iPhone and compilation albums?

I am having the exact same problem. Anyone come up with an explanation?

This may or may not be useful information. Please help me verify.

I am using the developer version of iPhone 3.1, and I just noticed that selecting some of the artists in the Artists view led to a screen that says "No Music. You can download music from iTunes". I was pretty sure I hadn't seen that before, so I did some investigating. Turns out it was any artist that was part of a compilation album. I could access the music for those artists by navigating to the compilation albums.

Can someone verify that iPhone 3.0 does not exhibit this same behavior? If it doesn't, then it appears that Apple is working on hiding compilation artists from the Artists view as part of version 3.1 (though they obviously haven't quite finished their implementation yet).

Well, 3.1 Beta 2 just came out, and it has "fixed" the problem where clicking on an artist that is part of a compilation does not show any music. The compilation artists still appear in the Artists view, and now you can get to their music.

So unfortunately it looks like my guess that Apple was implementing the "hide compilation artists in Artist view" option was incorrect. Sorry if I got anyone's hopes up.

Discosteve
I placed all compilations with a number as a sort, and I would put them all into the numbers category like both you and I described.

But it doesn't work. Let's use my library as an example. I have several albums from the Cure, and The Crow soundtrack which has one Cure track on it. That one Cure track will have the special sort meta tag that identifies it as a compilation.

Go into my artist view and it's all cleaned up, and all my compilations are listed in the numbers tab under the very first artist in the list. But if I go into my Cure directory to listen to a full album, it would jump right into the compilation folder. I literally had NO access to any Cure album from the artist directory. I would have to go into Cover view and slide through to get to them. And sliding through covers, while looks cool, takes a while to scrub through.

Maybe I am late to discover this - but I have just worked out how to fix this problem - it's been bugging me ever since I got a Touch a year or two ago.

Select every track that is part of a compilation (easy way to do this is to create a Smart Playlist and select Compilation= True)

Then right click on the tracks and select Get Info. Select the Sorting tab. In the Sort Artist field, enter something i.e. 'Compilation Artists'.

Select ok.

Next time you Sync - all the compilation artists will have disappeared from your Artist View list and you'll only see the Album Artists listed there!

Simples!

Oh it looks like I hadn't read right to the end of this string.... sorry for the duplicate idea!

Just trying to work around the missing tracks issue... if you leave blank the the Sort Artist field for any artists that you also have albums for - then in the Artist list everything seems ok!

Hi Tim
Yes it does clear up your artist view, however, like I mentioned above if you go into an artist that has a track in the a compilation, then when you go to that artist, it will go right into the compilation category. And the only way to can get to the actual artist albums is via the cover flow (which is cumbersome), or by album name (which doesn't work for me, because I usually don't remember the name of the album).

Hi, I found that if you clear the title from the 'Sort Artist' field for all the compilation tracks by an artist you also have albums for, it works fine!!

For example, if you have tracks by Madonna on the Like a Prayer album, and you have Hung Up on a compilation cd - make sure that the 'Sort Artist' field for all Madonna tracks, including Hung up, is blank. Make sure that all other compilation tracks have 'Compilation Artist' in their 'Sort Artist' fields.

I can now only see my Album Artists in Artist view on the iPod - and when I click on an artist I can see and select their albums and also their additional tracks on any compilation albums!!

Just a note - this works fine for my iPhone. However on my Ipod Touch it actually inserts all the 'Compilation Artist' tracks into the Artist list in one place. Therefore rather than enter 'Compilaton Artist' in the 'Sort Artist' field, I have entered 'zzz' instead. This keeps all the compilation tracks right at the end of the Artist list where you wont even notice them.

I hope that helps; if you have any probs let me know!

Tim

I'll try this in the next few days, and let you know what I find.
Are you using os 3.0.1? or 3.0 on your iphone? It might not make a difference, but it would probably help to make sure we are both using the same software. I'm using an iphone 3G S with the latest 3.0.1 update. And itunes is up to date as well.

My iPhone is 3.0.1 but my iPod touch is on 2.2.1 and it works fine on both - the only difference is that the Touch doesnt group all the items together - so I tagged the Sort Artist field as 'zzz' to make them appear at the end of the list on the iTouch.

Let me know how you get on!

I've got exactly the same problem, also on iPhone 3GS and latest iTunes. I'll try if the solution you mentioned works. I don't like it though, it shouldn't be necessary to tinker with my tags in order to make it work 😟. No bonus points for Apple on this one.

Another bit of weird behavior: I've grouped my compilations with a 'Sort Artist' ZZZ, all except the ones where I also have albums for, and yes it works, I don't see artists in the artist view which are only part of a compilation. However in the artist view under the letter 'Z' I now see 'Deep Purple'. I don't see 'ZZZ' (obviously, that name is only used for sorting), I don't see 'AC/DC' (it's a rock compilation so if it would show the first alphabetically, that would be more logical). This is not directly related to the unwanted artists in the artist view, but can I influence which artist name is shown? I have no clue as to how it figured 'Deep Purple' was the best description for all my artists which have the 'ZZZ' in the 'Sort Artists' field.

It trick does work. It's a round about way of fixing something, that I honestly feel was a HUGE oversight. It is extra work you need to do, which is bullcrap.

As for Deep Purple showing up, I noticed that it will pick the the first artist, from the first compilation album. So if your soundtrack is Blade Runner, you will see Vangelis up there.

Sigh. It's not a perfect system, but it's the one we got.

But 3.1 came out today. Maybe they fixed it!! I doubt it though.

Looks like something happened with 3.1.
Before it would stick all these artist into ONE artist at the bottom and when you clicked on it, it would take you into the sorted tracks, organized by albums. Now it's set up so that EVERY artist just happens to be located down there. So it's the same problem as before, only now it's out of sight.

It's super annoying, and ****** me off that my "outdated" 5th gen ipod handled this perfectly, but it's a work around.

I doubt we'll get a fix for this one.

Yes, I believe 3.1 is worse than 3.0.

The problem is not only for compilations. I have lots of albums in which several songs have guest artists, and the "Album" tags are set to "artistA feat. artistB" etc. On OS3.1, all these "A feat. B" appear in the Artist View, irrespective of how I set the "Sort Artist", "Album Artist" or "Sort Album Artist" tags.

I doubt we'll get a fix for this one.

Please send a feedback to Apple.
Ad hoc "changes" at every version up are not what we want. The sorting/groupig problems must be fixed once and for all. We also need a clear document from Apple which describes what is the purpose of various tags.