iTunes refuses to sort imported album correctly

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iTunes refuses to sort imported album correctly

I spent all day yesterday recording the audio from a vinyl, cutting the recording up into songs, and then putting in the metadata so they would sort correctly.

I figured after all that, I would be able to simply import the folder of songs into iTunes, and then sync the album with my phone so that I can listen to this album. (It's from Japan, so I've been listening to a bootleg off of YouTube that's just the entire hour long album, for the curious.)

Well, that's exactly what happened. I was super happy! Until I looked closer and noticed the tenth track was missing.

No biggie, I'll just add it real quick and re-sync, I thought. Except that's when I noticed the tenth track was in my iTunes, but had inexplicably not been sorted with the other tracks. Again, I figured stuff happens, I did do all the metadata while crossed from celebrating my brother's Bday... So I check the song info, and it all looked good. Just to be sure, I retyped the album info and artist info, and it disappeared. It didn't sort into the album though. It was just gone. Whatever, I can just import the song by itself. Then I did. That's where things really got frustrating. As you can see, iTunes sorts the tenth track last. You may also notice that the PC screenshot is missing tracks 12 and 13, which I'll get to. It's at this point that I make sure that all of the tracks have the correct track numbers in song info, and they do. I try to delete the album and import it all again after fixing the metadata. Same thing. I'm stumped. I look up "itunes sorting album in wrong order" and find a few other community posts with similar issues, but minimal info. One was asking because they didn't want to import all 12,500 songs individually. Oh! I only have 13 tracks that I want to import! I'll do them individually in consecutive order! Nope. That's why there's only 11 tracks. I was going one by one, until I got to track 11 and it frustratingly put track 10 below track 11! What the heck?! How do I fix this?!

Edit: While typing this, I got the idea to go through each track in iTunes and reset the track number. Still nothing. Ugh... maybe it's just a visual thing, and it will still play them in order? So I go to track nine, skip to the end, and wait a few seconds. Wouldn't you believe, it goes to track 11 next instead of track ten. Great... Now I'm REALLY stumped.

Windows

Posted on Jan 17, 2024 1:43 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

274,856 points

Jan 17, 2024 1:55 PM in response to neoGoblinIceWizard

The some tracks sort last issue is probably inconsistent Disc X of Y data.

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

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Answer 2

Jan 17, 2024 2:12 PM in response to turingtest2

Thank you for your input! I feel kinda bad.. I was about to try that, but I found the issue. For some reason, iTunes had removed 'The' when sorting the tracks.

So, 'The Sunset Valley' and 'The Moon Rose' of the album 'The Rainbow Goblins' were being sorted as 'Sunset Valley' and 'Moon Rose' of the album 'Rainbow Goblins'.

When I fixed the metadata for track ten, I had noticed that it was sorted into 'Rainbow Goblins' and changed it to 'The Rainbow Goblins'. I just hadn't bothered to go and check the other tracks and notice that they were all sorted in 'Rainbow Goblins', since I assumed it had only done this to track ten and that was why it was originally not put with the other songs. Jeez... I guess I'll be super extra vigilant about articles like 'The' in album/song titles in the future. Thank you again.

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

274,856 points

Jan 17, 2024 3:47 PM in response to neoGoblinIceWizard

Got it. By default iTunes drops leading articles for sorting purposes, so The Beatles get sorted under B instead of T. If you want to force the alternative then explicitly edit the sort field for all connected tracks at the same time, e.g. select all tracks by The Beatles and change the Sort Artist and Sort Album Artist to read The Beatles. The key is to be absolutely consistent, random discrepancies can lead to the kind of issue you were originally facing.

tt2

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iTunes refuses to sort imported album correctly

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