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Merge previously purchased single to album?

I purchased a song a year ago, and then of course the artist came out with a whole album a year later with the single as one of the tracks. When I bought the album on the Apple Store, the single was marked as "Purchased" and the rest was "Complete My Album." One expects that to mean the album will be COMPLETED, not downloaded as a separate file. I tried to edit all the album information in "Get Info" to combine the tracks but that fix doesn't work anymore. Any ideas? I want to be able to play the whole album in order, without having to make an entire playlist.


(AND get it to sync up in the iCloud Music Library)

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 22, 2020 8:14 AM

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Posted on Nov 22, 2020 9:56 AM

Purchased in the iTunes Store indicates a past purchase that has been hidden from your purchase history. See Hide and unhide music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and books - Apple Support to unhide it.



If iTunes or Music show multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Song 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 or Music 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 the library wanted to keep separate start typing a value and select the autocomplete entry from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.



tt2

1 reply
Question marked as Best reply

Nov 22, 2020 9:56 AM in response to bamabunny

Purchased in the iTunes Store indicates a past purchase that has been hidden from your purchase history. See Hide and unhide music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and books - Apple Support to unhide it.



If iTunes or Music show multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Song 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 or Music 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 the library wanted to keep separate start typing a value and select the autocomplete entry from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.



tt2

Merge previously purchased single to album?

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