Adding new songs to existing albums

Generally all you need to do is give the new track details that are consistent with the rest of the album you want to merge it into.

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

No, that isn't what I've said. If the album was already a compilation then you would set the new track as a compilation too. You should give the new track the same artist, album artist, album, sort artist, sort album artist, sort album as the album you want to link it to. You would normally add a track number one higher than the highest track currently on the device. You might also want to set the total track count and disc number and count to make them consistent.

tt2

If it isn't a compilation then set part of a compilation to false for all tracks of the album. If it is a compilation then set part of a compilation to true. Either way the setting should be consistent across an album, including any additional tracks that you want to link up to it. A common album title and album artist are normally enough to link things together but consistency may also be required for other properties.

tt2

The term compilation can be used for an album of tracks by different artists, or an anthology of tracks by one artist taken from different periods of their career. The Gracenotes CDDB database which iTunes can use for track information often sets the compilation flag in both cases, but it is generally only useful in iTunes in the former case, where each track has a distinct artist. In particular the flag can be useful for older Apple devices like iPod classic that don't read the album artist field when deciding what tracks should be linked together as an album.

tt2