How do I report an ITunes Store error without paying Apple for pointing out their software error.

Question

Since a couple of ITunes upgrades, tracks purchased from ITunes Store where the artist begins "The " it has included this in the artist sort key whereas it did not before. Nor has it ever done this and still doesn't for own imported CDs. I maintain my ITunes Library in artist sequence and I now have seven tracks sorted under "T" instead of where other tracks have been sorted. Apart from the fact that this needs correcting in the Apple software, I don't seem able to correct this in any way. I have reported on 11th February via normal channel, case number 747285554, and was promised someone would contact me by E-Mail within 48 hours, but no-one did. I have since sent via the same channel 2 reminders but nothing has happened.

Answer 1

Frankly I doubt that it is considered important. They are unlikely to fix a metadata error in the store based on your report. Four years on and this item still hasn't been corrected. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/comedy-classics/id332157974 (It was reported directly as well as through that review).
If you clear both the Sort Artist and Sort Album Artist values for the affected tracks then these fields should auto-populate dropping the leading "The" and sort accordingly.
In some cases the original iTunes Store metadata seems to be given preference over personal changes. If you are seeing this then
Go to iTunes > Preferences > Store and turn off
Show iTunes in the Cloud purchases
Share details about your library with Apple
On any iOS device go to Settings > Music and turn off
Show All Music
Close and reopen iTunes and/or reset the device and you should see your version of the metadata for each track rather than the original store data. If not it should reset as you play through content, or you can use my script UpdateTagInfo to force iTunes to read the current data from the tags.
For more tips on organizing content in iTunes see Grouping tracks into albums.
tt2