Itunes Filing Imported CDs as "Unknown Artist"

Thanks. I support a lot of regional folk singer/songwriters who have local companies produce their albums. The full song/artist/title show up on any player but evidently iTunes doesn't like something in the data formatting.

It depends on how much effort you want to put into this, but if you do wish to investigate this further, be more specific about these particular albums that are giving you grief:

• if you look at the CD in Windows Explorer, and the albums have MP3 format files on them, they are not audio CDs. In this case, iTunes copies the files from the CD (as data files) and it might be that the file does not have the "tags" information that correctly (and fully) identifies the album etc. (See below*)

Note that this is very different to an audio CD:

• • the music on an audio CD is not a straightforward data file that is readable by a computer. (Yes, the music can be played on a computer, by a dedicated audio player, but that's not the same thing.) When you import a CD into iTunes, iTunes converts the music to a data file, that a computer can read. It also adds the titles etc., as I'll explain in a minute.

Have a look at the screenshots below:

This first one is my computer, seeing an audio CD:

And here's the same CD, in Windows Explorer:

If we expand on this a little:

Notice that there is no track name etc. in the Name column and nothing in the additional data fields of Album, Album Artist and Album ID.. This is correct, an audio CD has no track name information on it. But here's that same CD in the iTunes import window (excuse my choice of album - it's the first one to come to hand):

All the information you see in this screenshot is retrieved by iTunes from an online database called Gracenote, which holds information on all commercially produced CDs. The information is not "on the CD" itself.

Now compare this with MP3 files. I don't have a CD with MP3 files on it with me at the moment, so here are some on a memory stick. (For this example, the type MPEG-4 - Audio File is just like an MP3 file.) If these files were on a CD, this is how they would look. Very different to an audio CD:

Many MP3 files I've seen have the artist name in the Name filed. This is not the right way to do it. The fields on the right hand side (Album, Album Artist and Album ID) is where the relevant information should be and this is what iTunes reads. In my example, notice that the Album Artist field is not filled in. But in the screenshot below, a song from a compilation album, note that the Album Artist field has the text Various Artists in it. Again, this is correct. It's part of how iTunes recognises and manages compilation albums.

My guess at this time is that your problem albums are data files (either in MP3 format, or one of the other audio formats), on a CD. Further, that those files may have track names, artists and album names all in the name field, while there is nothing in the Album, Album Artist or Album ID. fields. That will be why iTunes lists the albums as Unknown Album.

This is not a comprehensive explanation. There may be variations in what information has been included on the MP3 files that causes iTunes to recognise some information but not other. Basically, I suspect your CDs are not in a standard form. That's life - unfortunately.

Are these commercially produced CDs (actual physical compact discs, produced by a recognised record company), or something else, such as home burnt CDs, burnt as .wav files but imported to your iTunes Library as mp3s?

I have two unknown artist albums in my library. Although I don't recall whether I had to edit the titles after importing them into iTunes (I probably did have to do that), both were imported into iTunes from home produced CDs, which is why they are in a folder named Unknown Artist and then a sub-folder named Unknown Album.

Regardless of how this happened (and if that is what happened, then it's not iTunes' fault), you have a couple of options:

1. don't look at them in Explorer. Since you have them in your iTunes Library, that's what you should be using to manage them. If you use Explorer to change anything about the files,* iTunes will probably lose track of them and be unable to play them until you manually tell iTunes where find them again
2. alternatively, manually move each file into a correctly named folder and sub-folder (at which point iTunes will lose track of them, as mentioned above) and then use iTunes to re-locate the songs in their new location. Note that renaming folders or even the song title in Explorer is in effect moving the file to a new location.

* Edited for clarity by author after initial posting.

Thanks very much. That was a great explanation. It appears my problem CDs which I buy from the artists at concerts are in standard format but not registered in the Gracenote database.

That's quite likely. Modern artists see no reason to use old-fashioned record companies, but instead self-release their music. But of course, musicians are just that - musicians. They know little about how the record business works, except that record companies no longer suit them. (... and that's a very diplomatic answer.)

Even when artists do add their albums to Gracenote, they often get it wrong. In fact, so do the record companies.

Imagine: to add the CD information to Gracenote requires a human being to get involved somewhere and somehow. Suppose this information is added by each the following:

1. enthusiastic and dedicated record company employee - information correctly entered
2. bored record company employee, who'd rather be somewhere else - the result could be any old nonsense
3. fan of the artist, who knows what they're doing - same result as number 1, information correctly entered
4. fan of the artist who doesn't know what they're doing - same result as number 2, any old nonsense
5. the artist - once again, it depends on whether that artist knows how to enter the information correctly. Not all of them do.

CDs given away by newspapers (many years ago) were great fun. They were the worst nonsense ever (well, apart from the current Apple Podcasts app).

Sometimes, you just have to edit the information once you've imported the album into iTunes (as you have done). To add to all of this, some software programmes that have the feature to submit information to Gracenote might not have all the fields that Gracenote uses, so the result is that some vital information could be missing simply because whoever was inputting it didn't have the ability to add that particular field.

That's life. At least you can edit the information yourself.

Is your iTunes set to automatically retrieve CD track names form the internet? If not, that may be the issue. Check in your iTunes under Edit/Preferences/General> When you insert a CD...