How to force iTunce group Albums & Songs correctly? Various Artists album

Short answer (to this specific case)

Set the Album Artist for all tracks of the album 1000% Sax Collection to Various Artists. You should also mark the album as a compilation.

Long answer

If iTunes shows multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Get Info to add say a trailing X to each of the fields that the tracks should have in common:

• For an album; Album, Album Artist, and Artist (if artist is the same for all tracks) *
• For an artist; Album Artist (and Artist unless there are guest/featured artists listed which should not be changed)

Apply the change which merges things together, then remove the excess characters. Occasionally it may help to close and reopen iTunes between the two renaming operations. Part of a compilation should also be set consistently.

* If tracks are to be synced to a non-iOS device there should be a common Artist and/or the album should be set as a Compilation.

Use the songs view and display the fields Album, Sort Album, Album Artist, Sort Album Artist, Artist and Sort Artist side by side so you see whether or not it is appropriate to edit Artist and if sort values could be causing any further problems. See Grouping tracks into albums for more help if required.

One further tip for really stubborn duplicates. At one point I had three lots of Various Artists in the artists view of my iTunes Match library that wouldn't respond to the usual trailing X treatment. What I found worked was to add the trailing X to start with, but then with each group that iTunes wanted to keep separate start typing a value and let iTunes autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.

tt2

"So grouping should be done only by Album tag, Artist has nothing to do in this view."

Not true - its not uncommon for different albums to have the same name: just think of how many there are called "Greatest Hits" or "Live". Combining the Album title with the Artist (or Album Artist) value generally results in correct grouping, though it doesn't allow for the cases where an artist releases two or more albums with the same title. First example that comes to mind is Weather Report, who released one album called "Weather Report" in 1971 and a quite different album also called "Weather Report" in 1982. Based on the existing metadata in iTunes the combination of artist (or album artist), title, and year might be closer to a genuine primary key to base grouping on.

(Track) Artist can provide granular track level detail. Album Artist is the artist that you'd look under if you went to the record store. The Artists view in iTunes is actually the Album Artists view. Previously you could play with the column browser options for Group Compilations and Use Album Artists while in the Songs view to make all of the distinct values of Artist appear, but trying that just now it is no longer working that way.

tt2