View individual artists in compilation albums?

Hello,
I have an issue that has been bugging me for a while. I can't seem to set up my music collection so that when opening a compilation album on my ipad it shows a list of songs on the compilation album along with the artist of each song.
In itunes on my computer it displays as expected - the song name appears with the artist below it in the compilations album. See below:
When synced to my ipad and clicking on the same compilation album it displays without the artist name. See below:
Note also that the album artist name below the album thumbnail is one of the track artists.
The settings for this album in itunes on my mac are:
Each song has their artist name and song name completed.
Album artist is left blank
Compilation is ticked.
This results in the correct display in itunes on the computer, but not on the ipad.
Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks for any help

Typically, after posting my question I stumbled across a solution that almost solves my problem, but not completely.
I completely closed the music app on the ipad then reopened it and all the artists did appear under their track names in compilations.
I have added various artists under the album artist too.
The only problem that remains is rather than displaying "Various Artists" under the thumbnail in picture 2 above, it shows a random artist name.
Does anyone else have this problem? Any suggestions?

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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!

Music app shows unknown artist for compilation albums

I just submitted a bug report to Apple, though I can't believe I am the only person with this issue.
Since iOS7 (I am currently on iOS7.0.4) I have noticed that the music app (along with many many other issues) will no longer display the artist for compilation albums that I have. In iTunes the artist on the compilation is clearly defined but in iOS7 the Music app simply states "unknown artist".
Surely I am not the only one with this issue?

I am very annoyed by this bug too, I have a lot of compilation albums and soundtracks with lots of differents artists, and my library is super organized in iTunes, with the “Album artist” field empty and the “Part of a compilation” checkbox enabled, and it shows the compilations as a “Various Artists” album.
But when I tried to download through iTunes Match in my iPhone 5C some few songs from those albums today, I found out that the music app has this bug that makes almost all of the compilation albums appear within this “UNKNOWN ARTIST” category under the artists tab.
It is very annoying and I hope Apple fixes this, cuz it is driving me crazy.

How do i print a list of albums i have on itunes? i don't want individual artists, just the album

the problem as far as i can see is that if i have an album of say ministry of sound with 48 + artists, itunes wants to print the album with each individual artist listed under. So instead of Ministry of sound volume 1, i get Ministry of sound volume 1 (Moby), Ministry of sound volume 1 (Air), etc etc. All i want is Ministry of sound volume , then Ministry of sound volume 2 etc. This also happens if for example i print Aarron Nevile Best of. if he is in collaboration with another artist i get Aarron Nevile and Linda Ronstadt. THERE MUST BE AN EASY WAY!!!!! it also cuts down on the number of trees i'm using.....

Me again. I'v ejust discovered that because itunes forces me to print each individual song, I am up for 500+ pages. This is a bloody joke. All i want is to print the artist and the album. Nothing else. No individual songs, no artist collabartions. Just the album and artist. HELP!!!!

IPod not listing artist from compilation album

I have had my experience w/ Apple products and iPods before and this has NEVER happened to me ever. I just got a new-ish iPod classic from someone else and when I synced all my music from my iTunes to my iPod, ONE of the artists is NOT listed under "artists". I then proceeded to find the artist using other methods, such as albums, and I found the album, however, underneath it it said "Various artists". I then checked "various artists" under artists and I didn't find that either. Everything is perfect on my iTunes though... the band and songs are listed in alphabetical order like they normally should and nothing is missing. But it's just when I go to my iPod to look for that particular band I don't even see the name!
Anyone know what's going on? I checked and looked for everything several times; I know I don't have bad eyesight lol.
Message was edited by: Host <changed title for clarity>

It could be that you have imported this CD into iTunes as part of a compilation. If so, the artist won't show in the artists menu on the iPod.
To check, highlight the tracks on the CD in iTunes, right click and select "get info". This brings up a song info window, and by selecting "options" 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.

How to show one album art image for a compilation album in cover flow view?

I just finished getting album art for my entire music collection. Now I go to the Cover Flow view or the Album view and individual songs in compilation albums each have their own album art instead of being grouped together under the same album art. For instance I have a "Buddha Bar" Album with various artists. Instead of having one image for the album, each artist has his or her own image (all the same Buddha Bar album art). So a compilation CD with various artists ends up having 15 images instead of one image in the Album art or Cover Flow view which makes it harder to look through my albums. Does anybody know if it is possible to change this?
Imac PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

iTunes doesn't have the ability to do what you want, i.e. to define multiple separated values in a field and then have the item show up when looking at a selection based on each of those values. "Bob Dylan", "The Band" and "Bob Dylan & The Band" are three distinct values that can't be linked together. Sort values can change where in a list things are displayed but shouldn't be used to attempt to merge different values as results are undefined and unpredictable.
tt2

Play/list order within "compilation" Album

I have a large number of "compilation" albums that I have created by converting selected songs from analog sources (LP's, Cassette, reel-to-reel). I can control the order of songs in these compiliation albums by adjusting the track numbers in the info section of iTunes.
HOWEVER, when I later separately import a song and want to add it to a compilation album already on iTunes the additional newly imported song (after filling in the song title, artist name, compilation album namem genre, and the track number I wish the new song to be) always gets put in at the beginning of the compilation album - despite the track number I give to it.
Anyone have any idea how I get get the songs into the order I want?
Any thoughts and advice would be much appreciated.

Thank you for the response. The problem was NOT directed related to the view in iTunes. It had to do with how iTunes perceived a particular song when it was imported separately from other songs but when the information is manually filled in to make it part of a compilation album. Getting the songs in the desired order should have been as easy as changing the track numbers in "info". That did not work and my original question was "why"?
I have stumbled upon an answer (not sure where my inspiration came from). If, in a compilation album, you: 1) check the box that says compilation, and 2)manually put in the track numbers AND 3) PUT THE ALBUM ARTIST AS "VARIOUS", it all works and the list on iTunes and the play order (even without using a playlist) is in the order I designate.
Why the word "Various" should be a magic word that allows this all fall into place is beyond me - but in the back of my mind I remember seeing (don't know where) that in a compilation album the "album artist" field should be filled in with "Various". Now that I know the answer a search on the word "Various" or "compilation" will probably turn up the answer somewhere on the Apple support site of in a forum.

Best way to import multi-disc compilation album?

I have a rather extensive MP3 library (all my CD's are ripped to MP3) that I've maintained since about 1999. I just got my wife an iPod Nano last Christmas, and as such I never really used iTunes before a year ago. The only music in iTunes at the moment is MP3's and purchased music that is on her iPod.
I have all my music on my 1 TB D: drive under D:\Audio Files\Albums or \iTunes Music (purchased stuff) or \Various (music files not part of an album).
So I was trying to import a 2-disc various artist Christmas compilation album to iTunes 9. In Preferences, I have the box checked to keep music organized, and imported CD's are set to save under D:\Audio Files\Albums.
The issue is whether or not to use the Compilation option. If I set the album as a Compilation, iTunes automatically creates a Compilations subfolder in Albums, which I don't want. I want to have a folder with this compilation, and several others with a similar name. These are yearly releases of top songs of certain genre.
Apparently, to get iTunes to save these CD's where I want (I want the songs from both discs to go into the same folder), I have to uncheck Compilation, and also I have to change the Album Artist to <Compilations' series name> just to get it to put it in that folder.
Do I have any other options? It seemed like a major pain to get these 2 discs imported so that all the songs would show up under single album cover.
I suppose this may really be fallout from my manual folder organization in Windows Explorer. I guess if it were ALL in iTunes, I wouldn't need all those subfolders, as it would be organized by artist, album, etc. via each file's info. But then that wouldn't work very well with my iRiver MP3 player.
Message was edited by: PatrickGSR94

yeah but I use the same folder organization in both Windows and on the iRiver, on which I have the Rockbox OS.
One of these days I hope both of us will get iPhones, at which point I'll probably ditch the iRiver and just use the phone for all my media duties.
Anyway, back to the compilation album issue. All the other CD's I've imported (single disc and/or single artist) have imported beautifully, and perfectly integrated with the files and folders I already had (a CD of the same artist I already had other MP3 albums for created a new folder for the CD under the same artist folder - perfect).
It's just the one album with both multiple discs and multiple artists that seem to be giving me problems. It either wants to put it in D:\Audio Files\Albums\Compilations, which I don't want, or in \Albums\Various Artists, which I don't want, either.

Compilation album problem at iOS 7!!! [HELP]

(Sorry for inappropriate English, i'm not Native Speaker.)
So i used to edit some albums within various artists as compilation albums when i used iOS 6 numbering versions.
It was all good, the albums was all sorted and i could find which artists are participated, if i press A artist, the Music App showed me A's several songs in
compilation album A artist participated.
after i used iOS 7, when i press A artist, the Music App does not show me only A's songs, but all of songs in compilation album A artist participated,
It making me seriously annoying, because, after iOS 7, The Music App doesn't show me what artists has made the song in the pannel of what songs in some Compilation album.
As you see, the image shows you guys Songs pannel though, when i see inside of some Compilation album, i
can see what artists has made the songs But IT WAS iOS 6
I couldn't find any fitting image so i captured my iPhone, anyway, as you see, the image shows you guys inside of some Compilation album,
and none of those songs shows me what artists has made!! How Could i find it when i want to what artists has made what songs?
The Problem is not just it, sometimes, no, often when i Press A artist who participated, the Music App shows me only A's song at Compliation album,
and then i press the Compliation album, still only A's song remain, but all of other artist's songs are gone!! and these songs can be search -.-
all those problems were not exist when i used iOS 6, after i use iOS 7, technically when i changed the phone to 5s from 4, all those Copilation album problems came up, I need some help desperately!
(Sorry for inappropriate English agian.)

Thanks for all your help ...
The playlist option is viable, but it doesn't show up on the "browse section" and it wouldn't appear as an album ...
And copying songs again to another location is simply wasting space.
Is there any other way ?
What about creating a symbolic link ? Would that help ?
MBP, 20.GHz, 2GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Is there any way to have compilation album individual artists shown under the artist tab?

I have a couple of compilation albums with artists that i already had on my iphone 5, I find it really annoying not being able to see the songs from the compilation albums when i select a certain artist, is there anyway of changing this so the compilation artists can be seen under the artist tab?

Nobody?

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

Artist name for compilation albums (No album for artist alone present)

When I have a compilation album, fe Route 66 (including a song from Steppenwolf) and a Steppenwolf album (Steppenwolf : 16 greatest hits), i can see Steppenwolf in the 'artist view', and see the 2 albums.
When an artist only appears on a compilation album, but no individual album, the artist is not detectable in the artist view (except when using the search function).
Can this be solved ?
Thx in advance
Jan

THANK YOU!
I see the Album Artist tag from Windows file properties but not from within my tag editing programs. Granted, I've had these since probably 2003-2004ish, perhaps the Album Artist tag wasn't around at that time? I'm really unsure, I just know that they do not exist with any of my editors.
I highlighted all songs in the album folder, right clicked, hit properties, and set Album Artist for all songs. They now all show up under album art entry.
This problem has been killing me for months and I have a couple albums I've been missing on my iPod because of it. All is good now, thanks again!

How to show artists in a compilation album but not split the album?

Sorry, I wasn't sure which section to submit this question to.
I have recently downloaded my iTunes music to my iPhone 4s. However, 'compilation' albums ( in my case albums by artists who have a lot of guests on their songs) did not show up under artists. So I unticked the compilation box in the album info. But now when I go to albums, each song with a different guest is in its own album.
My iPod nano shows the different artisits for compilation albums and the album as a whole. How can I make my iPhone do the same?
Thank you for any ideas!

alice286 wrote:
Thank you so much! Got it sorted!
Another quick qu - what do I do if I have a compilation with each song having a different artist? Can I show the individual artist whilst keeping them all in the same album?
Only in the Album view. Artist view will display them separately unless you have Group by Album Artist turned On. I tend to set the Album Artist (not the individual track artist) as "Various" or XYZ Soundtrack or something similar making grouping them a bit easier.

De-cluttering tip: Is there a way to prevent a track from showing up under "Artist" while still being able to view the artist info when I play the song by Album?

I asked this question here:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15312099#15312099
It was suggested I re-post in this forum, seeing as the problem may be specific to the Touch.
So, I have lots of "compilation" albums that include songs by various artists (for example, Pitchfork's top 500 singles of the decade). I usually select my music by "Artist," and now my ipod is super cluttered, because now I have hundreds and hundreds of artists listed, many of which I only have one or two songs by from this compilation.
One solution: simply delete the artist information for these large compilations, and then the songs from the compilations will no longer show up under "Artists." Problem is, I would like to know who the artists are when I play the compilation (I simply don't want to have the artists listed under "Artists")
Another solution: I could manually delete the artist info, but paste that info on to the song name. For example, a track that once looked like:
Artist: Nirvana
Title: Smells Like Teen Spirit
Album: Best of the '90s
After my editing, would look like:
Artist: [blank]
Title: Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
Album: Best of the '90s
This would solve my problem...but it would literally take hours to do for each and every individual song. Not practical.
Does any one have any other suggestions? It seems like there would be a way to just check a box for what info you want to be listed (ie, I could un-check "Artist," and then the song would no longer be listed by Artist, even though the Artist information would still be retained for reference). Does this option exist?
In the prior thread, someone suggested I mark it as a "compilation" in iTunes. But that did not prevent the individual artists from being listed under "Artists." Someone suggested that I may need to turn "Compilation" to "On" on my iPod. But that does not seem to be an option on the Touch.
Suggestions?
Thanks!!

So, I have lots of "compilation" albums that include songs by various artists (for example, Pitchfork's top 500 singles of the decade). I usually select my music by "Artist," and now my ipod is super cluttered, because now I have hundreds and hundreds of artists listed, many of which I only have one or two songs by from this compilation.
Why not set the iPod to show Compilations?
In Settings select Main menu (or Music menu) and check Compilations. (You can do so for both if you desire.)
Now all of the Artists that only appear in compilation albums won't appear in Artists.
To get to the Artists that only appear in compilation albums open Compilations in your Main Menu or Music Menu (or either).

How do I get my 'Compilations' storage folder to match the view by artist list in the library?

When I view by Artist in the iTunes library, I have a 'compilations' section that contains soundtracks, etc. The weird thing is that when buying and or importing cds of this nature, it categorizes on my hard drive differently. I have 30 albums in my folder (in iTunes media) - which is correct, they are all soundtracks or various artist albums. But in the actually iTunes library it only shows 3. And thi sis something that changed at some point (im pretty are) when updating iTunes itself. It used to have them all. Can't figure out how to fix it. I know there is that 'part of a compilation' tag but for the life of me I cannot get it to 'accept' that something iss and then move it to the corresponding folder.

I was looking for this and found the answer by playing with smart lists...
1. File > New > Smart Playlist...
2. (Under watch the following rule) change the Artist to 'Compilation'. The condition will be set to 'is true' by default.
Thats it! the new smart playlist should appear under your other playlists with a cog icon (like other smart playlists) - this will display all those albums that don't appear under compilations when browsing by artist.
Hope this helps!

View individual artists in compilation albums?

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