Problem sorting by Artist in grid view using Itunes 8

Question

I have a lot of albums that contain various artist and i set up the info in each with the correct artist name and "various artist" as the album artist. In itunes 8 when i use grid view and use show by artist it displays by album artist putting all the albums by "various artist" in one grid. It's correct in list and cover flow view. How can i set the grid view to display by the artist of the song and not the album. (ex. Soundtrack from the motion picture Tropic Thunder: Display "U Can't Touch This" under MC Hammer instead of Various Artist)

Answer 1

Actually, the grid view should be using the Album Artist tag. When the Album Artist tag was added in iTunes 7.0, the intent was to allow users to properly tag songs based on the artist and any guest artists. For instance, on Luther Vandross’ album +Give Me The Reason+ Track 6, “There’s Nothing Better Than Love” is a duet. Therefore, while the Artist tag for the rest of the tracks should be ‘Luther Vandross’, the correct tag content for Track 6 is ‘Luther Vandross duet with Greory Hines’. Without having ‘Luther Vandross’ in all the Album Artist tags for all 9 album tracks, iTunes would split the album as if there are two albums of the same name by different artists.
The other situation are producer-driven albums like Quincy Jones’ +The Dude+ or +Back On The Block+ . These are not compilations, as you described, because the songs were produced for the albums and Quincy Jones, although not a performer on any of the tracks, is the album artist. The exception is soundtracks that are compilations of songs typically produced for a given film. Like the situation you describe, each track has a different artist, so by having ‘Quincy Jones’ in the Album Artist tag for each track, iTunes maintains the integrity of the album and keeps the tracks properly grouped.
(Now if Apple would only acknowledge and fix the persistent bug that does not carry these grouping and sorting features over to the user’s music folder when they have enabled “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” in iTunes’ preferences.)
The situation you are specifically referencing is that of tagging compilations—albums that consist of tracks by various artists where there is no actual album artist—but you have used the Album Artist tag effectively forcing iTunes to see them as single artist albums. I also tag compilations—e.g., Various Artists (Hip Hop), Various Artists (Jazz), Various Artists (R&B), Various Artists (Soundtrack), etc.—, so I understand what you have done. Unfortunately, the fix for forcing the grid view to recognize individual artists in compilations may require you to clear out the Album Artist tag on all of your compilation album tracks forcing iTunes to revert to the Artist tag in place of the Album Artist tag.
What I would suggest is clearing the Album Artist tag of just one compilation and seeing what happens. If the album appears under “Unknown Artist”, or some other generic listing, in the grid view then iTunes only recognizes the Album Artist tag and I am at a loss as to what you could do. If it works as you hope, then you can go ahead an clear out the Album Artist field on the rest of your compilation albums.
The downside of clearing the Album Artist field is that iTunes will revert to its pre-version 7 habits and break up the albums; that is, a compilation with 12 tracks by 12 different artists will appear in the various views as 12 different albums albeit with the same name and cover art. To keep the tracks properly grouped in other views, you will need to mark all of the tracks from the compilation albums as “Part of a compilation” in the info dialog.