Merging split album in Music

Cindy Rosenblum wrote:

Downloaded an album from iTunes and it's showing up as 2 albums. How do I fix this? I Googled around and nothing I've tried helped. Both the Album and Album artist are the same for both.

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

Hi Cindy Rosenblum,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We understand that you're having an issue with downloaded album being split into two. We'd like to help.

Just to confirm, are you saying that you're seeing two completely separate albums with all the same songs listed or one album shows up split in two? Depending on the answer, some songs may have different metadata and you may need to edit that to have the album be shown as one.

Check out these steps to check the meta data of specific songs:

"Change the name of the song, artist, or album

1. In the Music app  on your Mac, click Songs in the sidebar.
2. Select the item, then choose Song > Info.
3. If no information appears in the Info window, you can look up CD information in the Gracenote media database or send CD information to Gracenote. See If you don’t see songs in Music.
4. Type the new information, then press Return."

If you find the data that is different, and you edit it, are you able to merge the albums back to one?

Let us know how that goes.

Cheers!

Hi,

Read this thread How Do I Combine Albums - Apple Community

Jim

Hey Cindy Rosenblum,

We'd recommend contacting Apple Support for further assistance here: Get Support

Thanks!

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2