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How to resolve iTunes library synching problem between Mac and iPhone, such that music albums each show up multiple times in the iPhone library, once for each song on the album rather than just one album with all the songs?
iPhone 8
In general if the content is organized correctly in iTunes it should stay together when synced to your device.
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:
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
In general if the content is organized correctly in iTunes it should stay together when synced to your device.
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:
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
Thanks for trying to help but unfortunately I'm not following the advice with adding an 'X' to the songs etc. There's a couple of hundred albums in my iTunes library (3,400+ songs) and I don't see why I need to spend hours manually adjusting the files just to re-synch the library between my Apple Mac and IOS iPhone (8).
Update: Despite 3 failed tries to re-synch my iTunes library with my iPhone, the 4th time was the charm and it worked (without any of the manual intervention suggested by tt2). Whew, I feel much better now that my iPhone has my music library back. Good ol' technology, sometimes complicated and confusing but great when it then works! : )
How to resolve synching problem where albums each show up multiple times, once for each song on the album rather than just one album with all songs?
