tracks in same album split into different "albums"

Thanks sooo much! I've been dealing with this problem for a long time and couldn't find the reason or solution.

Your advice worked like a charm. Thanks again.

Hi,

Read your putting it all together again writing but I couldn't find a solution there for my case. Maybe here I'll have better luck...

Given an iTunes Store purchased album which somehow not only got broken apart, but each song has divided and proliferated. There are now 30 songs in 30 "albums" crowd the iTunes screen. Here is a screenshot:

Any idea, in a recipe format, on how to put Humpty-Dumpty together again? :-)

Thanks in advance...

Select all the tracks. This may be easier to do in the Songs view.

Press CMD+I to Get Info.

On the Sorting tab set the properties as follows:

Album=Sounds of Summer - The Very Best of the Beach BoysX

Sort Album=Sounds of Summer - The Very Best of the Beach BoysX

Album Artist=The Beach BoysX

Sort Album Artist=Beach BoysX

Artist=The Beach BoysX

Sort Artist=Beach BoysX

Click OK. This should merge everything into one album. Use Get Info again to remove the trailing Xs.

You also appear to be showing two copies of the track, one greyed out indicating it is unchecked, and another with a cloud link for downloading. Try signing out of the iTunes store and then back in again to remove the duplicates.

tt2

Thank you. This worked wonderfully.

There were two other single rogue instances - they fixed themselves also without me acting on them. It appears the iTunes Store logout may have made some difference in the background...

Thanks again!

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

None of that works for me. I usually just delete the album and rip them again. It happens all the time for no reason. I wonder if syncing with my iPhone has anything to do with it.

I doubt that syncing has an impact. I think the current version is more troublesome in this respect than previous ones. My library had been pristine, one album, one cover, but I trying to illustrate the technique I've caused some of my albums to split up when a a making a single edit, and the techniques to put things back together haven't always worked as they have in the past. 😕

tt2

There definitely seems to be a flaw in recent releases of iTunes that may cause its grouping rules to be incorrectly evaluated (hence the use of the "dummy character" workaround to "trigger" those rules). I've noted a recent case where an album that's been in my library for years (and always grouped correctly) suddenly showed up as two albums - one with the first two tracks of the first disc, one with the remaining tracks. I'm not aware of having made any edits or other changes that could have caused this; hopefully Apple are sufficiently aware of the problem (I've certainly reported it) and be able to fix it in a future release.

This worked very well for me on a compilation album that was driving me nuts! Just typing the space in album artist and clicking ok was enough. But I did go back, selected all songs, did Get Info and then remove the space, and the fix remained. Thanks for the tip!

I posted a new thread before I found this one. I purchased the album Hamilton from iTunes store. On my phone it shows up as two albums. One with two tracks and the other with the other 30 or so tracks. I learned sometime ago the trick of selecting all tracks and creating a compilation in iTunes with albums I've ripped. But do I need to do this with an album I purchased on iTunes?

I also considered making a playlist with all the tracks in the right order.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

Delete from the iPhone. Make sure the version in iTunes has a common album artist. Sync back to the iPhone.

tt2

Thanks bsteed,

I am using iTunes 12.4.3.1, and I had this same problem. Your solution worked wonders! Thank you.

Thank you sooooooooooooooooooooo very much Ay ya Yay! that is the solution!

TYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYTy!

: )

IIt's so annoying this is the 2nd time I have tried putting all my CDs on to iTunes so I can get rid of them and it's annoying now and again when I look through what has downloaded I find one cd say Madonna and it will have 1,3,5,7 and then another of the same cd which will have songs 2,4,6,8 I've tried dragging them together but it won't, why is it doing this, I must have over 100 CDs and they are taking up room, can anyone help, I've got a Windows 10 laptop.

If iTunes shows multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Get 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 iTunes 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 iTunes autocomplete from Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.

tt2