Q: iPod/Music App in iOS5 not sorting artist list alphabetically

Hi, i have the exact same problem. I mean, it's not a big deal...but it shouldn't be like this! If someone figures it out, i'd love to hear how many calories i'll have to burn to get the artists in proper alphabetical order. Artists in alphabetical order?...C'MON!!!

I, as well, am having this problem, and turning sort by album artist on and off, and then restarting does nothing. I also updated to 5.0.1 and that didn't fix it. I'm using a MacBook Pro running 10.7.2. This is annoying and I would expect more from Apple. Alphabetizing seems simple enough, right?

Well, just an update. Apple has recommended that I update to iTunes 10.5.1, no joy. Keep in mind that I erase all content and settings each time that I do these steps. I will call apple back tomorrow and check in later here.

Just updated to 10.5.1 and my artists are still not in alphabetical order.  Anyone has any further updates??  So annoying!!!

+1

Everything worked perfectly well with the iTunes 10.5.1 beta and the Mac OS X 10.7.2 beta. Not sure what happened after that.

Turning iTunes Match off then on didn't fix the issue.

same here, got the issue about the time i got ios5. took my iphone to the apple store, and they didn't know a clue about the issue and never saw it, was advised to wipe and restore. this worked for a little bit.

few weeks later after syncing more music the issue resurfaced again. this is quite frustrating. theres a workaround by using the search function, but id really like to properly browse my music! come on apple! please fix this problem i need my music man.

i also have a huge issue with phone calls. ever since the ios5 update, phone calls are incredibly unreliable. my carier is ussualy pretty reliant and i almost always have full reception, but when i'm on the phone people have mentioned it sounds like im on a plane and it cuts out dialog a lot. i always check if my reception is fine, theres no issue with that.

please come up with an update to fix this!!

As an update I recently deleted about 1.5 gigs of music off my iPhone and then restarted and this fixed the problem. Give it a try!

Copying everything again?! I demand Apple fixes it !!

Same problem here. I hope Apple fixes it soon...

Same problem for me also. Wiping the music and re-syncing fixes it only temporarily, as soon as I start adding new music onto the phone the problem comes back. Not impressed at all.

I paid £499 for a phone that has buggy basic features? it can't sort alphabetically? Come on Apple, get your act together...

I have a similar problem, but in my case about half of my Artists aren't listed when seaching. The music is in there, you can find the song or album but the artists just wont list. No updates have helped, and I recently upgraded to 4S from my 3 and the problem continued despite the new phone. ARGH!

Well, I have just discovered that the problem has somehow fixed itself. Not sure what happened to cure it. At this point I am no longer useful in this discussion. Sorry all.

Same problem. iPhone 4S using iTunes Match in UK.

Annoying, stupid problem. Lots of artists in completely the wrong place. Some artists appear five times in  the list in seemingly random places.

My contribution:

I think that, in my case, all the incorrect entries are ones where I recently manually changed the "Get info" about the artists' names in iTunes on my PC (eg changing "Antonio Vivaldi" to "Vivaldi" or "Lou Reed and John Cale" to Lou Reed).

I wonder if there is some delay in iTunes relaying the correct change information back through iTunes Match to devices - but it eventually catches up - hence animal397's unexpected cure? 

Got my 4S in November (I'm using iOS 5.0)...synced over all of the same music that was on the 3GS. It wasn't until last night that I attempted to put a few new albums on the 4S. One was "The Black Keys"...this correctly end up sorted under 'B' in the artist list. The other was a band called "Radical Face", this shows up under the letter 'N' in the artist list.

This has subsequently made it so that the last 'O' band is showing up as the first 'P' band and so forth (it's all shifted off by one row).

I then transferred an album by a band called "Shonnen Knife" which ended up under 'S'.

I then updated the album art for "Florence + The Machine" and after syncing it started showing up under 'B' instead of 'F' where it always had been before.

It's inconcistently doing the wrong thing and I haven't been able to idenfity any pattern. There is nothing wrong with the meta data on the files themselves, as far as I can tell, because the same files when synced to my Nano (v1.1 firmware) are sorted properly.

This is annoying! It's somewhat comforting knowing that this isn't happening only to me but I think calling this widespread is an exaggeration as there hasn't been large public outcry like what happened with the battery problem (which I have never experienced in the slightest).

I keep trying to find ways to blame it on something other than iOS/Music app but based on my (admittedly rudimentary) experiments with some files and tags I can't come to any other conclusion than a bug with the firmware.