Music (itunes) App/Duplicate Artist sites

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

Select all of the albums of concern. It may be easier to gather them into a playlist first. If using a playlist you can select all with cmd+a. Once tracks are selected you can use cmd+i get info, then change the Artist and Album Artist to say Duke Ellington X and apply, then set the same values back to Duke Ellington. I'm suggesting you use Duke Ellington as the primary value but it can be whatever you want. This should resolve everything, although you might potentially need to use a similar process to fix the album that was previously split in two, this time adding, and then later removing a trailing X from the album title. See also the final paragraphs in my post above. If the trailing X method doesn't work for you try using autocomplete.

tt2

From the earlier post:

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.

Consistency is key here. And then sometimes a bit of luck. Once Music has decided that two sets of tracks should belong to different groupings it can take a bit of effort to smoosh them together, but it usually works if you are persistent and try the alternate techniques.

tt2