iTunes Sorting Compilations by Artist Name and not Track Number

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Level 1

9 points

iTunes Sorting Compilations by Artist Name and not Track Number

I have yet to find a post that resolves the issue I'm having. I have too much music so I organize my music by genre. I most recently added a compilation to my library and iTunes is organizing them by artist name, which in a compilation is all different. Please understand that I have double checked the Album Artist field and made them all the same by highlighting the entire 23 songs, click Get Info and changed the album artist to the same name. I have selected the genre from a list while all items were highlighted and I even made sure that all track numbers are x of 23. Lastly I tried sorting by track number, then album artist and then genre in that order (since it was mentioned somewhere else) to see if it would fix the issue but it did not. How do I fix this problem?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Jul 29, 2010 4:35 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

272,905 points

Jul 29, 2010 5:57 PM in response to flip81

Hi, welcome to Apple Discussions.

iTunes doesn't do multi-layered sorts, or rather it does sometimes, but as users we have no control over them. Take, for example, the *Album by Year* view and you'll see that is has sub-ordering on quite a few values. In pseudo-SQL it's something like this:

SELECT * FROM Tracks ORDER BY Sort Album Artist, Year (Of 1st Track of Album), Sort Album, Disc #(Empties Last), Track #(Empties Last)
Where there is no Sort Album Artist value it is infered from Album Artist, Sort Artist or Artist. Where there is no Sort Album it is infered from Album.

When you click to sort on the Year column any previous ordering is discarded. If the tracks are in the wrong order then all you can do is click again to change between an ascending or descening sort.

A quick look at my tracks sorted by Genre suggests as if the result is something like this:

SELECT * FROM Tracks ORDER BY Genre, Sort Artist, Sort Album, Disc #(Empties Last), Track #(Empties Last)

Again, it doesn't matter which columns you click before selecting Genre tere's nothing you can do to get the sort you're after. Personally I'd stick with Album by Artist (which is actually Album by Album Artist) and turn on the Genre in the Column Browser so that you can show all albums in a particular genre in a sensible order.

For general tips on grouping & ordering tracks in iTunes see http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp

tt2

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Answer 2

flip81 Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 18, 2010 10:13 AM in response to turingtest2

Sorting by genre if the track numbers are all out of order is not very useful. Just to give an example to make sure we are speaking the same language, here's what's happening. I'm looking at album name: Martin Scorsese Presents: The Best of the Blues, genre (obviously) Blues, album artist, Various. When I filter by genre, the album is still grouped together and shows the album art and looks very nice. But then I get the following in this order:

Track # "Track Name" Artist
14 "One Way Out" The Allman Brothers Band
10 "The Thrill Is Gone" B.B. King
2 "Muddy Water" Bessie Smith
20 "Round and Round" Bonnie Rait
...

And so on. iTunes should get smarter and know that I would prefer to sub-filter this album by track number and not artist name since that doesn't mean anything. Ideally it should filter by this Genre>Album Artist>Album Name>Track Number>Track Name

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Answer 3

COHagan

Level 1

15 points

Nov 18, 2010 10:50 AM in response to flip81

I've had the very same problem with soundtracks & other compilations myself. Been tearing my hair out in search of a fix. It's nice to know I'm not the only one. It occurs to me that Track # should be the default tertiary sort criterion behind Artist/Album Artist & Album in all cases. Sadly it isn't.

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Answer 4

COHagan

Level 1

15 points

Nov 18, 2010 11:07 AM in response to flip81

The one thing I've found that is a somewhat acceptable compromise to achieve the desired result and not totally sacrifice cataloguing integrity is to set the Sort Artist & Sort Album Artist both to "Various Artists" (for example). You can still keep the Artist field consistent with the individual artists and still achieve proper track order sorting.

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Answer 5

flip81 Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 18, 2010 11:55 AM in response to COHagan

You may have just solved the problem my man. Try this out and let me know if it works.

1. Sort your music by Album Artist
2. Highlight all tracks on the album that you would like to sort
3. Sort your music by Genre
4. Right click and "Get Info"
5. Click on the "Sorting" tab
6. Change the "Sorting Artist" to the name you would like (e.g. Gilles Peterson (if it's a DJ) or Various Artists if it truly does not have an album artist
7. Press Ok
8. This should now group your album together in one chunk.

Sometimes I saw that this would make the album name become "Unknown." Since all the metadata is still saved, all I did was go back into those tracks and erased the last character from the album name, hit ok, then I went back in and added the last letter and pressed ok. And now I have that album with various artists, sorted by genre and track number, not artist name.

The bad thing is that this will take a while to do. Fortunately for me, I'm going through a MASSIVE exercise of organizing my music and rating every single song. With 290GB worth of music this will be a long project (couple of years probably). Since I'm listening to every song in my library, I'll make sure to employ this to fix the sorting issue.

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Answer 6

COHagan

Level 1

15 points

Nov 18, 2010 1:31 PM in response to flip81

flip81 wrote:

1. Sort your music by Album Artist
2. Highlight all tracks on the album that you would like to sort
3. Sort your music by Genre
4. Right click and "Get Info"
5. Click on the "Sorting" tab
6. Change the "Sorting Artist" to the name you would like (e.g. Gilles Peterson (if it's a DJ) or Various Artists if it truly does not have an album artist
7. Press Ok
8. This should now group your album together in one chunk.

Yes - that is what I was suggesting. Glad it works for your circumstances too! I also make use of the Sorting Album Artist field in addition to just the Sorting Artist field since I prefer to use that as my primary sort field (can't have "The Beatles" showing up in the "T's" nor seeing "Beatles, The" in the traditional Artist/Album Artist field). If you're going through the trouble of updating all your tags you might as well hit both sort fields.

Message was edited by: COHagan

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Answer 7

Chris CA

Level 10

82,440 points

Nov 18, 2010 3:27 PM in response to flip81

I have too much music so I organize my music by genre

If you go to iTunes menu View > Column browser, you can select a Genre (or multiple) and view only item in that Genre.
To me, this would seem preferable than simply sorting a big list by Genre.

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Answer 8

flip81 Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 18, 2010 3:32 PM in response to Chris CA

I did not know about column browser. It's not related to the issue we discussed but it's certainly a much better way of getting to my music. Thanks for the tip. I'll certainly make use of that.

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Answer 9

flip81 Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 18, 2010 3:35 PM in response to flip81

I take it back. You are correct. With the column view the tracks seem to be organized by track number.

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Answer 10

Chris CA

Level 10

82,440 points

Nov 18, 2010 3:49 PM in response to flip81

It may take a bit to get used to it but after a bit, you'll realize it's a big help.
Column browser simply adds a few columns up top. Everything else is still viewed (and sorted) as it waas before.
You can add or remove columns abnd still sort on any column.
Selecting somethiogn in trhge top boxes simply controls what is displayed below (rather than the entire library or playlist).

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