Keep album stacked together by album artist, in a library sorted by artist?

I have my iTunes library sorted after “Artist”. Which gives me nothing but trouble with collections or collaborations.
So what I would like to do is have iTunes to ignore the default or general sorting by “Artist”. And instead sort only this album by “Album Artist”.
I have 12 songs with the same album title, same genre, same album artist but with different song names and artist.
But regardless of how I try to tell iTunes that it has to sort this one by album artist and not the artist, it never does.
I have tried at select all the 12 songs, get info. Write the same Albums Artist, the same Album Title and leave the Artist blank. And I choose sort by Album Artist and under option I choose part of a collection.
But this isn’t working for me, As soon I go back to my library, which sorted by Artist. The albums is still spread all over the place.
HOW DO I KEEP THESE 12 SONGS STACKED TOGETHER, without having to chance the Artist to Various Artists and write each individual artist to the song title?
Which in my opinion is the wrong and oldschool approach.

Yes, I have just checked and rechecked it again. I have set an Album Artist value for each songs and the album in general. And even if i add the Album by Artist to my list view and sort after that. It still acts up. It can't for some reason keep the correct collections together, eventhough they are set as a collection in options.
But i don't really, keeping collections together didn't used to be a problem before. But i will keep trying some different things. But it's pretty annoying, that iTunes has such trouble with this.
I really have a pretty tighty library, everything is named and set up correctly (haha, or apparently not).
But thanks for the help.

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  • Itunes not grouping the same album artist together

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    Message was edited by: turingtest2

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  • Tagging Artists /// Album Artist

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  • Help! Need my Album- Artist Organization Back

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  • Changing Browser to Album Artist?

    Hello,
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    Me
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    Bollocks! No, it doesn't work nicely as they all appear in the wrong track order! Doh!
    I noticed other people have brought this up before in the forum.
    I sent a feedback to Apple. Here it is for those of you having the same problem, or who agree, or who don't understand what I'm on about:
    Hello,
    I've just changed to using iTunes a few weeks ago as it has some nicer user functions (was previously using windows media player) and it's making me very frustrated...
    I store all my albums (well over 10,000 tunes I've collected for YEARS on CD!) by the way they come on the CD; by Track Artist for the Artist and Album Artist for the Album artist. Normally for e.g. Michael Jackson, Artist and Album Artist will be the same. For compilation/DJ mix ablums this means the Album Artist will be Various Artists, the DJ/Production Crew, or Record label as applicable. If, for example, I want to listen to my Jazzanova Remixes album I can sort by album artist, choose Jazzanova, and get all the tunes on that album, whilst artist points out who each individual track is by (that Jazzanova remixed). Likewise, if I scroll to "various artists" in album artist I'll get compilation albums, or a particular DJ/collective such as by Mr. Scruff, Blue Note records compilations, etc., etc.
    Also this applies to artists where the album may be one artist, but each song artist may be that artist + another, e.g. Artist being Eminem & Dr Dre, Eminem & Dido, Eminem (feat. Joe Bloggs), etc., whilst the Album remains filed under the "Album Artist" of Eminem so I don't get millions of "X with/featuring Y" artists and spreading my albums out in a big mess.
    The problem of iTunes filing them in different artist folders for each track on that album on my harddrive can be overcome by making them a "compilation", then it seems to store in Compilation instead.
    However, it seems to insist on filing secondarily by artist, not track number/and album, when album artist is selected. This then messes the list up completely as, if I use the artists "Coldcut" as an example, when I go to Coldcut as an album artist it displays the beginning of the "Journeys by DJ" album by coldcut (album artist) from "track artists" alphabetically A->C until it gets to the Coldcut songs on it, then has a completely different coldcut album (Sound Mirrors) of which all tracks are written by Coldcut and the album artist is Coldcut, then finishes the "Journeys by DJ" album by coldcut with the rest of the track artists from Coldcut->Z!
    The only way around this seems to be to file by album, then scroll all the way through loads of tunes to get to that particular album, defeating the idea of an easily organised music collection!
    This problem is made worse by the fact if I have "browse by compilations" on to help, and use the browser at the top, Artist only chooses by track artist. I then need to go to Compilations and (assuming I remember it's called "Journeys by DJ" since I can't go straight to Compilation Artist) click on the album, from a list of all my "various artist" and DJ/remix/record label compilations.
    At this point it gets worse as having chosen the album (for the sake of this example "Journeys by DJ" by Coldcut) all the tracks then appear in track artist alphabetical order since it's either still being browsed by Album Artist as I would have had my records diplayed by that to begin with and it sorts secondarily by track Artist. Alternatively it could be sorted by (track) "Artist" since I'd browsing by compilation. Regardless since I would have narrowed it down to one album with the browser function so "album artist" will all be the same for all tracks, it makes no difference - it is going to be listed alphabetically by track artist.
    This means therefore, that unless the album is alphabetically sorted by artist to begin with it comes up in the wrong order!!! Therefore when you play your lovely expertly DJ mixed compiation you bought on CD all the crossfades between tracks don't happen as the album's in the wrong order!!!
    You can get around this by then clicking displaying "Track number" too. This seems silly though as normally in a normal view it already shows them at the front of the track listing. You therefore have to have them displayed twice, and then after going into compilations, choosing the album, you then have to sort by track number each time! If you do this, whenever you go back to the rest of your albums they then have all the track 1's first, then all the track 2's, and again you have to change what you sort by (Album Artist or Artist) to make them sensible again!
    As you can imagine this is a pain! It happens with all my Various Artist albums, and various other DJ artists such as Mr. Scruff, and soundtrack albums, or record label compilations too!
    The obvious possible answers to this problem are:
    a) when sorting by the column "Album Artist" make it search secondarily, after Album Artist, by album then track number, then finally "(track) Artist" after that (in case there are no track numbers!).
    b) make "artist" in the browser search by "Album Artist" not artist. This is what Windows Media Player does (even though it actually says "Artist" in the broswer), and goes by track "Artist" if there is nothing in the "Album Artist" tag field. it will then search by album and track number, but not Album artist followed by Artist. The browser could also be set to search in both Artist and Album Artist fields to save me having to go through all my 40+ compilations to find an album I know is by coldcut or Mr Scruff. If it did I could just turn "Browse by Compilation" off in preferences and get the same effect. Regardless to stop the wrong ordering it needs to not organise by Artist secondarily if I have it organised by album artist.
    Whether the "Artist" in the broswer does Artist/Album Artist/or both could be set in preferences? Also this could change it to file in folders on the harddrive by Album Artist too. I'd far rather have my Coldcut, Jazzanova, & Mr. Scruff, etc. albums in Coldcut, Jazzanova, & Mr. Scruff directories, so when I browse my harddrive it's obvious who they are by rather than apparently being by "Compilation"!
    Regardless iTunes should try to put things in the library view in order of Album and track number as much as possible when I have it organised by Album Artist. As mentioned I had been using WMP 10 & 11 beta until recently, but I changed as iTunes seems to work faster and smoother, and has the handy backup feature and seemless playback so I made the shift. The seamless playback made me instantly go to try DJ mix albums to hear them seamless, hence why I became frustrated very quickly!
    Also I intend to get a Mac as my next computer so I won't have the option of WMP!
    Another thing I noticed was the "Remember position" tag under the "get info" section when you have multiple selections. I wondered if this could change the order it plays them in but didn't seem to do anthing and can't find mention of it in the help or on the forum! What's that for?
    If I'm being stupid and there's an easy way to make it work let me know, but I've tried as many things as I can think of, but I think it's reasonable not to have to keep changing the way everything is displayed in the library view to find an album and play it in the right order. I want it to work like the pile of CDs on my shelves and appear as I got them in the record store! If not Microsoft might have finally made something that seems to work in a more user friendly way than Apple, and that can't be right!
    ...as you can see I also pointed out that it might be nice to be able to get iTunes to file my Mr. Scruff, Coldcut, Jazzanova, etc. compilation/DJ albums on my hard drive by the Artist who released them (or by "various artists"); the same place I'd find them in the record shop I bought them from, and the main name on the album cover of the CD!
    I DJ too (using Virtual DJ) and hence DO care about where I find these files on my hard drive, and would like to be able to find them based on the Album Artist! Also when I copy tunes over to my MP3 player, again I want them filed like the CDs I bought them on! I'm not just wingeing about this point for no reason. Obviously you don't care where they actually are stored on your HDD if it's only ever iTunes you play files with, and own an iPod where it automatically copies files for you, but it makes a big difference to me!

  • How to sort songs by Album artist and song number?

    System: +OS X 10.5 updated to 10.5.2 . iTunes 7.6+
    I have a CD "+Cafe Del Mar - Volume 01+". Added songs to Library. Every track has different Artist. So, I have 12 songs with individual Name and Artist. Then have put value "+Volume 01+" as Album in File Info and Album Artist as "+Cafe Del Mar+". This way songs are automatically grouped together whenever I sort my library by Album or Album Artist.
    Unfortunately in latter case (sorting by Album Artist) iTunes uses Artist field instead of Song Number within the Album to sort tracks. Here are links to screenshots I made to show what we are talking about here:
    Sorting by Album: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/7783/picture1qj6.jpg
    Sorting by Album Artist: http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/4199/picture2uo9.jpg
    How can I fix it and make iTunes to sort by Track Number within the same album even if I sort things by Album Artist?
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    From MacOSHints:
    How to use iTunes 7 new Album Artist field
    Mon, Sep 18 '06 at 7:30AM PDT • Submitted by stevebr
    iTunes 7 thinks of an album by a performer (call the performer XYZ), where one or more tracks are by "XYZ featuring ABC" or "XYZ and ABC," as separate albums. In the past, the only workaround was to set the album as a compilation to avoid this, but this is an incomplete solution, and it had the side effect of the album not being classified or filed properly.
    Enter the "Album Artist" tag in iTunes 7. Set this tag (via Get Info with all all tracks of the album selected) to the main artist's name, and the album will be unified.

  • The "Cover Flow" / "Album Artist" duplicate albums problem on the iPod

    Hi Guys,
    I've made some research about this issue and got to some interesting conclusions.
    DISCLAIMER:
    1. I searched the web and found people describing this problem since 2006 till 2009 and the solution always revolved around not using the "Artist" and the "Album Artist" tags like they should be used.
    2. I did a lot of testing, including re-writing the ID3 tags in different versions and formats to rule out any issues around the tags themselves.
    3. If the stuff I'm going to describe is already well known than sorry about that, I just couldn't find it anywhere.
    PROBLEM:
    An album that has a single Album Artist and different Artists appears several times in the iPod Cover Flow although it looks just fine in iTunes.
    Tagging the tracks as "Part of a Compilation" only partially solves the issue since the album will appear in the iPod Cover Flow as a Compilation showing up in the end and not together with the "Album Artist" like in iTunes and like it should.
    It seems to be a simple issue around the way the iPod uses the "Album Artist" tag but it also seems to be around forever and it's strange Apple hasn't looked into it.
    RESEARCH:
    Since I just bought a new iPod Classic, I was again looking into this issue and now I was getting annoyed, strangely the behaviour wasn't the same for all the albums that were suffering from the problem. I found that when the Artist was a combination of, for example:
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    Track 4 - ArtistX. Feat. Z
    Track 10 - ArtistX. Feat. XYZ
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    So, in the end, a combination like this in your "Artist" tag: "Album Artist"."Artist" would solve the problem in the iPod.
    I would love for Apple to solve this issue and I hope this helps.
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  • TS1468 When I change the album artist name it changes the order of songs, how do I stop this?

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