ITunes Album Track Order

I basically spend 8 hr a day listening to iTunes and I have a really frustrating issue that I can't imagine should be as difficult to get around - but I can't seem to figure it out.
I buy quite a bit of music either through emusic, itunes or cd's. Since I had probably 1/2 dozen albums a week, I ideally want to open itunes and just start listening to the last album I imported (in order) followed by the 2nd most recent album, etc -- and ideally listen for my entire workday. The problem is multifaceted:
1. Emusic automatically imports music I download. It processes them in reverse order, which is good since it makes song #1 the most recent "date added" which allows me to sort by "date added" and listen in order. Unfortunately, since it processes multiple songs at a time, shorter songs beat the song before it -- and it makes a mess of the track order. They get numbered correctly, but they're "date added" are incorrect -- which messes up my listening order.
2. When I import a CD, it starts at track 1 -- making it impossible to use the "dated added"field as a sort.
3. I believe Itunes acts like a cd on importing, so again the order is bungled.
I have about 6,000 songs so I don't think it's feasible to change each CD one by one, but I can't imagine there isn't some way to just listen to my newest album, in order, then my next newest, etc.
Does anyone know if there's a way to do this? I can't imagine I'm the only person who listens to music this way. Right now, I wind up filtering to the album, sorting by track, and listening to CD's one by one. I can get through like 20 albums in a day, so this it makes it really tought to get into a flow at work.
This has bothered me for well over a year, and I've searched many discussion groups and haven't come across any similar threads -- so I decided to just ask flat out.
Any help would be incredible, thank you.

hmmm... I didn't realize that was an option, but that definitely helps. I guess part two can be to request emusic to NOT IMPORT automatically, and I can just load the tracks in reverse order.
Of course that helps moving forward, but I guess I'm stuck with out of order imports on the existing library (not the end of the world).
I really wish Itunes would allow a secondary sort to allow us to sort albums and just leave the track numbers alone -- I'd say 99% of the time, people want the album tracks in order, so it's silly to have most of the sort options mess with that order.

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Rearranging Album Track Orders

Hello,
This small problem may have a very simple answer, but I can't seem to figure it out...
Sometimes when I upload an album to ITunes, the track order gets mixed up. The program will still have the right track numbers attached to each track, but the playlist for that album is out of order (ex: Track 3 of the CD will be the first tract of the album playlist). I can't seem to put them back in the right order. Does anyone know how I could do this?
Thanks!

If the songs are in a playlist open iTunes then click on the playlist. Click on the number column (extreme left). Click on the song you want to move and drag it to where you want it to be. Make sure neither Shuffle or Repeat are switched on in the playlist, either of those can prevent you reordering tracks.
If the tracks are out of order in your library view try this. Right click at the top of any column in your iTunes library and choose **Track Number** from the list. Click at the top of this new column to sort it and after that click on the Album column. If you like you can then click on Artist, it will continue to hold the track order as well. Afterwards anything you import should follow this arrangement Track Number>Album>Artist. Make sure the little triangle on the right side of the track number column header is pointing up. In that direction the column is sorted in Ascending order (lowest to highest).

Album track order in iTunes

Hello, I have a problem with a few downloaded albums.
I had downloaded album tracks off the net into album folders in My Music. The tracks were numbered. After importing the albums (folders) into my iTunes library, & updating my iPod with those, I see that in both the iPod & iTunes the tracks are in the wrong order. They are however, in correct order in their folders (in MY Music).
Any ideas how I can remedy this?

Try this, I found that it works for me. Right click at the top of any column in your iTunes library and choose **Track Number** from the list. Click at the top of this new column to sort it and after that click on the Album column. If you like you can then click on Artist which is how I prefer mine ordered, it will continue to hold the track order as well. Afterwards anything you import should follow this arrangement Artist>Album>Track Number within Album (you can hide the track number column when you've done if you don't want it cluttering up the view)

SICK of iTunes messing up my albums' track order!

SCENARIO: I rip a CD, get track name/number and ID3 info from online database, convert to MP3, import into iTunes, sort by Album by Artist (with tracks displaying in correct order), and my iPod STILL chooses to play it in whatever order it darn well pleases.
What's up with that?! Come on, Apple!
Oh yeah, my question:
As you can probably tell, I don't use my iPod/iTunes as a 'jukebox', I simply store my record collection on it. Concordantly, I want to listen to only my albums, and only in the track order the artist intended. How can I tell iTunes/my iPod once and for all that I don't want it to play albums in any order other than track order? If this isn't possible, my question becomes, which form of suicide could anyone recommend? I hear the Empire State Building is pretty high...

Your iPod will order the tracks by their "Track number" tag that appears when you ⌘-i a track and go to the "info" tab. Your iPod needs to know what the track number is in order to play the tracks in that order.
When this value is not present, I'm guessing it will order them in alphabetical order, or the order in which they were imported or some-such.

Album Track Order Problem

I have recently noticed that the track order in some of my albums has gone all screwy. Even though when I go to >Get Info, and verify that the track order and disk number is correct, they don't appear in the order listed.
For Example, when I sort by album, the tracks now appear in this order:
Track 7
Track 11
Track 13
Track 5
Track 1
Track 2
Track 3, etc...
I realized there were some issues with iTunes version 7, and have updated to version 7.0.1, but even after I have reput the track info they still appear out of order.
Dell Dimension 8400 Windows XP Recently updated from iTunes 7 to iTunes 7.0.1

Ahh... yep, that was it. Never would've even bothered to change those, because I didn't think it would effect the track order..
^_^ Thanks a bunch.

"Complete My Album" track order problem

Hello everybody,
I downloaded several tracks from Billy Joel's "The Stranger" in January. Just a few days ago, I decided to "Complete My Album." When I downloaded the remaining tracks, the tags were slightly different, resulting in two entries in my iTunes library. The old tracks had "The Stranger (Remastered)" in the Album field; the new tracks simply said "The Stranger." So I changed the tags on the new tracks to make sure they matched the old ones. Now, they are displayed properly as one entry, except the tracks are in the wrong order. I checked all the fields, including Album Artist, Artist, Track number, Sort Album...any that would affect the order...to make sure they matched. I selected all of the tracks and manually reentered the information. Whatever I tried to do, I could not get the tracks to display in the correct order (in iTunes, or the iPod it was synced to.) The new tracks stubbornly sit atop the old tracks, no matter what I do to them. I also noticed that when I press the little grey arrow next to the new tracks, it links me to the proper page on iTunes. When I do the same with the old tracks, I get an error that says "Could not complete your request. These songs are no longer available in the U.S. store." I contacted iTunes support, and they had no idea what the problem was. They told me to post here. So here I am, hoping that there is some iTunes genius who knows what is going on. I'm assuming that there is some secondary tag information that I can't access that takes precedence over the ID3 listings. Any clues? Please forgive my incredibly verbose question, but I just wanted to give a clear picture of the situation. Thanks for your help.
Self Built Windows XP 3 GHz P4x 2GB RAM

Ahh... yep, that was it. Never would've even bothered to change those, because I didn't think it would effect the track order..
^_^ Thanks a bunch.

Album track order incorrect after syncing ...

i was wondering if someone could help me figure out why, after syncing albums to my iPhone (4S; ioS 5.1.1) some of my albums are listed in correct track order while the tracks on others are listed alphabetically. the track order is correct when displayed in iTunes. i'll highlight all the tracks and drag copy them to my iPhone. but when i view the album on my phone the tracks are listed in alphabetical order. this only happens to some albums though. it seems quite random.
can anyone advise me how to fix it? i would prefer them to keep in their original playing order.
thank you for you insight and assistance.

i too am having this problem. please help

I'm going mad!Can't dictate album track order!

Dear all,
I hope somebody can help! I have downloaded mp3s (not from the iTunes store, sorry Apple!) and added them to my library no problems. However, the tracks for an album are in alphabetical order and I'd very much like to have them in the order they appear on the album, but for the life of me I can't! I'm not too computer savvy (and new to macs) so please bear with me! I have managed to create a playlist with the correct track order, but when I drag that to my iPod, it bloomin' well puts them into alphabetical order again! Aargh!
A pint is in order for anybody who can help and make it to Leeds!
Kind Regards,
Gavin
P.S.
I was under the impression that all this new fangled technology was supposed to be super simple, but there sems to be an awful lot of confused and frustrated people in this forum. I think I've come to the right place

To set the correct track order:
Select all songs of the same album and Get Info (command-I)
Fill in the total number of tracks at 'Track Number'.
Click OK
Then:
Select a song and Get Info (command-I).
Select the Info tab and fill in the track number at 'Track Number'.
You can move to the next song by clicking on the Next button (command-N)
Navigate to the previous song by clicking the Previous button (command-P)
Hope this helps.
M
17' iMac fp 800 MHz 768 MB RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9) Several ext. HD (backup and data)

How do I get my iPhone to play all albums by any given artist in consecutive album track order like it does on an iPod?

When I select an artist on my iPod Classic and then select "all albums," I can play multiple albums consecutively without losing the track order of each individual album. On my iPhone 4S, however, when I select an artist there's only the option to select "all songs," and it lists all the tracks alphabetically and plays them in that order, making it impossible to listen to one album followed by another. It isn't a problem if I select one album at a time, as the tracks then remain in their original order from the album, but it won't keep the proper orderings if I want to play all of the music by an artist and select "all songs." Is there some way to change it so that when I view all tracks by an artist I can see them and play them in their original intended track order, not in the alphabetical listing order?

Delete the file and re-download again.

5310 Album Track Order

I've got a 5310 with the Comes With Music package. I've downloaded some albums, but they seem to be listed and playing in a random order (Shuffle is off), not the order of the album. Is there a way to fix this?

The problem appears to be with the order you put the songs onto the phone in. The only solution I've found is to remove all the songs from the album on the phone, then add them back on in the order that they are in the album.
This only appears to be a problem with WMAs (The file format used by the songs downloaded from Nokia Music Store).
I have tried the same thing with MP3s, adding them on to the phone out of order from the album, and they are played in the correct order.
This therefore leads me to conclude that the 5310 cannot read all the tags correctly from the WMA format files, which would allow it to sort the album tracks by the track number. Some other information missing when looking at a WMA file on the phone is Year and Genre information which can be viewed in MP3s on the phone. This means that the Genres list on the phone doesn't list anything for the WMAs. I am a little disappointed about the poor support for WMAs, especially when the tracks downloaded from the Nokia Music Store are in WMA format, surely the phone should properly suppor this format, especially when the 5310 is supplied with the Comes With Music package.
I have to say Nokia support have been excellent in the speed and response of their communications over e-mail. I have been discussing it with them for the past couple of weeks and they have forwarded my summary above to the relevant department. Hopefully something will be fixed in future. Although creating playlists is a solution (And something that was recommended by Nokia) in reality this would take an awful long time with 50+ albums on my phone and the speed of navigation through the songs, so the best way is to remove the songs and add them on again. Hope this helps.

Album track order

How does one ensure that album tracks appear in their true original order and apply this throughout your whole library?

Each track has a track number field which can be filled in. Right click any track, and select 'Get Info' - one of the pages there will have a 'Track X of Y' field. If these are filled in, when you sort your library by Album, tracks will be listed by album, then by track number in their album.

ITunes changes track order when burning discs

When burning a playlist to disc iTunes changes the track order. I want the disc to have the same track order as my playlist. How do I do that?

Jim VanLeeuwen wrote:
How your CD appears in iTunes depends on the column selections. In list view in iTunes, select the column to the left of the track names to see the CD track order. To see the actual order of the tracks on the CD, open the CD in Finder by double-clicking the CD on the desktop. The tracks will be preceded by a number corresponding to their order on the CD and that is the order they should play in your CD player. If you use the Finder's list view, your CD should reflect the order in the playlist you burned it from.
Play the CD in your CD player? Does the order match the original playlist?
Nope, when I put it in my car CD player the tracks are randomized. On the playlist I can put the tracks in the order that I wanted them in and when I burn them iTunes randomizes the order on the cd. I've burned it 4 more times and each time the tracks have been randomized. This is also with a cd that I bought from the ITS. So the playlist is in track order and I even checked the tags and the numbers are in the correct order.

Itunes scrambles album track order

All of the track titles under all of my albums are out of order, for example the order is track numbers 8, 5, 7,1 ,10,3, instead of 1, 2, 3, 4,etc.
This is making it a pain to make playlists.

Which column is your view sorted on? See Grouping tracks into albums...
tt2

Album Track Order Editing

Hi,
How do you change the order in which songs appear in their album ?
EG. If I import an album and want to make the first song in the album become the fourth ?
Thanks,
Andrew

Hi, welcome to Apple Discussions.
You can modify the track & disc nos to change the order. If some tracks are set to *Disc 1 of 1*, but others are blank then the tracks may be out of sequence when viewing track no. alone.
For more on sorting & grouping see: http://www.samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp
tt2

Album track order different on iPhone?!

Hi,
I bought a single on iTunes and then later completed the album. Now if I select the album through 'albums', the single track always appears on the last position. On iTunes and my iPod nano it's on position 3, where it's supposed to be according to the track number. Any Ideas?

Album art issue?
(Just a SWAG, but AA has caused these kinds of issues before). Try this -- in iTunes (not in a standalone editor, which may be editing the wrong format tags) select all the songs in the album and make sure they all have the same album name and artist name. Then copy and paste into the album art box the album art (I use albumart.org, but Amazon.com is also a good source for copying). This will store your art into the song rather than album (assuming you may have gotten your art from iTunes).
Reset your phone, restore your phone, and then resync. That ought to do it.

ITunes Album Track Order

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