Option to Always Show Complete Album

Why someone at Apple ever thought that the default behavior should be to only show the songs from an album that you have specifically added to your library is beyond me. This "feature" drives me bonkers and I hope one day they undo their wrong or at least give us a way to toggle the default behavior.

Is this a case of having an Apple Music subscription, adding the odd track from an album to your iCloud Music library, and then later realizing you want access to the whole album? If that is the case then no, there isn't an option to automatically show the complete albums, you would need to add the whole album when picking up tracks that you like to add to your library.

tt2

You can change metadata for content added from the Apple Music collection. Generally your changes will stick but there are some caveats. You don't seem to be able to edit details while using AirPlay. Purchased items may occasionally revert to the original store details. A workaround is to hide affected purchases and reapply your change.

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

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2