itunes Compilation Sorting

Hhmm, quite a lot there.

Sorting on "the":

By default, iTunes does not sort on the word "the" for either artist names or titles (both songs and albums). Therefore, artists such as The Rolling Stones will be sorted as Rolling Stones, even the though text includes "the" at the beginning. I recommend that you do not try to override this for the following reasons:

1. 1. 1. to change the artist name to sort on "the" means changing every track in your library by that artist. But if you miss any of that artist's songs, you will then have two entries for that artist; the one with "the" and the one without
      2. if you add more music to your library by (for example) The Rolling Stones, you need to remember to change the sorting on those new tracks. If you forget, then once again, you will end up with two entries for them: Rolling Stones and The Rolling Stones. To make matters worse, when you look at the entries in your library, you will almost certainly struggle to understand why you have separated entries
      3. Sorting on The will cause you to have a lot of entries under "the". A lot!

Compilation albums:

To ensure that a compilation album is correctly sorted and kept together as one album, every track on the album needs to be marked part of a compilation - and - the Album Artist field must have the text Various Artists in it. The screenshot below shows the Get Info panel for all tracks on a compilation album:

• • as you can see, the artist field says mixed, because the selection has several artists. This is correct
  • the album artist field shows Various Artists. This field is sometimes left blank by the import process, but for a compilation album to be handled correctly, it must be contain the text Various Artists (on every track)
  • the compilation field must be ticked (checked).

Note that a dash mark in the compilation field indicates that some of the selection is ticked, while other songs in the selection are not. See below:

Box sets:

To keep multiple discs together as one album, the disc number and disc of fields need to be completed. First screenshot below shows track 14 on disc 1 of 2:

the next screenshot shows track 14 on disc 2 of 2:

A final note:

The album I have shown in the box sets explanation is a Greatest Hits album, in other words, a compilation of the artist's best works. However, as far as iTunes is concerned, this is not a compilation album. If a single-artist "greatest hits" album is (incorrectly) marked as a compilation, it will cause mis-sorting either in iTunes, on a portable Apple device, or both.

Note the explanatory wording of the compilation field: Album is a compilation of songs by various artists.

You would think that would be it...

stevemack wrote:

There doesn't seem to be any obvious pattern to how the compilations are sorted.

That's not really a surprise. Across your collection there may be more than one reason. Unfortunately, if you have that many problems, you will have to assume that each album has a potentially different cause, rather than one blanket cause to be fixed in one fell swoop.

I realise that all this is somewhat complicated. Read these responses very carefully and take your time.

I've been looking at the album info to check how the compilations have been set up.

On the details tab, Artist is set to Mixed and is greyed out. Album Artist is blank.

• As previously stated, a compilation album must have the album artist field completed. If it isn't, it will cause issues somewhere along the line. (Don't forget to ensure that the compilation field is ticked too.)
• If a single-artist album has "mixed" in the artist field (when you select all the tracks), that suggests either:
  • there's at least one track with a different text in it (which is incorrect). See below for further explanation of how this can occur
  • the album has a guest artist on one or more tracks. In this case, the artist will state mixed, which means that you will have add the name of the main artist into the album artist field

turingtest2 made the point in the link he added, that I had forgotten to mention; that is, to add a trailing asterisk to a field. This is in case there are any trailing spaces in the text. These are impossible to see without using a specific tip, such as turingtest2's use of the *. In case you're sceptical about this issue, look at the two screenshots below:

In the view above, the blue field highlights all the text. Note that the blue ends immediately at the end edge of the letter e. Now compare this with the next screenshot:

Notice that there is a small extra bit of blue after the letter e. That's a space (as in the spacebar) and that space will separate that track from any track that does not have the space.

But now look again, this time at the start of the name; the first screenshot has extra blue before the letter A. This is how it should look:

Here are screenshots from the Edit Info panel for that song:

&

Can you see how difficult it is to find those errors? And they do exist.

The Sorting tab fields should automatically reflect the main entry on the Details tab. So if you correct the issue in the main field, the Sorting copy of that field will also update. The only time that you would want to manually edit the Sort as field is for something like the "the" issue that we discussed before. In other words, when the main Details/Artist entry is The Rolling Stones, the Sort artist field will automatically put Rolling Stones:

Remember though, my personal advice about not changing the sort as field to sort on "the". You have enough to do without trying to keep that under control as well. Apart from anything else, consider what you would actually have to do. You will have to check every entry that begins with "the", that you want to sort on "the":

• • any and all album titles - edit the Sorting / (album) sort as field
  • any and all song titles - edit the Sorting / (song) sort as field
  • single-artist album - edit the Sorting / (artist) sort as field
  • single-artist album - edit the Sorting / (album artist) sort as field if it has been filled in. (If it hasn't that's one less job)
  • single-artist album with guest artists - change if it is required (each case will need to be checked and understood by you
  • compilation albums - edit the appropriate track's artist sort as field, making sure not to miss any and not to alter anything you don't want altered. A prime example is accidently editing the album artist instead of the artist field

Wow! I've scared myself there and I'm still not sure whether I've included everything. Even if someone produces a script to do this for you, it's still additional tasks when you already have enough to do.

To summarise, unless there really is an issue with the sort field of an entry, do not change anything on the Sorting tab. Every incorrect entry will be updated on the Sorting tab when you correct the Details tab entry. Only manually adjust the Sorting tab entries if all else fails (and I mean, all else).

Any field that has the greyed out text "mixed" simply means that you have selected multiple items and that the text in that box is different in some of the entries. For things like the song title, that's what you expect. It is also to be expected on the artist field of a compilation album.

& here's an even bigger caution:

if a field contains greyed out "mixed", and you overtype that with something else, then every one of the selection will have that text edited. For example: if you have a compilation album and you overtype the word mixed in the artist field in error, instead of the album artist field, every track on that album will then have the same artist name that you typed in.

We've seen it happen.

... but, we haven't mentioned guest artists!

Just in case you have any tracks with guest artists, I will now.

Suppose you have a single-artist album but with guest artists on at least one track. In this case, the artist field will have <artist name> feat. <guest artist> and that will cause the album to be split up.

Unless...

you fill in the album artist field for this album.

Take the Nelly Furtado album Loose.

To keep this album together, the album artist field must contain the name of the main artist; i.e. Nelly Furtado. The screenshot below shows the Get Info panel for all the songs on the Loose album:

As you can see, the artist field shows the text "mixed", because that list is mixed. So we add the text Nelly Furtado into the album artist field, which will keep that album together. (Do not tick the compilation field.)

If we look at the Song Info panel for one of these songs on the album (the last one on the list above - Attitude), notice the artist field for the song:

One final thing. For single-artist albums without any guest artists, iTunes is not fussy, the album artist field can be blank. Therefore you do not need to go through your entire library adding the album artist to single-artist albums. Note though, that I am aware of at least one music software programme that is fussy, but that's a lot of work to fill all that in.

If you've followed all of the fiend's advice above and you still get multiple covers for some albums take a look at this post: I Tune Library - Apple Community.

tt2