iTunes Library sorting inconsistency - is there any fix?

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nemogal Author

Level 1

9 points

iTunes Library sorting inconsistency - is there any fix?

iTunes 12.8.2.3

MacOS El Capitan

mp3,1

iTunes Library sorting inconsistency. How to fix this?

I have Library sorted by artist. The songs are arranged by artist, then named albums (alphabetically), then albums with album title starting with a year. Songs without album titles/listings are listed below these at the very bottom of the artist's album listings. At least that is how it should be. But I've experienced a few albums that do not behave as they should in where they are listed.

For some reason, some albums & even some songs are arranged after the songs without album listings. I’ve compared the details including sorting notes for the songs and there appears to be no difference between them.

A good example is a Rolling Stones album called 1972-07-22 - Civic Arena, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, SBD where the album appears at the end of The Rolling Stones album listings & after the songs with no album information. Yet one of the songs does appear in the correct position.

I've tried removing the songs & re-adding. I've tried copy-pasting the album title to be sure it was correct.

Note: I normally add id3 tags using Media Rage (a long time favorite) prior to adding to iTunes.

(The Blue & Lonesome album is another album out of order.)

Above is the correct way it should be sorted EXCEPT that only one of the album's songs appears in the correct position. ie: Song #8.

Above the remainder of the album shows up near the bottom of that artist's listings, away from song #8. Likewise the Blue & Lonesome album shows up at bottom of listing instead of the standard position of albums starting with the letter B.

Mac Pro, OS X 10.11

Posted on Aug 26, 2021 4:42 AM

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Answer 1

nemogal Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 26, 2021 4:45 AM in response to nemogal

I should have noted I am referring to the 'Songs' section of the Library, not albums. Everyone has their own way of doing things & I much prefer the Songs listed by artist & album alphabetically.

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Answer 2

nemogal Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 26, 2021 9:06 PM in response to turingtest2

Thank you for your reply and again for being so fast to reply. Problem sorted. Very helpful indeed.

Originally I converted the files simultaneously to ALAC using XLD. When I tagged the files using the Media Rage’s album tagger, all tag settings were locked except track number & song title. So there should be zero difference between the other tags. (I do not add sorting information when tagging via Media Rage; these are left empty.)

iTunes Information for each file > Sorting is identical except for ‘name’. That was until I realised iTunes had added a space after The Rolling Stones in the Artist sort field.

Likewise for the Blue & Lonesome album, iTunes had added artist > sort as: Rolling Stones, The

These were not things I had added in Media Rage, so sometimes iTunes has a mind of its own in understanding the tags or how particular files should be sorted when being added. Unless you have some idea why this happened. (There was no space after artist in the artist field.)

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