iTunes 9, sorting multidisc Album by Artist & Album by Year broken!
I've checked this on multiple installs (all on Macs). Sorting multi-disc albums with Artist by Album and Artist by Year results in tracks not following the disc number, so track 1 disc 1 is followed by track 1 disc 2, then track 1 disc 3, etc.
One quick workaround (although it has to be applied each time!) is to click on the album field to sort by album. That works, but it's not the default condition as it was in iTunes 8 and before.
I just noticed that shuffle by album, as a direct result, is also broken (when shuffling by multi-disc albums, that is). There is no workaround for this - it messes with the correct order no matter what you do.
1. For example, if we were working with the White Album, select all tracks from the disc 1 of 2.
2. Get Info and click on Sorting.
3. Under "Sort Album" type "White Album 1"
4. Click OK
5. Repeat 1-3 for disc 2, typing "White Album 2" this time
6. Click OK
7. There is no step 7.
All these workarounds presuppose you only have a few multi-disc albums you need to do this with. I have—literally—thousands of multi-disc albums. Doing this for each and every one is not only impractical, it *doesn't improve the ITunes experience in any way.* How is this an upgrade??
To be clear, I'm all for improvement and change and there are many features on ITunes 9 that look great. But treating multi-disc albums as some freak, aberrational format betrays an ignorance about the last 40 years of popular music.
Did you miss the comment earlier that this is a bug? It will be fixed eventually. Until then, use the workarounds or live with the bug, no huhu.
I've got a large library too (60K songs, 2K audiobooks) and bitter experience with iTunes updates has taught me to wait for the X.1 version before installing them.
Actually, if you're a suspenders and belt man (and who isn't?), adding the Sort Album field data is a good backup for avoiding bugs like those occurring now.
I always thought it was Apple that decided what was a bug and what wasn't. This isn't a defect because the software is operating just fine. It's Apple's interpretation of what users want that is distorted.
I didn't know by a few users saying, "This *****," that Apple decides something is a bug. However, I'd love to be wrong!:)
Sorting has been a problem for me for the last few versions. The same issues occur when you are using smart playlists. I subscribe to a lot of podcasts and its a nuisance to get to play in the correct order. Not to mention that the so-called Smart playlists are pathetically limited in the setting of selection criteria to begin with.
If i had known any of this i would not have upgraded iTunes.
And these work-arounds folks are good-heartedly suggesting, well, they may be fine for smaller libraries, but my music library is around 100,000 songs and this s
*ks. Think about the problems this creates for the motown single collections which have up to 6 cds per set or the stax singles which is a 9 disc set. Many of us have quite a few muti-disc collections.
This looks like a sloppy oversight for a product which is loosing it's definition. iTunes is doing too much for one application, let it allow us to keep it to the music. Create a sister app for video and all the other crap, it's too cumbersome.
I've had sorting like this forever in iTunes since I don't want to retag the many, many albums that I've ripped over the years.
If only there was some kind of way of sorting by the file path (Like in Winamp and FooBar 2000 and Songbird and Cog and <insert all other sane MP3 players here>) which would work as a backup when your tags just don't cut it.
I was really hoping this sorting would be in iTunes 9.
Oh well.
