music dividing into multiple albums

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 the application 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 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 application wanted to keep separate start typing a value and use the autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.

tt2

E.g. If you had a split album by The Splitz you could change the Album Artist to The SplitzX and then to The Splitz. Afterwards the album should stay together. While you don't need to have Album Artist filled in if the artist is the same for every track it can be used to link things when there are guest artists.

tt2

It seems to be a bug in the software. Occasionally it will happen on import, but I think it is more common when you make a change that if you did it one track at a time would create two different groups that then merge back into one when you do the last edit. Its as if having increased the number of albums, artists, album artists, etc. it doesn't want to decrease them again. If you go through all of the advice in my earlier post when you run across a broken album then the album shouldn't break up again.

tt2