iTunes keeps adding underscores after artist, album and song names

Hi,

My guess would be that something has updated your metadata with unwanted trailing spaces. When iTunes is set to organize the media folder and it notices a change from its stored value it will attempt to rename the files and folders accordingly. Because spaces aren't allowed at the end of a folder name iTunes will use its universal placeholder, the underscore, instead. The artist and album can split in two in iTunes if the text values aren't identical, and sometimes even if the are. Back in the day Windows Media Player was often the cause of unwanted updates, but perhaps you've used other software to try to make corrections to metadata at some point outside of iTunes, and now it is showing unintentional side effects.

See Grouping Tracks Into Albums for some thoughts on relinking the divided content. Consistency is key.

tt2

When you copy from CDs into iTunes, iTunes uses a database named Gracenote to provide the information about the album. So possibly the issue lies with the entries on Gracenote*, rather than with iTunes.

If I'm not mistaken, the screenshot you've posted shows the Windows 10 File Manager. What we see is two separate folders for the artist Soen (I've never heard of them).

For now, I have two questions which should help in working out where the problem lies and what to do about it:

1. do each of those two folders have songs from the same album, or do they have different albums? This is a cruicial question. Does each folder (Soen and Soen_) each have at least one song from the same album? The albums Lykaia and Lykaia Revisted are two separate albums (still never heard of them!)
2. are the copies of your Soen albums actually from physical CDs, or from digital downloads, or a mixture?

The album Lykaia Revisted has additional songs compared to Lykaia, and the digital version appears to have yet another song. So I can see what may have happened. (I'll explain later, if I'm correct.) I don't know how I know all this about Soen, since I've never heard of them.

If you look in your iTunes Library, do you have the same problem? (It's preferable to look in the iTunes Library, rather than File Manager. The iTunes interface is designed by Apple to be used by you; the File Manager is used by iTunes to manage what you see. If you try to chnage anything about your music in File Manager, iTunes may become unable to find, or play, the music.

* Gracenote's information about an album may be compiled by a bored record company employee, the artist or even by a fan. It's not always correct.

This is not something I have come across before. I am intrigued by this problem though.

I'll see if I can find anyone in the depths of this Apple community who can offer any further help, but it may take a day or two before anyone responds. I will keep my eye on this discussion and I will notice if anyone else contributes to this discussion.

P.S. I've still never heard of Soen. I might put money on them not being Swedish!

British humour.

I looked them up so that I could understand any particular peculiarities about their albums (such as Lykaia and Lykaia Revisted).

At least I didn't ask you if they were Norwegian. That wouldn't have been good, would it? (haha...)

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2