Sorting /Grouping Issue: Single Artist Compilation Album Doesn't Group

iTunes 8 Sorting / Grouping Issue
EXAMPLE
• Album: Essential Willie Nelson
• There are 22 songs on this Disc
• 19 of them are labelled "Willie Nelson" in the artist field
• 3 of them are lebelled "Willie Nelson Feat. Waylon Jennings" in the artist field
PROBLEM
• Album will not stay grouped together when in the standard "Sort by Artist" in Grid View. A very legitimate expectation to be able to have Willie's name listed along with his pals in the artist field and have them grouped together in one album within Willie's albums section. 19 songs group within one album in the Willie Nelson section and the other 3 are placed separately either in the compilation section or as separate albums within the regular artists grid view.
I've read most if not all postings that suggest solutions but no matter what... they don't work. The only way that I know to work is to strip out all other names and leave only "Willie Nelson" in the Artist field. All other sorting and grouping options don't work for this issue... I've tied every combination. My opinion is that this is just a limitation at this time and there is no solution until future updates. I don't want a cheezy work-around either, that's very "unApple like". I assume it to be fixed in future updates.
Bueller... Bueller?
Anyone?

There's a few other "goodies" I have found also but haven't had time to check out.
If you have songs not in iTunes that you want to add to iTunes in a different format than the song is in...
(This is carried over from at least 7.4)
Set the Importing prefs to what you want the new file to be.
Hold the Option key and go to menu Advanced and select *Convert selection to* AAC (or whatever is in the Import prefs}.
This will add it to iTunes in the new format.
Previously, you had to Import the file, change the prefs, go to Advanced - *Convert selection to*, convert the file, then delete the original from iTunes.
This is new...
In iTunes 8, go to to File - > *Show duplicates*. (moved from View menu).
Now hold Option and go to to File and it now displays *Show exact duplicates*.
Don't know what it means by *exact duplicate* though.

Similar Messages

Why won't iTunes group songs from a compilation album together

Most of my CDs are compilation trance CDs. iTunes ignores the facts that they all come from the same album and groups them by composer instead, forcing me to create playlists for songs that should be grouped together. This occurs even for albums purchased as albums from the iTunes store. Am I doing something wrong, or is this just poor programming?

Generally setting a common Album title and Album Artist will fix things.
For compilation albums set Album Artist to Various Artists and Part of a compilation to Yes.
For deeper problems see Grouping tracks into albums.
tt2

ITunes does not sort all of my artist's albums together, how do I fix this?

I can only find certain albums under the album listing on my iPhone and iPod. I'd like to have everything listed under the artist's name. Any suggestions?

iOS: Device not recognized in iTunes for Mac OS X

Having downloaded update 10.5, the artists section of my iPod no longer recognises artists who feature on compilation albums. Instead it groups them under the album artist, ie various artists. Any suggestions?

Having downloaded iTunes update 10.5, my iPod no longer recognises in the artists section those artists who feature on various artists' compilation albums. Instead the iPod groups them under various artists, and, if you are looking for a particular artist,who only features on a compilation, you have to remember or search to see which various artist album they feature on - all very frustrating, especially as it worked OK before the update. So far I've not updated any more - so I've not taken 10.5.1 or 10.5.2 because 10.5 caused me so many problems, but I'm wondering if the solution could be in those updates
I've tried amending the iTunes library artist and album artist, and it is possible to get the iPod to recognise the artists, but the downside is that the library then removes the artist from the album, and you then have to play those tracks individually
Has anyone suffered the same problem and, if so, has a solution been found?

Having downloaded iTunes update 10.5, my iPod no longer recognises in the artists section those artists who feature on various artists' compilation albums. Instead the iPod groups them under various artists, and, if you are looking for a particular artist,who only features on a compilation, you have to remember or search to see which various artist album they feature on - all very frustrating, especially as it worked OK before the update. So far I've not updated any more - so I've not taken 10.5.1 or 10.5.2 because 10.5 caused me so many problems, but I'm wondering if the solution could be in those updates
I've tried amending the iTunes library artist and album artist, and it is possible to get the iPod to recognise the artists, but the downside is that the library then removes the artist from the album, and you then have to play those tracks individually
Has anyone suffered the same problem and, if so, has a solution been found?

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)

Adding compilation albums to ipod

I manually add music to my ipod. I can get itunes to recognize various artist/compilation albums; but when I transfer the music to my ipod, the ipod will not keep the tracks together.

Thank You,
if i download an album by bob dylan; keeping it in order by track listing; it appears on both itunes and my ipod in alphabetical and by track listing in one group. Now if i do the same for an album by metallica and warren zevon itunes & ipod will do the same. My problem is if I use a various artist/compilation album the tracks are all shown by artist, not as a group. For example a song from a compilation might feature songs by aerosmith & zztop. Aerosmith will show before bob dylan & zztop might show after warren zevon. I would like to make them all show in actual track listing, in one group , under the album name. Hope this makes sense to you.
thanks again
Prate

I need help manually managing music- I only want select artists and albums in bulk

Hi All,
I am currently trying to sync music with a new Ipod (120GB) and am having diffuculty.
What I have done: I have checked the 'Manually manage music' box and am able to select music I want to sync with the Ipod no the 'Music' Page of the Ipod.
What I am trying to do: I have over 400GB of music, so I only want to select certain artists and albums. In this case I am trying to select batches of music to take across to another PC in alphabetical order. In other words, I want to select all Artists and Albums starting with the letters A, B and C.
What I want to know how to avoid: I am currently being forced to click on every single artist and album starting with A, B and C individually which as you can imagine is taking hours!!! I want to be able to select all artists or albums starting at one point and ending at another point, without having to click individually on each and every line item.
Please help! This is going to take me forever!
KCM

Enable the sidebar with CTRL+S if not there
Create a playlist with CTRL+N
Go to the Songs view.
Click the heading of the Album column until it reads Album
Select the first track of the first album
Scroll down the list until you see the last track of the last album beginning with C
Hold down shift and click that last track
Drag the selection to the playlist name and let go
Click the heading of the Album column until it reads Album by Artist
Select the first track of the first album
Scroll down the list until you see the last track of the last album beginning with C
Hold down shift and click that last track
Drag the selection to the playlist name and let go, don't copy duplicates
Drag this playlist to the device, or better yet go to automatic syncing and sync the playlist. You can then edit for the next update when the device isn't connected. You can also create additional playlists for stuff you "must have" on the iPod, new stuff etc. Automatic syncing is easier, more powerful, and more selective than manual management.
tt2

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!

Is it possible to sort a 2CD compilation album where each CD has a different "album artist" together as one album in iTunes?

I have an album which I am trying to sort correctly in iTunes.
It has 2CDs of tracks by various artists, it is set up as a 'compilation' and I have 'album artist' set up.
As far as I can see all the settings are correct, however CD1 is a compilation of tracks remixed by "artist A" and CD2 is a compilation of tracks remixed by "artist B" therefore becasue each disc has a different album artist, the album is split into two seperate albums on album view.
Is there any way to get this to display as one album?
The album is released as "Artist A" so for now I have set that name as the 'album artist' for CD2 as well to get round it but would ideally like to have the second CD labelled correctly with the second artist's information.
I suppose I could also use "Arist A / Artist B" for both CDs but would prefer not to do this as well so that it would be grouped with other (solo) albums from these artists.
Cheers for any help!

Your options are to treat this as one collective album by the joint Album Artists, or as two separate albums by them as individuals, or I suppose you could duplicate the entire album and do both.
tt2

Some albums in my itunes by single artist are mistakenly seperated into compilations. how do i fix this?

some albums in my itunes are seperated into complilations although they are by single artists. I set up my itunes to seperate compilations so that I only see artists I have entire albums by when i browse my artists list.

If you check the get info information there will not be a value for Album Artist or it will vary. This needs to be the same for all Tacks
eg Various Artists, Artist & Friends etc whatever you like.
Also here is an excellent article by turingtest
http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp

Is there a way to sort songs into alphabetical order under artist as opposed to being grouped by album?

Hi all.
After a long overdue update to my ipod touch I've noticed that when I select an artist my songs are now grouped by album as opposed to alphabetically. Wondering if its possible to change this as I cant find any options or information on this myself.
Thanks.

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

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

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.

Thanks, if it's a feature of PL/SQL, that will be nice.
But both are bind variables, one is on bind variables peeking and the other is not. it's better for me to keep in mind it has a switch to control the peeking when using bind variables in PL/SQL, as I thought there is no way to avoid peeking when using bind variables...

Cover Flow sorting is wacky (not a compilations issue).

I just purchased a 120GB Classic with the hope that I'd be able to browse my collection of music by album artist. After all but giving up hope, it looks like Cover Flow is almost doing it (on purpose or not, I don't know).
Here's the issue: I tag my .mp3s so that on tracks with multiple artists, they're separated by a "/" -- so, for example, on my Aesop Rock album, "None Shall Pass", track 6 has an artist field of, "Aesop Rock/Breeze Brewin/Cage". I always include the artist in the artist field before I put any of the guest artists.
When I sync this to my iPod, the Cover Flow only shows this as one album (there are four tracks scattered throughout the album with different artists). If Cover Flow was sorting purely by artist, it would have multiple covers. So I'm thinking that I figured out a way to get what I want.
Except the iPod seems to randomly decide which albums it wants to treat this way -- some, such as the Kid Rock album "Cocky" (the one with "Picture" with Sheryl Crow"), are shown as two separate albums in Cover Flow. This doesn't make any sense to me.
All the "sort" fields are blank for all the files, so that can't be what's doing it. If I go under the Artist menu, it shows all the artists just as they're written in the tags.
So what's the deal here? How does Cover Flow really work?
[EDIT] Nevermind, I figured it out. Apparently when you sort by artist, it will give me all the songs with just the artist, and then give me the songs with that artist and any other artist (the slash comes after all the letters alphabetically). So if the artist has more than one album, it doesn't group them together by album.
I guess the "sort field" is the only way to fix it for now.
Message was edited by: Psyact

Using the sort field to try to force things together doesn't quite work, and certainly not when the album artist has more than one album with guests. I think you'll also find there are some enumeration issues in the album menu which may cause the wrong cover to be displayed as you progress through the library. See my recent post on Grouping Tracks Into Albums for a somewhat long, but hopefully comprehensive, exposition of the issues.
tt2

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 /Grouping Issue: Single Artist Compilation Album Doesn't Group

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