Apple Music driving me mad !

Hi, I hope someone can help.


In Apple music if I have downloaded an album from somewhere other than Apple Music sometimes the album goes in ok and stays grouped as an album. Great.


Recently albums have been going in and no matter what I do I cannot get songs to load as an album. They are all separate songs, so say 10-20 separate covers instead of opening one cover and the songs are there.


So I click on get info make sure I set the album name, various artists, CD1 of etc etc but they all just remain separate.


No matter what I try I cannot get them to group as the album.


Can anyone help ? I am ok with computers but not outstanding.


Thank you in advance.


So from the picture you can see The Collect album is all separate. Cannot get it to load as one


iMac Pro, macOS 14.1

Posted on Feb 3, 2024 5:51 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 3, 2024 6:09 AM

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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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 3, 2024 6:09 AM in response to adrianfromherne bay

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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Apple Music driving me mad !

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