Problem sorting by artist name

itunes 9 sort by artist is not consistent (e.g Alberta Hunter appears before Harry Allen). Why? And is this fixable?

Because it sorts by the name in the artist column.
Alberta comes before Harry.
If you want *Harry Allen* filed under A and *Alberta Hunter* under H then put the names in the *Sort Artist* column as *Allen, Harry* and *Hunter, Alberta*.

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Problem Sorting on Artist Name with numbers in title

I just upgraded to iTunes 7.7 and when I sort by artist, all the artists with numbers in their name (3 doors down, 10,000 Maniacs) appear after the "Z's" at the very end of my library, I want them before the "A's" as the first block of songs in my library, can't firgure out how to do that, it was always that way in my previous iTune versions, but with the upgrade it changed by itself
Can anyone help, I am sure this should be easy as I never had to do anything before to get this sorting behavior

This was changed in version 7.3.
See this -> iTunes 7.3: Changes in music sort order

How do I sort by artist name on I tunes

how do I sort by artist name on I tunes

Sorry Chris - that doesn't work unless you want the albums all listed. What I found was so simple. In the view catagoryclick on "Show View Options" That brings up a whole table of things. At the top it says sort by and if you click on the arrow it brings up however you want it sorted - in my case by artist instead of by song.
Thanks anyway

Problem sorting by Artist in grid view using Itunes 8

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)

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.

Sort by artists name

maybe one of us can help me.
I using Itunes 7.6 and wanna, that in the name of artist:
first Figures
second Letters, starting "A"
how can do this, prefer step-by-step

Have a look at this article in the Apple Knowledge Base and let us know if it brings you any combination of joy and/or satisfaction.

Artist Name not sorting

I'm having trouble when I import new artists into Itunes. Suddenly, if it's a new artist
Itunes will sort it to the right genre list but won't list the artist. I tried "get info" for the
cd and sorting by artist name but still nothing comes up.
Any help?

Hi, welcome to Apple Discussions.
iTunes doesn't do multi-layered sorts, or rather it does sometimes, but as users we have no control over them. Take, for example, the *Album by Year* view and you'll see that is has sub-ordering on quite a few values. In pseudo-SQL it's something like this:
SELECT * FROM Tracks ORDER BY Sort Album Artist, Year (Of 1st Track of Album), Sort Album, Disc #(Empties Last), Track #(Empties Last)
Where there is no Sort Album Artist value it is infered from Album Artist, Sort Artist or Artist. Where there is no Sort Album it is infered from Album.
When you click to sort on the Year column any previous ordering is discarded. If the tracks are in the wrong order then all you can do is click again to change between an ascending or descening sort.
A quick look at my tracks sorted by Genre suggests as if the result is something like this:
SELECT * FROM Tracks ORDER BY Genre, Sort Artist, Sort Album, Disc #(Empties Last), Track #(Empties Last)
Again, it doesn't matter which columns you click before selecting Genre tere's nothing you can do to get the sort you're after. Personally I'd stick with Album by Artist (which is actually Album by Album Artist) and turn on the Genre in the Column Browser so that you can show all albums in a particular genre in a sensible order.
For general tips on grouping & ordering tracks in iTunes see http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp
tt2

Changing the artist name

I am probably missing something easy, but I would appreciate any help you can give. I have downloaded many songs from the internet that were in compilation albums and the artist name on I-tunes shows up as "various artists." I know the correct artist names, but I can't figure out how to change it, so that I can sort by artist name. Tt will let me change the title, but not the artist. help please!
Thanks, Bill

Read this article, it has some good tips on Artist vs. Album Artist.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1468
I put "Various Artists" in the *Album Artist* field, and the single artist in the Artist field.

How do I organize individual songs by artists name in my iphone5?

Hey, the pre-installed music player in my iphone5 doesn't have an option for me to organize individual songs by artists. It is organized by song names.
I'm sure I can do this in itune. How do i do this?
Also I have another question. When I play my music and tilt my phone horizontally, this screen saver that has tiles of albumns pops up. Sometimes when I close my walletcase the case touches this screen and it plays the albumn that it touches. When I tilt it vertically, it is gone. How do I disable this function?
I thank you for your support.

I don't believe it is possible to sort by Artist name, sorry.
As for your second issue, why not just turn off your screen? If that for some strange reason won't work, try locking portrait orientation in Control Center.

Since the update IOS 8.2, the artists are not any more sorted out by name in the application Music. Anybody has the same problem?

Since the update IOS 8.2, the artists are not any more sorted out by name in the application Music. Anybody has the same problem?

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/king-dance-bonus-track-version/id531510300
Bailando por el Mundo shows up on my iPhone as just Juan Magan It should say Juan Magan, El Cata & Pitbull
Como Yo shows up on my iPhone as just Juan Magan. It should say Juan Magan & Buxxi
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/meet-orphans-deluxe-edition/id402727180
Danza Kuduro shows up on my iPhone as just Don Omar. It should say Don Omar & Lucenzo
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/don-omar-presents-mto2-new/id518105534
No Sigue Modas a.k.A Ella No Sigue Modas shows up on my iPhone as just Don Omar. It should say Don Omar & Juan Magan.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/globalization/id933984003
Time of Our Lives shows up on my iPhone as just Pitbull. It should say Pitbull & Ne-Yo

ITunes Won't Sort Some Artists By Last Name

I have recently decided to sort my artists by last name on my Macbook, using "Sort Artist" and "Sort Album Artist" in the sorting columns of iTunes. This has worked fine for all artists, except two of them. For instance, my Brian Wilson collection will not move and remains sorted by B instead of W. The only way I can move it to W is if I change the "Album Artist" to a different name in the info section. So, if I changed it to, say, "Brian Wilson 2" or some variation, it moves. But when I change it back to Brian Wilson, it keeps reverting to sorting by first name. Of course, this is unpractical. I deleted and reimported my entire Wilson collection, and it still didn't make a difference.
Strangely, on my iMac, I do not have this problem and everything sorts perfectly. I am an iTunes Match subscriber and thought perhaps that was messing with things, but the problem still persists with it off. So if there's any suggestions to what's going on, that'd be great.
Thanks!

I have this problem too, and I get around it by adding a middle name - so Franz Schubert became Franz Peter Schubert
It's not ideal, but there is not fix that I can find.

About 'Sort Artist' name

Hi
i am trying to find out,
as some of my songs' "sort artist" is grey in color (instead of black),
and if the "sort artist" content word is grey in color, it will automatically sort songs with same ARTIST name to have the same "sort artist" name.
EG: if the ARTIST name is The Pussycat Dolls, and the "sort artist" name is Pussycat Dolls (grey in color instead of black), all songs ARTIST name with 'The Pussycat Dolls' will automatically change the "sort artist" name to Pussycat Dolls.
EG: if the ARTIST name is The Pussycat Dolls, and the "sort artist" name is Pussycat Dolls (black in color), all songs ARTIST name with 'The Pussycat Dolls' will not automatically change the "sort artist" name to Pussycat Dolls.
May I know how to set the "sort artist" name to become grey color so that it will automatically change the "sort artist" name for all ARTIST with the same name?
Anyone's soonest help will be appreciated.
Thank you
Grace Tang

Further to my question, when I plug in and select my iPad 2 I don't have the same problem. I have restored the settings on my iPod Touch and updated both iTunes and iPod Touch software and restarted my iPod touch. Nothing has made any difference.

Problems Renaming Artist Names

For some reason, when I imported my Counting Crows albums, some of them imported as The Counting Crows. It's odd because it doesn't show "The Counting Crows" in the artist name area, but when I do a search for "The Counting Crows" 70 songs come up, and when I search for "Counting Crows" only 212 of my total 282 songs come up. They are also separated when I have to sync the artist to my iPhone. I have tried everything I know to change them, doing them individually, selecting all and right clicking>get info>typing in the artist name, and i have tried to select all and apply the sorting field to all, but nothing has worked. Any suggestions?

For some reason, the 'album artist' name was different from the 'artist' name on some tracks. I changed it, but now for some reason I have 60 tracks that still come up as "The Counting Crows". This is from the list menu on iTunes. I have other problems too. Whenever I go to a grid or cover flow view, a lot of my album artwork is on the wrong album (or better stated, some of my tracks are under the wrong album artwork). In list view, the artist and album names are all correct though. I don't understand why it's all messed up since the info should have been applied correctly when I uploaded these albums. My big problem is that the artwork is incorrect not just for this artist, but multiple tracks and artist for my 12000 tracks.

Alphabetical sorting of Music Artists [Name of Artist] All Songs?

When I go to Music>Artists>[Name of Artist]>All Songs, it sorts the songs by album, is there a way to have this sorted alphabetically instead, without regard to album? Basically I want a way to view an alphabetical list of songs by a certain artist without making a million playlists. This would only apply to Music>Artists>[Artist]>All Songs, I want everything else to stay as is. This is for a current gen Ipod Classic. Also, would doing this (if it's even possible) mess up the sorting of artists who I only have one album for (I would want these to stay sorted by track number)?

Regarding the playlists, just click on the NAME column within each playlist to sort the list by name. Make sure the shuffle icon is not selected before you do this. Your playlists will be in Track Name order now. (You must do this for EACH playlist)
I believe when choosing an individual artist, then choosing all albums by that artist, the tracks will be sorted by album name then track number per album, so the ALBUMS will be played in alphabetical order, but the songs will play in the track order of each album. There is no way to chage this, as far as I know.
There may be a workaround for this by removing all the track numbers from all of your files. However, this will mess up your album order if you ever wish to listen to individual albums.
To each his own, I know, but hearing all songs in alphabetical order drives me insane.

Upgrade to 7.0.2 deletes artist name, Album sorting, importing files

Well, I use iTunes at work on a PC and it *****. I lost 90% of the artist name appearing in the Artist column. They show in Info for each song. How can I get them to show upm again. Also, on the PC version everytime I click Album it changes to Album by Artist, Album by Year, then to back to Album all of them in alphabetic descending order. I no longer can reverse the order. Finally, I have tried to import a few folders of music using the file method and itunes just links to the folder. None of this absurd behaviors happen on my macs nor do I ever want them to ever do it. Apple either send post a work around or upgrade and fix these annoying problems. These discussion threads are too bureacratic and time consuming to read.

These discussion threads are too bureacratic and time consuming to read.
Can't argue with you there, Stephen. I'm going to get the heck out of here ... ; - )
But before I do, I can address one of your issues.
Also, on the PC version everytime I click Album it changes to Album by Artist, Album by Year, then to back to Album all of them in alphabetic descending order. I no longer can reverse the order.
If you click on the words Album, Album by Artist, Album by Year, the column cycles through those headings but if you click on the actual arrow at the top, the heading remains the same and the arrow changes direction.

Can't override artist name when sorting by artist

iTunes has selected about half my library of Nine Inch Nails (hasn't been updated or shifted by me for years) and is displaying the artist name as "seasonsinthesky", which I've never heard of - but only when I'm browsing by artist (i.e. all data appears correct when browsing by Song).
All the "Get Info" data is correct, but it won't pick up "Nine Inch Nails" in search and doesn't display that half of the artist files under that artist name. I would love to fix this, but there appears to be nothing to actually manually correct, as the data and the filing system all seem correct!
This seems to have just happened with iTunes 11 and I've only just noticed it. It also doesn't appear to have happened with any other artists.
Any thoughts would be most appreciated!

Hi AurelianoNile,
Thanks for your response. I have checked the sort tab and all the data appears correct. (And identical to the other half of the NIN tracks that are still behaving correctly).
I'm still stuck

Problem sorting by artist name

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