Sorting albums a-z, not by year..

no idea when this started to happen, can't have been long ago, but iTunes (7.5 (19)) is now organizing my library albums by their year, and I really don't want this!! I want to list my albums a-z! I can't find where I can switch this off. I ctrl-click on the title bar, and 'Album' is checked. So I uncheck it and the 'Album by Year' (AbY) goes away. great. But then there's no album sort. So I ctrl-click the title bar again and select 'Album, and I get AbY again! grrrrrr.. how can I make it sort JUST BY ALBUM?!?!?!

GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
didn't even know i/it did that!!!
i feel so frikken stupid.
Thanks John
you know, there's no mention in any help topics about this
Message was edited by: Kit Greer

Similar Messages

Lost Sort Album Metadata

Hello Everyone,
I've been applying Sort Album metadata to songs within iTunes. Unfortunately, when I attempt to change the song quality to a lower version using the "Create MP3 Version" function, this Sort Album metadata is not written to the new version of the file. Instead, it is simply written within the iTunes Library database. As a result, when the newer smaller version of the files are transferred to another computer - the Sort Album metadata is lost. Is there a way to force the writing of this data contained in the iTunes Library to each file?
Thanks!
Patrick

Thanks for your suggestions. The 'Show Camera Info' is selected. I tried your other suggestion, exporting a master. I then imported it with a new name back into Aperture. The new copy has all it's metadata intact so the data is there in the file it is just not displayed.
Even worse now, the affected pictures no longer display correctly, they are just a dull mess, presumably as there is no longer any RAW decoder applied.
I have already repaired then rebuilt the library with no improvement, in fact it is now worse as the picture itself is no longer displayed correctly after the rebuild.
Unless anyone has some ideas I think I can only export all my masters, then re-import them or maybe restore from a vault (losing my recent adjustments).

ITunes sort 'Album by artist/year' problems

I've been having problems sorting _some_ albums. I'll give you a specific example:
I rip Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Concert in Central Park' which has 19 tracks. I want them to play in continuous mode, and in order.
I show track number in the columns, make sure all the tracks are of the same album and artist and I don't specify and sort options.
Now I click on the column header 'Album by Artist/Year' and I see that track 16 is first followed by 18, 19 then 1,2,3, etc.
I'm not sure why 16,18 and 19 are out of order, but they are and I don't know what other field it is using to apply this sort order since I've turned off the sort fields. I should say that I think the sort fields are turned off since I selected all tracks, hit command-I and made sure that the artist and album are the same, then went over to the sorting tab and selected each checkbox and made sure that the field was blank. Clicked on OK, then went into each track one at a time and verified that the general info and sort info were as I specified.
If I change the sort column to be just 'Album' then it sorts correctly - I think that the year is messed up, so I add the year column to the display and see that it is 1982. I click on the year and the sort is just fine. I set it back to 'Album by Artist/Year' and the same bizzare sort shows up. The same mis-sort shows with 'Album by Artist' so I do a check on the artist name (even looking for leading or trailing spaces - nothing).
I could probably delete the album and re-rip it, but I would rather find out why the sort is messed up so I can correct this problem if/when it shows up again. I'm aware that I have a few other albums with similar problems.
Thanks,
-Mark

Reply to my own question.
In the sidebar a similar question was asked (if I could learn how to post the right question in the first place I probably would have found it).
I reset the disc number then the tracks showed up in the correct sort order. I'm pretty sure that the tracks had disc number 1 of 1 before, now they just have _ of _ (blank of blank).

Sort album by artist or album by artist/year & compliations behavior

I am running iTunes 10.4.1.10 on Windows 7 (64-bit)
I was wondering about the behavior of sort album by artist or album by artist/year. Instead of sorting solely by artist or artist/year, it seems to take into account album artist. Is this correct? Previous versions of iTunes (iTunes 7 and iTunes 8) used only the album and artist field not album artist. Is there anyway to force it to sort solely by artist and ignore album artist?
I am wondering because I currently use the album artist field to hold information about featured artists, featured instrumentalists, conductors, alternative band names, etc and reserve the artist field to describe the more generalized album artist. For me, this organizational scheme works better because my iPod does not feature offer any access to album artist. My current solutions are to roll back to iTunes 7 or 8 or change the sort album artist field for every entry which has information in the album artist field; neither of which are long term solutions.
Finally, I would like to group compliations (musical soundtracks, movie soundtracks, etc) where the artist might differ by album but still use the sort by album by artist to organize the rest of my music using List View. Is this possible?
I really wish iTunes provided more options for sorting music.
Thanks!

Album Artist has been supported since iTunes 7 (7.1 I think) and normally takes preference over Artist when it comes to grouping tracks in iTunes. As you say the iPod Classic doesn't work quite the same way. You'll find my extensive thoughts on fixing things at http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp You might find that different vlaues of Group Compilations and Use Album Artists restore the view you were familiar with, otherwise it might be time to rethink the strategy.
If it is simply a mattter of swapping Album Artist with Artist then I can (and will) rustle up a script for that... It will end up on the list at http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/scripts.asp shortly. More complex rearrangements of properties are also possibe once you know what you want to achieve.
tt2

Sorting albums by year doesn't work properly in new iTunes 11.

Sorting albums by year doesn't work properly in new iTunes 11.
See the screenshots below.
There's a kind of albums. Double CD in one set. Queen "The Works" 1984, for example.
First CD is the original release and the second one is bonus CD for the original album's reissue in 2011.
iTunes 10 took year info from track 1 of CD1 for "sort album by year" function.
But new iTunes 11 takes the highest value of year in the album's track list.
Same things with additional bonus tracks for the album's reissues.
See the screenshot of Madonna "Like a Virgin" 1984 album.
So my collection is in a huge mess after last update to iTunes 11.
It's a big problem. And must be solved to the next update.

I noticed this too, and I think it gets even more complicated when you think about the difference between how you want Re-releases to be ordered: based upon the intial release year (like you have described above), and Compilations or Greatest Hits: where you want them to be sorted by when the albums were actually released. iTunes 11 seems to just grab the date of the most recently released song on an album. This worked fine for 2/3 of my Compilation albums, because they just happened to be released the same year as the latest song on each album.
Compilation example (released: 2003, latest song on album: 1969):
This is what I submitted to Apple as feedback:
This issue is actually aimed at iTunes 11, but 10.6.3 is the most recent version number I could select in the drop-down menu.
As with normal albums, iTunes 11 puts a release year next to "Various Artists" in Albums > Expanded View (and also in the Songs and Genre Tabs). However, iTunes seems to produce this number by looking for the last released song on the album. This has worked fine for 2/3 of my compilations, but the third one is a 60s compilation released in 2003. It displays "1969" next to "Various Artists" and there are no tags available in Get Info to change this. This also happens to greatest hits collections.
When selecting View > View Options > "Artist" then "Year" in Album view, and View > View Options > "Year" in Artist and Genre view, the above issue causes compilations, greatest hits collections, and re-releases (Although users may want re-releases to be listed in order of original release) to be sorted in the wrong order.
Considering iTunes 11 has added this feature (in previous iTunes versions, "Year" would only appear next to individual tracks), it is a shame an "Album Year" or "Sort Album Year" hasn't been added to the Get Info options.
As is, the only solution I can think of is to change all track years to the release year of the album.
I imagine this might be a bit of an edge case, and not something the majority of iTunes users would care about, but then again, I could imagine a fair number of musicphiles wanting control over this metadata.
Message was edited by: folo1988, info added.

Creative ZEN, Albums fused, does not sort albums correctly!

;Creative ZEN, Albums fused, does not sort albums correctly! http://nl.creative.com/products/prod...t=6999&listby=
Creative ZEN, Albums fused, does not sort albums correctly!
I attach my Creative Zen to my computer true USB,
I manually copy Albums to my creative zen.
If i view my (ZEN) folder in Windows XP, everything looks great and sorted!
I safely remove my ZEN player from my computer,.
The ZEN rebuilds his data.
I go and view albums, and what do i see each time! over and over again!
Albums fused together, albums scattered true each other, MOST albums got different names then in windows XP!
I get really frustrated from this! how can i make this right!
I want the ZEN to show the albums like in WINDOWS XP! how hard can this be!!!
Thanks for the help in advance!
Greetz!
Support4u

Hi,
The Creative ZEN organizes songs according to the ID3tag of the music file, not by folders. If you want to arrange the music files in the order you want, please check and make sure that the music files are tagged properly. You may need a third-party tag editor to do this.

"Sort Albums" not working in Iphoto 11

I see a lot of discussions about not being able to sort albums manually. I have not problem with that. When I control click on the name of the album, and hit "sort albums" noting happens. This used to work. I do not want to manually sort, since I have a ton of albums. HELP

I'm able to sort albums both way, inside folders and those out of folders. The feature exists. As a test launch iPhoto with the Option key held down and create a new, test library. Import some photos, create a number of albums and albums in a folder and test to see if the same problem persists. Does it? I'm running iPhoto 9.4.3 on 10.8.4.
OT

IPhoto album slideshow will not play in the manually sorted order.

iPhoto Album slideshow will not play in the manually sorted order.

Use a regular slideshow created by "File > New Slideshow". These will play manually sorted. The instant slideshows cannot be played in a manual sort order.

Sorting albums by artist then year

I have a bunch of albums imported into my itunes but I have problems sorting them the way I want it.
I want it to be sorted first by artist then by year so I have all the albums from 1 artist together in the order they was released
Now itunes sort by artist then album name
How is that changed?

Click on the Album column header. It will change to Album by Artist, then Album by Year.
This will sort all the songs by Artist and then Year.

Sorting Albums by Year

When sorting albums by year, albums with the oldest title go first. That's ridiculous because an album never could have been released before the latest title has been released. Sorting albums by the latest title track would make more sense...

I think the distinction is about which "year" is used to sort compilations/anthologies when different tracks have different dates. I suspect iTunes uses the year of the first track of the album rather than the latest value across all tracks which might make better sense. iTunes supports only the single year value rather than extended year & time (date) for the original recording & the release in question. Including these would enable iTunes to sort correctly when an artist releases more than one album in the same year.
tt2

In using Photos and iPhoto on iPad 3 - does not sort Albums in either program! How do I sort?

How do I sort Albums using Photos or iPhoto for iPad 3?
Thanks!
D.

Spare yourself the frustration of sorting photos with the Photo App.
Use a 3rd party apps like Photo Manager Pro. You'll be able to drag the photos to any position you want.
https://itunes.apple.com/sg/app/photo-manager-pro/id393858562?mt=8

How can I sort albums in a genre by release date in the itunes store

How can I sort albums in a genre by release date in the itunes store

Did you figure this out? Am having the same problem.
EDIT:
Found the group in store (in this case Juana Molina) It said music -> alternative
Changed to column view, and could not find the artist at all in any of the sub categories.
iTunes is really the biggest pain in the .... and has gotten worse over the years.

Sort Artist and Sort Album tags don't update

Having spent a lot of time over the years getting the metadata in my iTunes library just right, I've noticed a frustrating problem when it comes to iTunes Match.
I make use of 'Sort Artist' and 'Sort Album Artist' tags so that my library is sorted by artist surname (eg. Lennon, John).
This always worked correctly when I syncronised my music via iTunes, but since switching over to iTunes Match this has become problematic.
When I initially signed up for iTunes Match, my Library moved over correctly - honouring the sort order tags that I had added. However, When I add NEW music to the library and subsequently change the sort tag, the change does not propegate to iTunes Match (Though it does appear correct in iTunes on my Mac). So the result is now a mixed sort order on my iOS devices - some by first name and some by second.
Under iOS 5.0 and iTunes 10 I used to be able to get around this with a little forethought - I would turn iTunes Match OFF on the Mac before adding any new songs, then I would edit the tags and then switch Match back on. This would rescan the library and add the new tracks to the cloud complete with correct metadata.
This workaround no longer works under iOS 6 and iTunes 11.
I have tried switching iTunes match off on my iPhone and restarting it. This does not work either.
Does anyone else have this issue or know of a way to 'force' the metadata to be updated?
Any help would be appreciated.

I also am finding it impossible to convince my iPhone that the Album Sort field exists. This is especially odd considering when I view my Home Shared music from my iPhone, it works exactly correctly. I have verified that the tags are being uploaded to iTunes Match by viewing the songs from another computer that has iTunes Match. So, for some reason, iOS 6 will not sort by the Album Sort field when using iTunes Match music.
Does anyone have any sort of fix or workaround for this problem? I've submitted Feedback to Apple.

Sorting Albums

When sorting albums by a particular artist in a playlist, I would sort them by date and then by rating(stars). This was the only way I could have the albums listed in the order they were released, especially when there are more than one in any particular year. For example, 1964 (*), 1964 (**) etc. I have found in iTunes 11, that the sort by rating is hit and miss at best. I have also found that albums will not sort by date sometimes, I have had a few cases where an album released in 1970 will appear after albums released in 1971 or 1972 no matter what I do, I have even deleted an album and re-entered it, to no avail. Any thoughts?? Thanks

Hey, u could try renaming your artists by last name first before you import them.

When you show all albums, why can you only sort albums by best sellers, release date, etc., sometimes?

Sometimes I can sort albums by release date and other times I don't have the option. Its frustrating. I tried to look in preferences but couldn't change it.

I agree that Apple should improve the year field to be an actual date.
I am not 100% happy doing this, but when you have multiple albums from a single artist for the same release year, a temporary solution is to chage the album title by adding an outline type letter before album titles for that year, so that they appear in the correct order:
David Bowie
1977
a. Low
David Bowie
1977
b. "Heroes"
etc
This could help in the short term until Apple changes that field.

Sorting albums a-z, not by year..

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for