if they would play but they wouldn't so i just connected the phone to the computer after everything had synced i found that there was now two copies of the each song i had just bought. at first none of the songs would play but then i connected my phone to wifi and i think this is when the icloud came to into work because now one song will play and the other wont. it annoys me because its not showing whether i double bought the songs or if its some kind of stupid glitch. i dont think i double bought them though because theres no double copies showing up on itunes. i just want to know how to fix this because its annoying to have two copies of the song when one doesnt even play. could anyone please help?

Apple does not respond to these forums but users do. You can sync both devices to the same computer using the same itunes account. After initial setup you can pick and choose what apps you want on your devices. I have an iphone, ipod touch and ipad that I sync to the same computer and account. I have different apps, music, photos, etc on each. The key is one computer, one itunes account and you will be fine.

Tracks in Album show up as separate albums

Some of my albums in iTunes show up as seperate albums (with same name).. this is most noticeable when looked at on iPhone. How do I get this re-grouped so on iPhone I can listen to whole album and not have to play each track seperatly? And without making a playlist for each album..
running iTunes 10.4 on iMac. iPhone 4 with all current updates.

Generally all you need to do is fill in an appropriate Album Artist. For more details see my article on Grouping Tracks Into Albums, in particular the topic One album, too many covers.
tt2

ITunes 11... I have multiple artists with the same album name... how do i have them show up as separate albums?

I have itunes 11 with iTunes Match on 2 Macs and 2 ios devices... I know it all has bugs... but I have been ok.
I am wondering how to show my library in the column browser view when I have multiple albums with the same names? I have noticed on my ipod in my car that an album titled "Christmas" plays and includes 2 different albums titled christmas... and in itunes it lists them both when not in the artwork view... (I primarily use the column browser to navigate my library.
Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this/knows how to fix.
Thanks!

Various workarounds I can think of which basically involve playing around with tags. See which meets your needs or come up with others:
Give the albums slightly different names. For example, "Greatest Hits" [ABBA]"
Do the same but do it in the sort album field.
Add a bogus disc number to different albums. It may string them together still but at least they will be slightly grouped.

How can I display a compilation album as one album rather than as separate songs? (each different artist shows with the same album art)

I want a compilation album, consisting of different artists, to all be included within the one album folder. Currently when scrolling through my ipod classic each artist has its own album folder, even though they originate from the same album e.g. "The Best Rock 'n' Roll Album in the World Ever" consists of two discs (50 songs). Each artist's song shows as a 'separate album' of one song, each with the same album artwork. I want all of those on Disc 1 to be under one album cover and similarly for those on Disc 2.

Select all the tracks on disc 1 and via Get Info, change the Album Artist to Various Artists and turn on the compilation flag. This is iTunes 12:
Then repeat for disc 2.

Songs showing up twice on my iPod

Hello everyone. I am an organization junkie, and just jumped to the iPod from Zune. I can say already, I like the iPod itself better, but iTunes is really p*ssing me off.
I just did a sync to my computer, and then noticed some of the songs I synced have been added 2 times or more.
Example:
In iTunes, I have an album from Chimaira. When I did the origian sync, I went into the iPod and noticed some of the details where not typed in right. So I went back into iTunes and fixed them. Now with the Zune software, anytime I change any meta tag details on an album or song, the software would automaticaly fix them in the Zune player as well. I am assuming this is not the case with the iPod if you have it set to sync manualy.
So in iTunes, I re-dragged and dropped the album to the iPod in hopes to update just the detsails of the album/songs, and now instead of 11 tracks, I have 22 with each song showing up in the album twice.
This is going on for several of my albums in the iPod. How do I fix it so it shows the song only once, and if there is a song or 2 on my iPod that I want to take off of it, how do I delete from the iPod but leave it in the itunes? In the Zune setup, I could goto the player section in the software and select what songs I wanted to delete from JUST the player. But with iTunes, I am confused as how to do it.
Thanks in advanced.

Hello Rockwood610,
And welcome to Apple Discussions!
Now with the Zune software, anytime I change any meta tag details on an album or song, the software would automaticaly fix them in the Zune player as well. I am assuming this is not the case with the iPod if you have it set to sync manualy.
Exactly. This will only happen when you have the iPod set up to sync automatically with your iTunes library. Otherwise, as you have already discovered, you will have to delete the originals from your iPod and then drag each freshly updated track back to your iPod.
how do I delete from the iPod but leave it in the itunes?
See this Apple support document for detailed instructions on how to delete content from your iPod when you have it set to sync manually.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1855
B-rock

Songs from CD show up as individual albums

Each song on the CD shows as a separate album in the Library. How do I combine the songs into the actual Album?

THis suggestion is very helpful. I was able to correct the problem in most cases. However, as I went through the list, I discovered that in the case of two albums, James Taylor's Greatest Hits and Billie Holiday's Greatest hits, each individual song from one album has been combined with an individual song from the other. In other words, there are multiple 2 song albums containing 1 song from each album.
Is there any way to separate these and then re-combine them?

Songs didn't load properly into itunes; each song is an album

I moved several albums of songs into itunes, but some of the albums didn't load properly, with each individual song going into itunes as an album itself. I went into the info for each song and found that the album name is correct, and the same for each song, yet they don't load under one album. Is there some way to get each song into its album besides just changing the album name? Is there some other setting in those songs that needs to be changed?

If you right click on them and select Get Info and go to the Info tab are they shows part of a complilation/different tracks of one album?
See:
Grouping tracks into albums.

In iOS 4, you could make separate photo slide shows with separate songs. In iOS 5, this has changed. Now only 1 song is allowed at a time. It will not save separate song selections for each slide show. Is there any way to fix this? This is something I

In iOS 4, you could make separate photo slide shows with separate songs.
In iOS 5, this has changed. Now only 1 song is allowed at a time. It will not save separate song selections for each slide show.
Is there any way to fix this? This is something I use every day.
I am on an iPad 2, 32gb, wifi...
Thank you

My Photos app works the same on iOS 5 as it did on iOS 4 i.e. I can have a different track for each album. When I select a track for a photo album I then start the slideshow so that it shows the first couple of photos with the track playing - I'm not sure it's necessary to start the slideshow but I always do and it remembers that track for that album.

Some Albums on iTunes separate into one album for each song on iPod

Some of my albums, imported from CD's, show up properly on iTunes. After the sync, each song in the album shows up on the iPod Touch as a separate album with the one song. All the songs on the album are "ticked" in the iTunes list before the sync.

See http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp
tt2

Each song shows as a separate album

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