ITunes Match erased metadata from my iTunes Library

Question

I have been frustrated by the inability to show music sorted on my iPod by “Album Artist.”  I really like that I am able to do this on my iPhone and iPad.  But the iPod will only show “Artist.”  This is a real pain when you have several albums by the same artist; but also, when there are numerous track artist variations because of guests, duets, etc.  So instead of a single album artist listing for all such albums, I get about 25 separate listings.  Aughh!!!  Very annoying!
I have come up with what I think is a pretty viable work-around, however.  I discovered an AppleScript available online - by Doug’s AppleScripts - that allows for transferring, copying, appending, or replacing information in any iTunes metadata field with the information from another field.  It will do this for selected iTunes tracks, even my whole library if I select all tracks.  To make this work for me, first I went through my entire library and copied the contents of the “Artist” field to the “Comments” field.  When complete, I then selected all my music tracks, EXCLUDING classical music, and copied the “Album Artist” to the “Artist” field.  I did not do this for classical music because I think the related track artist info is really important – it is useful to know what symphony or orchestra is performing, for example.  Also, I use the “Composer” field for all my classical music, and the iPod Classic allows for sorting on “Composer.”  Problem solved for my classical music.  If I’m in a classical mood, I just sort on “Composer.”  For all my music that is NOT classical, my “Artist” field is now the same as my “Album Artist” field.  And if I really need to know specific track artist information, it is still available for viewing in the track “Comments” field of my iTunes, on my iMac.  This whole process took about 30 minutes for just under 12,000 songs.  Not bad!
Here’s a crazy kicker, though.  I also use iTunes Match.  The next day after I had made all these changes, they were all changed back again!  The metadata I had changed reverted to what was previously written to the iCloud!  Any ideas on how I can prevent that from happening if I’m using iTunes Match??

Answer 1

Michael... what you are describing above is not accurate.  The iPod Classic does NOT have the capability of using the "Album Artist" field from iTunes to sort music.  This particular metadata field is not even available to the iPod Classic.  Only the "Artist" field is available.  (It is the other way around with the iPod Touch, iPhone, and Ipad -- for these iOS devices, the "Album Artist" field is the one that is available, and not the "Artist" field.)  There are numerous posts here in the discussion forums from other folks who are frustrated by the same issue.  The iPod Classic can only sort and group songs together by "Artist" -- that is, the track artist.  And the track artist is often quite different from the album artist.  For example...  I have 29 different Barbra Streisand albums in iTunes.  For all of them, the album artist is "Barbra Streisand."  There are several different track artists however.  Most of them are just Barbra Streisand.  But she also does a duet or two on several albums.  So there are track artists like...  "Barbra Streisand with Kim Carnes," and "Barbra Streisand with Barry Gibb," and many more like that.  After syncing to my iPod Classic, when I sort on the iPod's "Artist" field, I get about 25 different iterations of "Barbra Streisand and .... " as the artist.  Yes, "Barbra Streisand" does appear among them.  But the only songs that are listed under "Barbra Streisand" are those that she sang by herself, and where she is the only track artist.  Given the setup of the iPod Classic as it is now, using firmware version 2.0.4, it is NOT possible to use the Album Artist field to sort and group songs together.