Album doesn't load properly on iPod Touch 7th Gen

bob10010 wrote:

I have an mp3 album which I created from scratch years ago, and which I'll just call "Album" here. <....> It consists of 149 tracks from a various sources. I retagged everything, so all of the tracks have the same album title, are marked as part of a compilation, and have no "album artist" indicated <....>

For some reason, 29 of the 149 tracks are listed separately on the iPod, as though they're separate singles.

Ah! That's because you do not have an album artist.

It is quite straightforward and even the Classic benefited from having the album artist. It depends on the type of album.

If you have a group of songs with a common album title (i.e. one album), but it consists of different artists, then it's a compilation album. To keep all the tracks together on a various artists compilation you have to mark every track as part of a compilation - and - every track needs to have the text Various Artists in the Album Artist box. Study the screenshot below:

Notice that:

• the artist field says mixed. This is because at least one of the selected tracks has different information in that field. This of course, is because there is a mixture of artists on the album.*
• the album artist field contains the text Various Artists, which is correct. This field is one of the two fields necessary to correctly identify various artist albums
• the compilation field is ticked (checked). This is the other necessary field

If we check any track on the album, we see this:

Take my word for it, the artist for this particular track is Down To The Bone.

Your observation about the artwork is correct, iTunes doesn't really like different artwork for each track. If you want it to work correctly, put the artwork into each and every track.

A few more points;

• if you have an album by one artist; that is, a collection of their greatest hits, that is not a compilation album
• if an album by one artist has guest artists on some tracks but not others, you can have that guest artist in the artist field for that track, but you must type in main artist's name into the album artist field in order for it to sort correctly
• on the iPod Classic, having the album artist field completed grouped all the compilation albums under a specific section at the end of the artist list. On the iPod Touch, there is a section titled Various Artists as well as a specific group in the main Library list headings for Compilations. Hence the need for the album artist field

Unfortunately, I've only had time to skim through your post (duty calls), but here's what you need to know.

First of all, you cannot make the changes necessary on the iPod itself, even if it's connected to iTunes. It's a very inefficient way to do it and it may not actually work (as you've found out).

You should be making the changes to the tracks within your iTunes Library - that is, the copy that's listed in iTunes as a part of your music library. Once you've done that, copy the changes to your iPod. If you use:

• • Sync to manage your iPod, then a Sync will copy the changes onto the iPod for you, that's its job
  • (however,) if you use Manually Manage to manage your iPod, you will need to delete the copy on your iPod and then put a copy of the revised song from your iTunes Library, onto your iPod

So - if you don't already use Sync, I advise you to consider starting to use it, it's so much easier.

Regarding the music itself:

I have never had a situation whereby iTunes reports all songs on an album as a compilation but when each track is looked at individually, I find some tracks are not marked that way. Are you sure there was a tick in the box (check mark) and not simply a dash, as shown in the screenshot below:

In this screenshot, notice a dash mark in the Album is a compilation... box, not a tick. This means that one or more tracks is different to the rest - in other words, some tracks are not marked as part of a compilation, while others are.

iTunes is fussy in this respect:

to keep all songs on an mixed artist album, even one you've created yourself, as a complete album both in iTunes and on an iPod, every track on the album must have:

• • the identical album title
  • Various Artists entered into the album artist field
  • album is a compilation of songs by various artists flag "on" - there must be a tick in the box for every track. Every track - no exceptions

To fix the problem:

• • make the corrections (as outlined above) in your iTunes library but without having the iPod connected to your computer
  • once you have made the necessary changes, connect the iPod to your computer and allow iTunes to synchronise with the iPod (a Sync)

There is a caveat to all this:

if you have an artist that only appears on a compilation album, that artist will not be listed in the Artists view. But if you subsequently add an album by that artist to your Library, the artist and all that artist's songs will then be listed under Artists. (iTunes has a good reason for doing this.)

I did spot this in your recent post:

bob10010 wrote:

for future reference, I'd like to know whether there's a way to delete multiple tracks from the iPod in one action, instead of having to delete each track separately. I see that I can apparently delete an entire album all at once, but what I have in mind is whether I can either delete multiple albums all at once, or delete multiple tracks from a single album all at once, while leaving other tracks in the same album on the iPod.

Yes, of course you can, but as with the changes to the information, you should make the changes in your iTunes Library - and then Sync (synchronise) the iPod with iTunes so that the changes are then copied over to your iPod.

If you want to remove some songs from the iPod, but keep them in your iTunes Library, while leaving other songs on the iPod, again you do this in your Library:

• while holding down the CTRL key, click on each of the songs you want to remove from your iPod. Do not click on the tick boxes - click anywhere else on the song's line

• once you have selected the tracks you want, either right-click/Untick Selection or use iTunes' top bar menu and choose Song/Untick Selection (or possibly uncheck selection). This will remove the ticks from the boxes of your selected tracks
• connect the iPod to iTunes. A Sync will start
• click on the iPod icon that appears towards the top of iTunes (just below the menu bar). This takes you to the Device/Summary pane
• you only have to perform this step once, in order to set it up (or check that it is already et up). On the Device/Summary pane, make sure that Sync only ticked songs and videos is ticked (checked)

• You will have to wait for the ongoing Sync to complete, and then click on Sync (or Apply) button in the lower right of iTunes (not shown in screenshots)

You've raised a number of things that need addressing, so let's see what we can do.

1. 1. With the old version of iTunes and the iPod Classic, when the iPod was connected to the computer, the Music category under the Device in iTunes was to allow iTunes to be used to directly edit the tags on the iPod
   2. is the only function of the Devices | Music category merely to see what's been loaded on the iPod? If so, then why is it possible to edit that information in iTunes, when such edits have no effect on the iPod?
   3. I didn't realize a dash indicated a mix of some tracks marked compilation nd some not so marked
   4. syncing isn't an option for me. Due to the amount of music I want on my iPods, I have to split everything between at least 2 of them <....> If I'm not mistaken, if I sync, then I have to sync everything, which gets me beyond the capacity of a single iPod

Responding to questions 1 & 2:

iTunes has always tried to be all things to everyone, leaving the user to decide which of those features he or she wanted to use. So if you had an 8GB iPod, with 30 songs on it, manually managing (and editing on the iPod from iTunes) may well have made sense. But once your collection of music gets beyond a certain point, both methods become unwieldy. Time to use Sync.

Question 3:

The compilation field box is not very intuitive, is it? It's one reason why I insist on using the terms tick and ticked rather than check/checked. A tick is so obvious, a check mark can mean almost anything.

Question 4:

You can certainly use Sync and still, achieve what you want. Just Sync selected playlists, artists, album and genres, instead of Sync entire library. For each of your iPods, set up the Sync options for that iPod, as outlined below:

• • and then click on the Summary/Music option (1.) as shown below:

• • tick the Sync Music box (2.)
  • now select Selected playlists, artists, albums and genres (3.) and you will then see the additional boxes in 4.
  • you can now select only what you want to be added to that particular iPod. The additional sections (albums and genres) can be found by scrolling lower down the page. Once you have chosen the appropriate options, click the Sync (or Apply) button in the lower right corner of iTunes (not shown in my screenshots) in order for this change to be actioned
  • so for your classical music iPod, select only the Classical genre. Each subsequent Sync of that specific iPod will Sync only tracks with the Classical genre. You do not need to repeat this setup procedure unless you want to change any of these settings
  • any new tracks subsequently added to your iTunes Library with the Classical genre will be added to your iPod at the next Sync. (Having said that, iTunes has suffered for quite a while from a bug that misses out some tracks when syncing. Perhaps one day Apple might fix this. In the meantime, a second Sync often resolves the issue)
  • Repeat the steps above for your other iPod, adding the other genres, along with anything else, such as your Playlists

I've had to add this bit into a separate post:

Talking of Playlists...

I think you mentioned wanting different artwork on specific tracks of your "album" (the one you created). If you were to add the 149 tracks to a Playlist instead of "an album", each track would have its own artwork or the artwork of the original album it came from. Tracks can be in multiple Playlists, but not in multiple albums.

Here's a couple more things to think about:

• • if you suddenly decided that having Vivaldi's Four Seasons on your non-classical iPod, so that you could play play it immediately after a rock song, or the current chart toppers, was a must, simply include that album in your selection in step (4.) above, or even easier, create a Playlist to which you could add or remove songs at will
  • if you wanted to temporarily remove a song from your iPod, but leave it in your iTunes Library, simply untick it in the Library and the next Sync will remove it from any iPod Synced with that Library

And here's a trick I use all the time:

• • let's assume that the non-classical music part of your Library is still too big to fit onto your iPod
  • decide which songs need to be on your iPod all the time and which songs can be removed for a while (because for example, you've heard them lately and therefore don't want to hear them for a few weeks or months etc.
  • Create a Smart Playlist in iTunes, that automatically includes songs only if they have not been played in the previous X days, weeks or months
    • set up your Sync Music options so that it includes everything that must be on your iPod all the time - and - the Smart Playlist.
    • at each Sync, iTunes will remove from that Smart Playlist, any song that has been played recently - and iTunes will then also remove those songs from the iPod, freeing up space for other songs that have gone back into the Playlist
    • Ah but ( you may be saying); what if I want to play again, a song I've heard recently that has been removed from the Smart Playlist? That's an easy one! Simply create a Recently Played Smart Playlist and Sync that to your iPod too. Then, if you keep playing a recently played song, it will stay on your iPod. But once you get tired of hearing it, off it goes! And it will come back onto your iPod again once the exclusion period is over

If you wish to delete songs from your iTunes Library, use the selection procedure I outlined in my previous post and then click on Song/Delete from Library.

If you delete a song from your iTunes Library, you may not be able to get it back from the original source.

You're welcome.