Albums not displaying correctly in iOS Music app when a song uses the "grouping" field

Question

Level 1

9 points

Albums not displaying correctly in iOS Music app when a song uses the "grouping" field

When a song in an album has information in the "Grouping" field, it causes the album to not display correctly in the iOS music app. In these cases, the song in question has its name replaced with the text from the grouping field, and the album's song listing is truncated (not all of them are displayed).

This pertains only to songs that I've added from my personal library, not from songs added through Apple Music. I am using Apple Music and songs/albums are automatically synced when I add them using the Music app on my Mac.

Even if I remove the album and then re-add it to Music, the issue persists. The issue persists even if I remove the text from the grouping field.

The songs in the album are indeed present on my iPhone, because they can be listed in the Songs view. It's only in album view that they are obscured.

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like on my iPhone. It's the same thing on my iPad. This album has 11 songs, and two of them (#5 and #8) have labels in the grouping field ("Fast" and "Medium" respectively). Note the stats at the bottom, where it says the album only has 3 songs (wrong) and is 1 hour 10 minutes (correct).

I believe this is a longstanding bug in the Music app, but I'd like a better resolution than replacing all of my personal connection with the same albums in Apple Music, as this would be tedious and I would lose my meta data.

iPhone 11, iOS 14

Posted on Oct 30, 2020 3:58 PM

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Answer 1

pelier Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 3, 2020 4:28 PM in response to Jeff_W.

Thanks for your response, but your diagnosis is not correct. There are not two albums showing in the iOS Music app — just one album. The songs don't have 'featured artists' — the artist info that is being displayed is actually the data from the Composer field. It seems to me that iOS is confusing what fields to display when showing the album, and this is causing a display issue which prevents all the songs from being shown.

On my Mac the album shows properly. The entire album is correctly filed under the artist name ("Dave Matthews Band") and it shows up only once. There is no featured artist on this album, and every Album Artist field is the same as the Artist field for this album.

I only see this issue occur for albums where I've used the Grouping field for some of the songs. So I maintain that this is an iOS bug in how it displays albums where some of the songs have data in the Grouping field.

Some other interesting notes: if I press the Play button, the album is played correctly, with all 11 songs in order. When playing, I can see the playing list and all the songs are shown with the correct title and artist name. So this is only an issue with how the songs are displayed in album view.

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Answer 2

Todd0213

Community Specialist

Nov 4, 2020 4:58 AM in response to pelier

Hello Pelier,

Thank you for the clarification on the issue, and letting us know the artist, album, and additional song details are showing correctly on the Mac. With the songs showing correctly on the Mac, but not showing correctly on the iPhone it's recommend to confirm that all your devices are up-to-date using the steps linked below.

How to update the software on your Mac

Update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

If updated, or the issue continues it's recommend to contact Apple through an available support channel found on the Get Support website.

Take care!

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Answer 3

Jeff_W.

Community Specialist

Nov 3, 2020 4:06 PM in response to pelier

Hello pelier,

We know how important it is for your songs to appear correctly in the Music app, and you've come to a great place for help. To ensure the best support is provided it sounds as though the album is showing as two separate albums, not one album as it should. From the photo you provided it looks as though they're separated based on singers as some of the songs are showing as having a featured artist. If that's the case do those songs show with the features artist name in the artist section on the Mac? If so, what happens if you edit the artist name in Music or iTunes on your Mac?

Change song and CD information in Music on Mac

Have a great day!

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