Sorting Compilation Albums etc

I want to sort my music by artist, and view each album together.
Where I have a compilation CD, or a CD with a guest artist, if I sort by Artist, I can't see all tracks from the album in the same place.
So I painstakingly entered the "Album Artist" for each album and sorted by this field, as well as marking any such albums as "compilation", and selecting "group compilations when browsing".
No good, my PJ Harvey/Thom Yorke track is listed at the bottom of my PJ Harvey albums and my compilation albums are sorted not by track number, but by artist.
There HAS to be a way around this, surely?

Have you realised that you can select a group of tracks and then use Get Info to edit them all togther, so entering an album artist and setting the compilation flag for a whole CD is not really such a chore.
If you have "Group complilations when browsing checked", the compilation albums should come out right under "Compilations".

Similar Messages

  • Sorting compilation albums

    I've downloaded several compilation CDs into the music library on my computer (I have not loaded the library to my ipod yet). They sort fine when I sort them by album, but when I sort them by genre, the compilation albums "break apart." The single artist albums all stay together no matter how I sort the library. I've made sure that all the compilation albums are designated as compilations, and I've even gone in and changed the album artist so that they're not all "various." The weird thing is that not all the compilation albums break apart, only some, and I can't see any difference between the ones that stick together and the ones that don't. Any ideas?

    Hey S. Steele,
    In the iTunes preferences, on the General tab, is the setting for "Group Compilations when browsing" checked?
    If not, does checking this work as you would like?
    Hope this helps,
    Generik
    PowerMac G4/Dell Precision WS 370, XP Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.7)  

  • A question about compilation albums, and how they are sorted...

    Hi all,
    Right I have loads of one off songs by many artist, or I just have the singles from albums, etc. To save having hundreds of single songs on their own I put them all together in a self-made compilation album with the decade as the album. So I have a 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s album. I also have a Disney album, with all different movies as the artist, I do the same with Musicals. It's just helps with tidying up my library. When I sort by Album I would like the artists to be listed alphabetically, which doesn't always happen. I don't know what to do to make it happen. Especially if I have a full musical soundtrack that has the tracks listed, and I have a few of them. Instead of each artist being separate the tracks are all muddled up and listed numerically. For example the first track of The Book of Mormon is followed by the first track of RENT, then the second tracks come, all the numbered tracks are bundled. I hope that makes sense.
    The other issue is when I transfer these songs to my iPhone. I want the album to appear as one album, but I want the artists to be separate. So I want one 'Songs from the Musicals' album but I want to look at artist and see every show listed separately. Again, I hope this makes.
    I've seen how to add an 'Album Artist' which I tried, but that just gathers it up all into one artist. So to be clear, I want one album with multiple artists on my iPhone.
    If you have any tips or help, it would be greatly appreciated as it's becoming increasingly frustrating trying out different combinations of options to see what might work.
    Thank you.

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  • Turned "Sort by Album Artist" off on iPod Touch 5th Gen so individual artists on compilation albums will show up separately under "Artists" with no succuss.  This worked perfectly on my Ipod Touch 4th Gen.  Any Advice?

    I have a 5th Gen iPod Touch.  It is running the latest iOS, and iTunes has the latest update.  I have many compilation albums that I imported from CD.  I want the individual artists and their associated song(s) to show up under "Artists."  I have turned off "Sort by Album Artist" in Settings.  This worked perfectly on my 4th Gen Touch.  Each artist from a compilation would show up under "Artists" with the correct song(s) showing, while still showing the whole compilation under "Albums."  Now, on my 5th Gen Touch, when I try to look at an artist from a compilation under "Artists,"  I get one of the following:  the correct artist and song, an incorrect artist and song, or an incorrect artist with the entire compilation album showing up.  Is this a bug in the new iOS 7, or am I doing something wrong?  Anyone else with this problem?  Any advice?

    I have the same problem and I have been really trying hard to find a solution.  No success. 
    My main problem is this:  For example:  Top Gun soundtrack - I look at Kenny Loggins under artists and I see his albums and songs, plus the 2 songs from top gun.  Then when I look at Miami Sound Machine (also on top gun cd) under artist, I see correct albums from Miami sound machine, but under the top gun soundtrack, it shows the 2 kenny loggins songs instead.  then if I look at another artist from top gun cd, it continues to show the kenny loggins songs.  It doesn't matter which songs i look at, but the first one i start with will always show up on the others.  Funny thing is, if I click on the song, the correct song plays, it just says it is the kenny loggins song!!!  ha ha.   Been dealing with this for over a year now.  Pretty aggravating.   Happens whether I have compilations checked or unchecked on settings.   I have over 50 compilation albums and some are checked, some aren't...they all behave this way. 
    On Mac, itunes (v 12) it all shows up correctly and works fine.  I have become an expert on ID tags and am very thorough with my tagging.  HAND TAGGING, not some program that does it for you...they are never correct.  I match all my tag info with the info in the iTunes store for each album so it is sure to match.  Has taken a long, long, long time. 
    Love iTunes match, but this one issue is a real pain.  Anyone with any ideas, I'd love to hear them!  Thanks!

  • Compilation Album sorting trick

    As you now know, you can group tracks in a compilation and assign an 'album artist' to display the main artist with the album cover. But the compilations sort to the bottom of the library by date. If you want to sort the album by main artist alphabetically amongst your other artists do this: Use 'album artist' to keep the tracks together as before, but change the individual artist of the
    First track to begin with your main artist: For example 'Angelo Baldalementi/David Bowie', then select all the tracks and change compilation to 'No'. The album now sorts all the tracks together under the first track by the first track artist when you sort column 'Album'.
    If you are as fussy as me, this may help.
    One wish for iTunes sorting: A check box for the Artist field that would allow you to sort by artist last name, and not just by total artist name.

    Starmac74 wrote:
    I recently bought a compilation album from itunes store. My problem is that each song shows up as a seperate album, both in cover flow and when I list by Album. This is very annoying and all the songs has the same Album name.
    What do I need to do to make iTunes understand that all songs belong to the same compilation album?
    hi marcus,
    see this great post by TT2

  • Album Art Sorting incorrectly in Compilations/Albums iphone Music App listing/tab

    Album Art Sorting incorrectly in Compilations/Albums iphone Music App listing/tab
    Sounds like a mouthful, but basically im saying that I have a bunch of compilations that when displayed in itunes on my pc,
    show the album art which is set for the first track. This is to be expected.
    But when i upload the compilations to my iPhone 5, and i open up the Music app and select the compilations tab...
    The same compilations show another album art that is actually associated with another track in the compilation.
    When i looked for a pattern, i found that it would basically take the album art from the track in the compilation based on the artists name in reverse alphabetical order.
    So if i had album art associated with every track in the compilation, normally it would show in the listing the album art of the first track... but now it was actually the album art of the artist name starting closest to the letter z.
    I've tested this many times. very annoying. but to explain again...
    If i have a compilation containing artists from Coldplay to Ziggy Marley... no matter where in the listing Ziggy Marley is listed first to last... it will display the Album art associated to Ziggy Marley in the List view for the Compilations or Albums tab in the Music app on an iPhone 5.
    Normally you would expect it to show the album art associated with the first track in the listing as it does in Itunes so as to keep uniformity between what you upload in iTunes and what you see in the Music app on the iPhone.
    THIS IS A BUG APPLE!!!... test it for yourselves... someone broke your db sorting in the new itunes. ITunes 11, with iPhone 5
    Please fix!
    Thank you kindly...

    another note... when i select the album from the list (on the iphone, in the music app) and it slides over to show all tracks in the compilation...
    it then shows the proper album art as it should.
    Also, when i check cover flow it then shows another incorrect cover?

  • How do I sort by Album and not Artist on my 7th Generation

    I can't veiw my music on my ipod nano by just album. It's separated everything by artist and doesn't just play the whole album. How do I fix that?

    Wow!! You've went to a lot of work! I'm sure I'll figure this out eventually! I have read down through your entire article and tried everything and I stilllll can't get it! It's funny you responded to this thread, I actually had already used some o f your scripts. I am doing all of this for my church, so that's why I have so many artisits, albums, etc. and I've tried delegating the work out to different people but it is very hard to make them all do it the same way...so here we are. I tried using the "sort album" feature in the get-tag-info and it didn't do anything, I tried making it a compilation and "compilation" came up under "artists" in the normal itunes screen but NOT in the music selection screen for my ipad, I tried converting the id3 tags back to none and then back up to v. 2.3, and I really don't want to go through all my "album artist" values and change them to the "album" because then I wouldn't be able to see the tracks by artist and besides that I can't find any tag renamer that is capable of changing album artist and contributing artist. See the 2 screen shots below, they should tell the story. Thanks for the help!!!

  • Compilation Albums are not ordered by track order - by alphabet/artist

    This is something I just noticed with iTunes that I would like to have fixed if possible. I've ripped a good handful of compilation albums onto my computer, and when I put them into iTunes, and order the songs by album, all of the differing artists on a certain album are in alphabetical order. Meaning, the track order is set not as track 1, track 2, track 3, etc. Instead, it's set up by artist, by alphabet. For example, Animosity will be first, and Zebrahead will be last...and these aren't in the correct order of the album! I don't know if there is a fix for this, but if there is, I would greatly appreciate the help. Thanks.

    *HowTo: Grouping Tracks Into Albums*
    Excuse the long post, but hopefully covering all the bases (that I can think of) will help you fix the other issues you are likely to run into as you try to organise your iTunes library.
    *Use an album friendly view*
    iTunes will let you sort music on many columns, some of which are unlikely to group albums together. The most useful order for editing the library is probably *Album by Artist*. If you're not already there, select the list view and click on the column heading for Artist until it reads Album by Artist.
    *One cover, too many tracks*
    The iPod (and iTunes to a lesser extent) conflates two or more albums with the same title, most obviously with *Greatest Hits*. On the iPod this can result in one album acting as a combination of two or more. Selecting any cover gives all the tracks of all albums with the same title. The workaround for this "Greatest Hits" bug is to give each album a unique title - I tend to go for *Album - Album Artist* as this reads clearly in the iTunes browser. Alternatively you could use the wording as it appears on the cover or append different numbers of spaces for each different album. Somewhat oddly, setting different values for Sort Album doesn't work.
    *Album not with others by same artist*
    iTunes relies on the Gracenote CDDB database when identifying CD's. This often marks collections or anthologies of an artist's work as a compilation. In iTunes, however, the compilation flag has the logical function of grouping together tracks with the same album name, but different artists on each track, e.g. "Now That's What I Call Metal 666!". These compilations are then all grouped together at the end of cover flow. Most of us however, would expect "Greatest Hits" albums to be listed with the other albums by the same album artist. For albums which are essentially by a single album artist or group it is best to set the appropriate value for the album artist and clear the compilation flag.
    *One album, too many covers*
    Sadly the iPod ignores the Album Artist field when grouping albums which causes problems when some tracks list guest artists. You can simply mark the entire album as a compilation which seems to be the way iTMS handles it, however that's not an ideal fix. Short of waiting for Apple to address this issue (and as far as I can tell it goes back to the 1st gen. of iPods) we need a workaround. What I do is to put any additional artist info. in square brackets after the song name. E.g. *Track \[Feat. Guest\]* and then set *Artist=Album Artist* for each track. For anthologies where the Album Artist is credited as part of another group, e.g. for Cream tracks on an Eric Clapton anthology, I use *Track \[As Group\]*. For a track where the main Album Artist doesn't receive a credit, e.g. the first track of the Slim Shady LP credited to Jeff Bass, I just set the track name to *Track \[Guest\]* while still setting the artist to the album artist. N.b. I use square brackets to indicate this is not part of the actual song title and also use this style for Mix/Live/Bonus info.
    *One album, still too many covers*
    iTunes may split albums into two or more sections if some tracks from the album have different values for Artist, Album Artist, Album, No. of Discs or Part of a Compilation. Tiny differences such as trailing spaces, accented characters or variants of symbols can sometimes be quite hard to spot. The iPod is also more sensitive to case variations and may split or reorder an album that looks okay in iTunes. Normally overtyping the desired value for each shared field will complete the grouping of the album into one entity. Occasionally, however, this method seems to fail. When this happens I've found that you can force every field to update properly by adding some extra text - e.g. a trailing X, which once applied seems to complete the joining of the tracks into one album. Once this has happened the extra data can be removed and the album should remain properly grouped.
    *Tried that, there are STILL too many covers!*
    The Sort Artist, Sort Album & Sort Album Artist fields can be used to override the normal sort order. For example iTunes automatically drops leading articles (a/an/the) so "The Beatles" are arranged under "B" instead of "T". Occasionally different tracks from the same album can have different values in these sort fields which can also break up the grouping. Making the sort columns visible in iTunes can help with spotting & correcting such problems.
    *One cover for multi-disc album*
    Multi-disc albums are often listed as *Album (CD1)* for CD 1, *Album (CD2)* for CD 2 etc. To display these properly using just one cover, each disc should have the correct *Disc X of Y* values set, and then the entire album should be given the single title Album. Being somewhat obsessive I also renumber the tracks sequentially, working backwards from the last track (so that no two tracks ever have the same number) until I reach disc 1. BTW You can still give the individual discs different artwork should it be relevant so that the correct artwork will be displayed as the album progresses.
    *One artist, many names*
    With some artists, particularly classical composers, you should be aware of alternative representations of their names. E.g. 2Pac vs. Tupac. The menus will work best if for each artist you standardise on just one form of their name. E.g. make a choice between Mozart, W.A. Mozart or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and then apply it consistently. For classical music I tend also to use the Composer as the Artist & Album Artist and either discard the performer details or place these into the Comments field.
    tt2

  • "Sort Artist" does not work on iPod / How to sort by album artist

    I have many albums in my music collection that contain songs by different artists. In iTunes, I have set all these songs to the same "Sort Artist" so that they all appear under the same artist's name (the album artist's name).
    However, when I sync my iPod, the "Sort Artist" settings don't carry over. For example, a compilation album with 10 songs by 10 different artists would show up under one single artist in iTunes (per my sort artist settings), but on the iPod the songs show up under 10 different artists. Is there any way to fix this problem? I basically want to sort my music by album artist, instead of just the artist.
    The strange part is when I browse my iPod on my computer, the compilation albums are properly sorted under one artist, but it's still wrong when I browse on the iPod itself.

    It could be that you have inadvertently imported these CDs into iTunes as part of a compilation. If so, the artists won't show in the artists menu on the iPod.
    To check, highlight the tracks on one of the offending artists CDs in iTunes, right click and select "get info". This brings up a multiple song info window, and from there you can check if you have 'yes' in the box marked "part of a compilation".
    If you have, select 'no' instead and click 'ok'. Do this with any CD that has this issue. This will alter the info in iTunes, and you should then connect your iPod and synchronize the changes.
    The problem arises because the information contained on the Gracenote CD Data Base (where iTunes gets all it's album/artist/track info from), is sometimes incorrect. It can show CDs as compilations when in fact they are not.
    You should also check that the songs have album name info in their ID tags.
    See: Some songs don't show under artist on my iPod.
    Once you add a second album name for that artist even for a single song, ALL the rest of the songs should now show up under that artist, even those without album names.
    Providing the spelling for the artists is exactly the same of course.

  • How do I remove all traces of  'album'? I do not want artwork, blank place holders, titles or artists sorted by album? I just want my music listed by title, artist or genre.

    How do I remove all traces of  'album'? I do not want artwork, blank place holders, titles or artists sorted by album? I just want my music listed by title, artist or genre.

    1, you can't at the moment, though with iOS 5 in the Autumn, from http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/features.html#photos :
    Even organize your photos in albums — right on your device
    2, by removing it from you synced from and re-syncing. Only photos taken with the iPad, copied to it via the camera connection kit, or saved from emails/websites etc can be deleted directly on the iPad (either via the trashcan icon in the top right corner if viewing the photo in full screen, or via the icon of the box with the arrow coming out of it in thumbnail view)
    3, the location of the photos that you synced to the iPad should be listed on the iPad's Photos tab when connected to your computer's iTunes.
    4, you can copy the photos from your iPad to your computer : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4083 . You should also be able to delete them from the iPad as part of the transfer process to your computer, and it's then your choice whether to add them to your sync photo list so as to copy them back to the iPad. Copying them to your computer would allow you to organise them into folders and therefore be able to sync them back into separate albums.
    5, I don't use Dropbox either. There are some third-party browser apps in the iTunes App Store that allow you to download pages so that you can view them when offline e.g. Atomic Web (the whole page is saved within Atomic Web, it doesn't place a photo into the Photos app)
    6, deleting content should help. If you remove an app from your iPad then you also remove the content that it's got on the iPad - so if you then decide to reinstall it back onto the iPad then you will need to manually add back any content that you want in it. None of the Apple built-in apps (including Photos) can be removed from the iPad

  • How can you sort an album that was released in 2007 but has 80s music on

    I have v8 of iTunes, almost completed all my tagging how I want it in iTunes for all my music
    I have a query though, I have a 80s, 90s smart playlist.
    I have recently got an album that was released in 2007, so the year in my library is 2007, however all the music on that album is from the 80s.
    So can you tag with 2 years, ie Album release date and song release (original date) or can you sort the album to show its songs from the 80s.
    Someone must have the same issue, especially from compilation albums
    please help
    cheers

    ahh, was hoping it may have had a "overall" year or album year release date.
    Man that means I gotta tag a lot of my music with the correct year now then, as the compilation albums I got all tagged form web with year released
    Whats the best way to get the year of the songs then please? is there an easy way? Ive got a lot of songs to do now
    cheers

  • How do you sort by album name?

    I have iTunes for Windows Vista, and I can sort music in my library by Name, Time, Artist, Genre, Rating, Play Count, and last played. However, there is no option to sort by album name. Shouldn't there be? Otherwise, how can I possibly find all the tracks of a compilation with various artists without going crazy?

    Anyone have a solution to this yet?
    In MUSIC, clicking on columns to add ALBUM name only adds ALBUM by ARTIST which does not give a way to see and sort for the entire LIBRARY.
    Seems to be a lost ffeature in the new 9.0 version.

  • How do I sort the album order in my music window in itunes 11.

    I am wondering how I can sort the album order in my main music section.  I have had to collect up tracks spread across several 'albums' into the 1 album they were.  The name is the same.  Now this album, 'The War of the Worlds', has 2 CDs.  One is now where it should be, the other is near the end of my albums.  How can i sort the order?
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    Chris

    See Grouping tracks into albums. A big split in the postition can be caused by different Album Artist or Sort Album Artist, or one disc might be marked as a compilation while the other isn't.
    tt2

  • Cover flow with compilation albums

    Hi,
    I have three compilation albums on my Ipod 4g that currently mess up the whole cover flow, each artist gets its own album art so I have like 20 albums with one song in it. I looked for a solution but found the same problem posted in 2007 already. Did Apple fix this in Itunes 8 or what can I do to get a nice compilation album. I already tried settings the artist name to Various (worked in Itunes, but not on my Ipod), I tried the sorting things but neither of those worked. Any known solutions so I'm able to use cover flow again?
    Thanks!

    Did not work for me, I can select this option if I right click a song, but as soon as I select multiple files the option of "part of compilation" is gone? I don't think I'm supposed to select this option for every song, one at a time? Also, should I do this when the songs are already on my Ipod or when they are still on the computer? Thanks for your help!
    EDIT: Nevermind, I didn't see the "options" part in your solution. Now it works!
    Message was edited by: Gobbomaster

  • Cover Flow of compilation albums not quite right on iPod Classic

    Okay, so after receiving my new iPod classic 80gb the other day, I decided to go through and fix up a lot of my albums in iTunes to display properly in Cover Flow. I have lots of Various Artists albums and have marked all tracks in each album as part of a compilation so that they show up correctly in iTunes 7.4.1.2. Now, when I'm scrolling through Cover Flow within iTunes, these albums appear correctly as 1 entry of "Album Name", and then "Various Artists" underneath that.
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    Has anyone else experienced this or know of a fix for either of these issues?
    Thanks,
    Rob

    You r not alone Rob! I just posted the same complain in a previous thread...
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1121028&tstart=0
    yeah..i just hope this whole Coverflow problem,along with the ridiculously slow menu response is fixed b4 my 14 days return period is up, if not...this iPOD is going back and am going back to my iPod Photo!

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