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.

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ITunes 11 [Songs view] - Sort on artist, then year

I just downloaded iTunes 11 and there seem to be some features missing compared to iTunes 10. One of the most important issues is that in the "Songs" view, I cannot seem to sort on (1) Artist and (2) Album year. It seems that iTunes is automatically sorting as (1) Artist, (2) Album name alphabetically. For example, for Norah Jones, first the album Little Broken Hearts (2012) is displayed, and after that the album Not Too Late (2007). Does anyone know if this can still be done in iTunes 11 or is the feature missing completely? Interestingly enough, in the "Albums" view, there is an option to sort by Artist, then Year (view --> view options).
Another issue, which I believe has been adressed in other topics as well, is the complete missing of albumart in the "Songs" view. Consequently, this was also the place in iTunes 10 where you could choose to sort on Arist/Year. I really hope that Apple puts this feature back in iTunes 11 as soon as possible.

Yep, I'm seeing the same thing. Just downloaded iTunes 11 and now I can't sort albums by year in the "Artists" view. I used to prefix all my album mp3 tag names with the year number to work around this, but removed it when Apple added the Artist/Year sort. Now it's gone. Yay!
A note: you can use the free mp3tag.de software to insert your year tag into your album titles using regular expressions. If there doesn't seem to be any obvious solution to sorting by Artist/Album/Year in the next couple days, then I'll post here with some tips if anyone is interested.

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

How can I make a smart playlist sort album by artist in order of size?

I'm trying to figure out a way to make a playlist of songs I generally like from a very large library to fit on my iPod. The songs aren't rated, and I don't want to have a totally random selection chosen by a smart playlist.
I thought a good way to pare down the list would be to sort album by artist, and then filter that list in order of the size that each artist takes up. It's more important to get rid of an artist that I don't like that also hogs a lot of space than one that maybe only has one track. I figure if I could scan down the list and exclude the worst offenders, it conceivably would make the task much simpler.

I'm trying to figure out a way to make a playlist of songs I generally like from a very large library to fit on my iPod. The songs aren't rated, and I don't want to have a totally random selection chosen by a smart playlist.
I usually make two playlists.
One playlist with favorites I do want on the iPod and another smart playlist to fill the rest of the iPod. Just limit the size to th esize of the iPod minus wthe size of my iPod selection playlist.

Within Music Library can anyone please explain why when I select the option to sort 'Album by Artist' a number of tracks are being treated as separate albums? How can I correct this? I have tried to 'drag and drop' but that doesn't work.

Within music Library can anyone please explain why after I select the option to sort 'Album by Artist' a number of tracks are being treated as separate albums? How can I fix this? I have tried to manually correct by 'drag and drop' individual tracks but that doesn't work. My music library includes a number of repeat album artwork images simply because not all tracks are being listed under the one album making my library more difficult to use than it should. Any advise would be appreciated.

See Grouping tracks into albums.
tt2

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).

Sorting album (under Artists) on iPhone 5 by year

Okay, so I have realised that when I go to any Artist in "Music" on my iPhone 5 (an Artist that has more that 2 albums), the albums are sorted by year, but from newest to oldest.
Is there any way to change this setting where all albums, under any given artist, are displayed from oldest to newest?
The metadata is correct (all albums have their respective years of release, and I even put the year at the beginning of the Album Title... I personally prefer to hear an Artist's discography starting from his/her earliest work to the latest).
As mentioned, I am using an iPhone 5 that is running iOS 8.3.

Klann wrote:
...all music that is on the iphone has been merely dragged and dropped from a generic windows folder.
Dragging music files directly from Windows and dropping onto the device? I have no idea how that is even possible, but right there you're deviating from the intended design -- iTunes is meant to be the intermediary.
Are you suggesting that i first update the music in the itunes library and then drag & drop to the iphone? In a way, not manually manage the music?
Yes, that IS what what I'm suggesting, and that is what manually managing means in the iTunes world. It is a media manager for your devices, and if you're bypassing it then its no wonder you're struggling. It sounds like you're coming from a mp3 player perspective, and like it or not, that's not how i-devices work.
I'm sorry to say, but if you try to force things another way it will be a rocky relationship to say the least.

Artist then year of albums

I reeeeeeeeeealy want to be able to have my Artists sorted alphebetically then the Albums of that artist to be listed by the year they were released. Instead it will only allow me to have the albums listed alphebetically too. Thats just dumb. I searched for 2 hours for a way to change that but theres nothing. Is there anyway for me to have the albums listed by the year they were released for each individual artist??

.... yes, and then? Here I'll give an example:
I'll use Green Day
Their album "Nimrod" was released in 1997
Their newer album "American Idiot" was released in 2004
If I sort by Artist, I want the songs in "Nimrod" to be listed first, because it was released first. However this is not the case; instead it sorts the albums alphebetically, so the "American Idiot" songs come first. I don't want that. Since "Nimrod" came first, I want that to be first.
But thats not it. I want them to be grouped with the same artist. Not only THAT, but I want all of my artists listed alphebetically. Another example
NOT THIS:
Fall Out Boy: Infinity On High (2007)
Fall Out Boy: Take This to your Grave (2003)
Green Day: American Idiot (2004)
Green Day: Nimrod (1997)
NOT THIS because the artists are listed alphebetically, but the albums are too. The albums need to be listed according to year like this:
LIKE THIS:
Fall Out Boy: Take This to your Grave (2003)
Fall Out Boy: Infinity On High (2007)
Green Day: Nimrod (1997)
Green Day: American Idiot (2004)
So how do I do THAT?

ITunes 9 sorting Album by Artist shows multi-cd albums out of order now

Hello,
This has worked before in every version of iTunes I have used. iTunes 9 now lists my multi-cd albums' tracks out of order. For instance, it lists them as track 1 of disc 1, then track 1 of disc 2, then track 2 of disc 2.
It used to list them correctly as Disc 1 of 2, track 1-x and then disc 2 of 2, track 1-x, in that order. Why did they break a perfectly good thing?
I use 'list view' and sort by 'Album by Artist', anything else my my huge library just slows it to a crawl.

I'm in the same boat. I always use Album by Artist.
My work around for now is to add the Album Artist field to the library list and sort on that field. It seems to work ok.
I'm able to edit my post ok here.
I see that my solution only works if I've put in the album artist. Other wise, they go to the obttom of the list as "Unknown". This shines a spotlight where I haven't put in Album Artist so I will now work on cleaning that up.
I hope they can fix this quickly.
Message was edited by: AardvarkPrime

Is there a way to sort in iTunes 1st by artist then year?

Right now when I sort by artist the albums or songs go into alphabetical order. When this happens I get new albums or songs mixed with old ones. I want my permanent sorting to be in “artist” order then inside each artist the sort to be by “year”. Then I would like this same set up to load to my iPod.
This seems simple but I can't fine how to do this. Can anyone tell me how to do this if it is possible?
HP Windows XP
HP Windows XP
HP Windows XP

Sorry, but it's not possible.
B-rock

How can I sort "Album by Artist / Year" in new iTunes 11?

Hi all! I just can't find such option in new iTunes!
Can I sort my music like in old iTunes by Artist/Year?

When I sort like that in th genre menu albums go by artist or by year only. I just wanna old method by artist/year like in itunes 10.

Sort Album by Artist/Year Not Working Correctly

For the Beatles, I have bought 3 albums from iTunes - Please Please Me, With the Beatles and Magical Mystery Tour. For some reason, using the above sorting Magical Mystery Tour appears at the top of the list, despite the fact that the year field is correctly entered for all 3. There is no info in the 'Sort Year' field either. I have quite a good understanding of how the iTunes library works, but this has me baffled (and annoyed)

dannycorker wrote:
It appears they are, although I refuse to believe this is the accepted behaviour - has no one else complained about this?
It could simply be a weakness is the way this was all designed. If you look at the information Gracenote uses, it's not unusual for all tracks on a 60's compilation album to be incorrectly listed as the same year, often the year the compilation was released. The same thing tends to happen with re-issued albums. That's down to whoever inputs the information into Gracenote for that album, often a bored record company employee.
First of all, you could try changing the year for each documentary to the year the album was produced and see if that fixes the problem. If it does, then you have to decide how to handle it.
Accept it as it is.
Change the year for the documentary to the same year as the album and simply kid yourself that it's the correct year. (I'm not being flippant, but if the documentary is all footage from album release year, then "technically", the doumentary is from that 60's year.)
Leave the year of the documentary track blank, but put the year (2010) into the track's "Comments" field instead.
Propose a workable solution to Apple via Apple Feedback. (I am being a bit flippant now. Sorry, but you'll be in for a long wait before anything might change.)
Get Gracenote to change their text fields, get the people who input the information into Gracenote to do so correctly and then get Apple to change iTunes to recognise those changes. (Now I am being very flippant. Good luck with this one!) Oh! And hope Apple never decide to change from Gracenote to someone else!
Number 2 or 3 are probably your best bet.

Is there a way to sort albums under artists in the Music app?

On my iPhone, the albums under each individual artist are sorted from newest to oldest. On the previous version of the iOS they were sorted oldest to newest. Is there a way to change it back to show oldest to newest? I like to listen to my albums in order.
When you go into your music app, select the artist, the Albums should be sorted from oldest release date to newest. Right now, when I go into Pink Floyd it shows:
Wish You Were Here (1975), then it shows
The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), and finally
Meddle (1971)
Thank you.

If you find the music sorting order as annoying as I think most people do, let apple know at:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Music app won't sort albums by artist

On my iPad 3rd Gen, after the 8.0 update, the "Group By Album Artist" check box in the Settings no longer works. It used to group the albums in the Music app by the associated Artist, but now it just alphabetizes them regardless of the artist.
I've tried:
1) Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings
2) Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Content and Settings
3) Manually deleting all music content, resetting iPad, reimporting music to iPad
4) Each of the above, but allowing a full day between powering down and then back up.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated, because I'd really rather not switch to a nonstandard app for this.

I am having the same issue as well with Linkin Park, M83, and Panic! At THe Disco. Itunes match on my Macbook shows all the albums and the artist pictures (when browsing through the artist tab). I just had my phone replaced a few days back and even after a fresh intsall of IOS 7.1.1 on this replacment model it still has the issue. I even set the device as a new device without iCloud back up and still iTunes match wont show the artist photos.

How can I sort albums by album artist while keeping compilations together?

Argh, I'm getting a bit exasperated. Basically I just want to be able to scroll through cover flow and see all my albums with one cover representing each album, with all the compilations near the end under "V" for various. Surely most people would want to scroll through their albums in this way??
So I've gone through and added all the album artist info, which has worked fine for the artist albums. But for all the "Various" ones, instead of doing the logical thing and grouping them together by album, iTunes orders these all by track artist. There doesn't seem to be any secondary sort function..
I'm always defending Mac and Apple products for their logical applications and ease of use, and now I feel let down.. If there's a way around this please let me know! Thanks,
Malinna

The trouble you're encountering is that iTunes sorts first by Album Artist, then by Artist. Thus, within each Album Artist, you'll get multiple Artist clumps.
You want to sort "Album by Artist". This will, first, strip out all your compilations and sort them to the end of your library, then sort using the hierarchy Album Artist (or Artist if there is none) > Album > Disc # > Track #. Click the Album column header until Album by Artist is displayed. (You can also choose Album by Year, which will sort albums chronologically within Album Artist.)
If you want to keep albums together, you'll need to sort on an Album column; other columns are bound to clump things by whatever you're sorting on.

Sorting albums by artist then year

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