Music 1.0.5.14 Album is a compilation of songs by various artists issue

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Level 1

10 points

Music 1.0.5.14 Album is a compilation of songs by various artists issue

I am importing songs into Music. They are records that have had clicks and pops removed by other software. Many of the records have songs by various artists so, I check (tick) the box for ALL the songs at once (by selecting all songs in the album) "album is a compilation of songs by various artists. I then enter the song and artist data for each track. When done, I always end up with 1 track (usually track 1) that is separate from all the other tracks on the album even though the box is checked like all the others. Unchecking and rechecking the box does nothing. Nothing I've tried will make all tracks into one album.

(Yes - the album name is the same for all of the tracks).

If I check the box for each track individually, then all the tracks end up in one album as they should.

Is there any trick to getting an "orphan" track to "join up" with it's designated album?

Definitely a bug in the program as I'm not doing anything "wrong".

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 12, 2020 10:48 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

turingtest2

Level 10

273,161 points

Jun 17, 2020 3:44 AM in response to wmalden

If iTunes or Music 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 the application 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

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Answer 2

rose_10

Community Specialist

Jun 16, 2020 10:22 AM in response to wmalden

Hey there wmalden,

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. I understand you’re having issues placing your imported songs into one album and it usually seems to be one track causing the issue.

Just to verify, are you doing this using the Get Info option? If not, follow the steps in this link and select multiple tracks when doing this:

Change song and CD information in Music on Mac

I hope this helps.

Take care.

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Answer 3

Joseph_S.

Community Specialist

Jun 17, 2020 6:09 AM in response to wmalden

Hey wmalden,

Thanks for providing those details. If you’re selecting all the songs, choosing Get Info and then entering the meta data but it’s still not working, try updating macOS:

How to update the software on your Mac

Then try in safe mode and see if this helps at all:

How to use safe mode on your Mac

Regards.

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Answer 4

wmalden Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 16, 2020 7:08 PM in response to rose_10

To reply to sarah_s1, I am entering all album data manually as most are from old records that are not in Gracenotes database. Even when they are in Gracenote, I enter album name, artist, genre and album art manually as the imports are from a 3rd party software vendor (Click Repair) and not directly from a CD.

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Answer 5

wmalden Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 18, 2020 7:05 AM in response to Joseph_S.

Thanks for the reply, joseph_S. My Mac OS and iOS are all at the latest release/update levels.

I will try turningtest2's suggestions and see if they might do the trick.

Another "bug" I've come across is that album art does not always sync with iOS devices.

I have recently added album art to just about every album in my 40k song music collection.

Some art shows up on my iPhone 11 Pro and some does not despite multiple syncs (I use USB sync with finder - not iCloud).

Others with this issue have solved it by deleting all music from their iPhone and then re-syncing everything.

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Answer 6

wmalden Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 18, 2020 9:03 AM in response to turingtest2

THANKS, turingtest2 - you solved my problem!

I looked for "duplicate" albums (really the same album with songs split into two albums)

I selected all songs on album 1, used "get info" to access data fields and appended the album name with a letter or number.

I selected all songs on album 2 and did the same. That put all the songs into one album.

I then selected all songs on the unified album and removed the appended letter or number.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

Amazing the machinations we must go through to deal with Apple's "bugs"!

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Music 1.0.5.14 Album is a compilation of songs by various artists issue

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