Sorting issues with apple music

In iTunes you need to edit the songs and change the Sorting fields. iTunes automatically drops the word The when it adds music to its library. In the example show below, although the display text includes The, look at the Sort As field:

Although I've ringed the Album Artist, the same thing applies to the Artist field. If you want to sort on The, you need over-write the greyed out text with the text you want. To be specific; if your album only lusts the Artist (but not the Album Artist) field, change the Artist field. If the album includes both the Artist and Album Artist, you probably need to change both if you want to keep both an iOS and an Android device consistent. In the song above, I changed the Artist/Sort As field to include The. As a consequence, that field is now in full black text (which indicates that I've changed it):

If you're attempting to manage the your music (or more specifically, the same file for a song) with two different pieces of software (for example iTunes, and Media Monkey for the Android) there are several factors you may need to take into account and even then, it's more than likely that you will have conflicts.

Using Media Monkey as an example (even if you don't use it), changes made in Media Monkey (MM) will usually cause the listing for that song to change in your iTunes Library (but only after certain events). For example;

• • if one changes the album title in MM, then when that album is next played in iTunes, the album title will be changed in iTunes to match MM (but only as you play each track)
  • if you add artwork in MM then as above, when the track is played in iTunes, the new artwork is added to the track. But only if the artwork is actually saved in the tag. MM may show artwork, but you have to check whether it has actually saved it or not
  • if, when creating a library in MM, one imports iTunes' play counts etc. from iTunes, then usually all the information from iTunes is available in MM. However, there are times when MM simply splits one field and adds each word from that field to separate fields in MM. This seems to be especially problematic if the album title has unusual characters at the end of it
  • iTunes isn't too fussy about the Album Artist field; while it always adds the text Various Artists to compilation albums (if they're correctly identified in the first place) it usually only completes the Album Artist field on other albums if there are guest artists on the album, but an Android device likes the Album Artist for every track, which is dependent upon it being listed as such in MM

I could go on (but I'm sure you don't want to me to). Oh alright then, I will. Take for example, the use of "The", and "A". The standard practice (that I was taught as a child) was to ignore The and A when sorting, something that Apple adhered to. But MM isn't consistent. Using the song that I used above (and an Android phone synchronised with MM):

• • Song - The Age of Understatement: (iTunes=Age, MM=The, Android device= The)
  • Album - The Age of Understatement: (iTunes=Age, MM=Age, Android device=The)
  • Artist - The Last Shadow Puppets: (iTunes= Last, MM=Last, Android device=Last)

Notice the discrepancy.

And let's not start on numbers: iTunes puts them after the alphabet, MM before.

To summarise, if you're managing music in iTunes world and Android, you can expect to have to be actively managing, not passive. (I know...)

That's life I'm afraid.