cover flow on ipod does not match cover flow in itunes

This problem occurs because iTunes thinks the albums in question are compilations. To fix this, in iTunes, shift-select all of the songs on the particular album, then press Cmd+I to edit info. The lower left corner of the dialog box says "Compilation." Make sure this is set to "No." When you're finished doing this for each and every album in question, the Compilations directory of your iTunes library should no longer exist (~/Music/iTunes Music/Compilations) and your covers should be in the correct order next time you sync.

The compilation flag is the most obvious one. It's worth checking track by track on the affected albums. The other possibility is the setting of the *Sort Artist* field.

In general the iPod sorts the tracks that comprise the cover flow by Sort Artist/Artist/Sort Album/Album/Track No./Sort Name/Name. As these are enumerated in sequence a new cover image will be displayed each time the value of Sort Album/Album changes. Firmware 1.0.3 associates compilations with the album artist. Other albums & all albums on earlier firmware are connected to the artist of the first track. All tracks that have a given Album Title will be returned whenever that title occurs, most obvious with titles like *Greatest Hits*. Other factors that can break album groupings are mispellings and leading or traailing spaces.

tt2

sorry to bother you - i am new to this ipod thing - i have sort of the same issues with the sorting of the albums BUT i would like to understand it, when i imported all my beatles albums, half went to the iTunes folder and half to the compilations folder, WHY? -- to group the correct songs under the correct album i set the compilation check mark to yes but also it did sorts the albums the way you describe itunes, then compilations

Personally I believe the Compilations flag should only be used for albums where each successive track is by a different artist, e.g. Now That's What I Call Music #666 or whatever they've got up to now. Some of the music stores however also set this flag on anthologies, e.g. The Beatles 1967-1970 (The Blue Album). It gets more complicated when you get to something like The Best Of Clapton where tracks are credited to EC, Cream, Derek & The Dominos etc. Careful use of the sort artist & sort album fields should enable you to force iTunes to gather the correct tracks together and display them as one album.

tt2

you still way above my head on this one but thank you for the info
- is there a document/white paper that documents all these concepts and behaviors of itunes/ipod that you may know ?

I have just bought an ipod classic 80 gig & am busy putting all my cd's onto it. When uploading album info from my music folder-mainly compilations-instead of getting one cd with all the songs in it, I get 14 or 18 (depending on number of tracks) different songs. How do I put them all into the correct folder? And the album cover photo doesn't always transfer across.

iTunes doesn't always populate the *Album Artist* field when it supplies the info. for your CD's. And while recent versions of iTunes will recognise that they should group albums with matching Album & *Album Artist* fields, the iPod still tends to gather tracks together on the Artist field so that it will treat a compilation as many indivudal albums unless you specifically mark the album as a compilation. You can set the values of common fields by selecting the tracks from the album and then using *File... Get Info...*.

tt2

I'm having a similar problem to this thread. All my compilation albums are grouped correctly but ones where I have set the sort album artist still appear labeled as various artists within cover flow on my iPod.

This is not the case when I look at the album in cover flow in iTunes.

For instance a compilation album by 'Deep Dish' is with other album artists beginning with 'd' in iTunes cover flow, but on my iPod the compilation album is under 'various artists' in at the end of all the albums

Is there a way to rectify this so they match?

Looks like iTunes is set to ignore the compilations flag, but the iPod is grouping them together... Since i don't think you can change the behaviour on the iPod, go to *Edit... Preferences...* in iTunes and click *Group compilations when browsing*. For the cover flow views to match you might also want to click on the Album column until you get *Album by Artist*.

tt2

My iTunes is set to group compilations. The albums are grouped properly - it just seems that the iPod ignores sort data for tracks maybe? May be this is a bug?

I was hoping that the iPod cover flow would reflect the way I had set up the cover flow in iTunes but obviously not 😟

Message was edited by: Michael McIntyre

As a new owner of my first iPod (160GB Classic) I'm still getting to grips with it and have a couple of queries reagrding cover flow and compilations. I've read the threads above but they don't seem to fully answer what I'm after, although appear to indicate the problems I'm experiencing.

I've got lots of compilations and greatest hits albums in iTunes. For example, I've got the greatest hits album +All Hits+, by +All Saints+, all songs on this are by +All Saints+ except one which is by +Artful Dodger featuring Melanie Blatt+. All this info is correct in the song info in iTunes (including copying the same info into Sort Artist, Sort Album Artist and Sort Album) and when viewing Cover Flow in iTunes, the album is displayed once in the correct place alphabetically ( between +Achtung Baby+ and +All Killer No Filler+ ). When synced to my iPod however, the album cover appeared twice in Cover Flow ( once under +All Saints+, once under +Artful Dodger featuring Melanie Blatt+ ). To fix this, I selected the album as a compilation in iTunes ( highlighted all tracks, right clicked, Get Info, Compilation>Yes ). This solved the issue on my iPod of the Cover Flow displaying the album art twice, but now it's stuck it at the end of the alphabetical list with the album artist described as +Various Artists+ ! Also, through Music>Artists on my iPod, +Artful Dodger featuring Melanie Blatt+ isn't there. I can't even find it through the Search option. When finding and playing the specific track through Music>Albums or Cover Flow, the artist for the song is correctly displayed as +Artful Dodger featuring Melanie Blatt+ , so why won't the Search engine on my iPod find this? Seems like the only way to get round this is deselect the album as a compilation, but then I get duplicate artwork in Cover Flow. Irritating and very slow as this means I've got thousands of album art to scroll through. Has the correct artist gone 'missing' because I've used the Sort fields incorrectly in iTunes?

What I'd like on my iPod is:
- Cover Flow to show the album art once in it's correct place (A), with +All Saints+ as the album artist ( even though the album contains a track by another artist )
- For the Music>Artists list to still display all artists, even those on compilation albums.

I've used the above as one example. I've got loads of compilation albums, such as +Global Underground+ dance mix compilation albums which feature tracks by many different artists. I haven't tinkered with these in iTunes yet as I'd like to get to the bottom of this issue before spending time and effort organising all my compilation albums. Currently the cover art is displayed for every artist on these compilation albums in Cover Flow ( so lots of album art duplication, which I don't want ), and each artist appears in the Menu>Artists list ( which I do want ). However, if I sort things out to just display the album art once in Cover Flow, I want it to appear under G with +Global Underground+ as the album artist, not +Various Artists+ . Surely this can't be that tricky to sort out??!

Any ideas, tips, and solutions gratefully received!

Hi,

There's no real fix until Apple decide to make the iPod use the Album Artist field in the way that it is commonly understood that it should work. It will group albums in iTunes, but not, as yet, on the iPod. Workarounds include giving every track the same Artist info. and putting guest artists into the the name of the track, e.g. *Title (Feat. Guest)*. Putting the album artist in the sort artist field to group the album as one unit in cover flow, however this can create repeat artists in the artists listing. For compilations, if every artist has the same value, that value is displayed as the album artist, otherwise *Various Artists* is displayed regardless of the value in *Album Artist*. Compilations are always grouped after everything else. Note also that every track with the same album title, e.g. *Greatest Hits*, is considered to be one album regardless of the values of Artist & Album Artist. To avoid separate albums lumping together each needs a unique title, e.g. *Album, Album Artist*, or Album followed by different numbers of spaces for each artist.

tt2

Hello,

I'm new to this forum and I have little idea how it works really so sorry that this is off topic. All I want to know is, is there a way to make COVER FLOW show IN ITUNES FROM MY IPOD? It seems I can only get cover flow from the library on my computer's harddrive but maybe someone knows how to get it from the ipod's harddrive as well.

Help from anyone on this is appreciated.