Transfer single song to album
I suspect that the answer to my question is a no, but here goes.
I want to move single purchased songs to an artist or album whose album did not come with that song. Is it possible?
PowerBook
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You can edit the metadata such that the track appears as a bonus track after the existing ones, e.g. set the track number one higher than the current number of tracks, possibly set the new track as disc 2 of 2, give the same album title as the album you want it to merge with, and then perhaps update the total number of tracks and discs for the albums as a whole.
Note if this is a purchased track it is possible that the original store metadata may occasionally revert while iTunes/Music is fetching the list of your unhidden purchases. If needs be hide the item from your purchase history without deleting the track so your edit metadata can prevail.
Further advice on split 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 app 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 iTunes Match 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 iTunes wanted to keep separate start typing a value and let it autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.
tt2