How to see songs on a compilation by artist in the Artists tab in Apple Music on Mac

I have songs that are part of compilations where the Artist is the Artist, but the Album Artist is “Various Artists.” You have to do this to keep the album intact, and I’m fine with that. However, it seems odd that those songs don’t organize under the Artist while in the Artists view. I would think that view organizes all songs by a given Artist under that Artist so long as the artist is listed as the artist. This is not the case. In order to see those songs organized under the Artist in the Artist view, you need to populate the album artist with the artist name. This isn’t possible for compilations for the reason stated above, but it shouldn’t impact the artist view so long as the artist field has the artist. Am I missing something? And if this is working as intended, is there a work-around to show songs by an artist in a compilation under the Artist in the Artist view without breaking up the album by changing the album artist field?

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 13.7

Posted on Dec 11, 2024 7:49 PM

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Dec 12, 2024 6:57 PM in response to macorin

...... In order to see those songs organized under the Artist in the Artist view, you need to populate the album artist with the artist name. This isn’t possible for compilations for the reason stated above, but it shouldn’t impact the artist view so long as the artist field has the artist. Am I missing something? ....

Well, I definitely agree with not butchering your metadata just to work around that quirky inadequate thing called "Artist" view. And even if you did as described, it would still not know to include cases where a featured artist is stated in the title field.


What may be more satisfactory is to use Songs view. Enable the filter field and enter the artist you are looking for. That will find it in any displayed field so you won't miss any instances.

Dec 13, 2024 8:01 AM in response to macorin

Enter the Songs view, use View > Show Column Browser, then untick both of View > Column Browser > Group Compilations and View > Column Browser > Use Album Artists. The Artists view should now show all artists, even when they only appear within compilation albums.


Note that Music will pick up metadata from the Gracenotes CDDB database that will sometimes mark collections of a single artist's or group's works as a compilation when for the purposes of organizing in the app this is best used only for collections of tracks by different artists.


tt2

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How to see songs on a compilation by artist in the Artists tab in Apple Music on Mac

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