Sorting singles chronologically by date, not just year

Question

Level 1

9 points

Sorting singles chronologically by date, not just year

Hi, I posted earlier about the Glee singles and albums and I don't think I was clear about what I was looking for. In hybrid view, with Album by Artist/Year selected, iTunes sorts music by Artist A-Z, then within each artist, sorts by year of album release. I have SEVERAL singles (most notably the Glee problem) where within one year there are 50+ singles, plus a few albums. Right now, it will group all of the singles released in 2009, then all of the singles released in 2010, and then the singles released in 2011 with the albums mixed in. I would like to somehow set specific dates so that May 2009 singles come before June 2009 singles and so on. With this specific order, the singles would somewhat be in order according to the show. Please help. Thanks.

Posted on Mar 28, 2011 8:59 PM

Reply

Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Mar 29, 2011 3:52 AM in response to rhatchell73

The Year field in the id3 tag only supports the 4 digits of the year, and while there is a replacement property in the v2.4 specification this is not yet widely implemented, and not support by iTunes. You could use another field such as Comments or Grouping to hold the release date in a form that can be sorted as text. E.g.

yyyy-mm-dd

Depending on what other factors are taken into account when sorting it may be that this fails to put the tracks of any given single/album in the correct order so you may need to add the track number into the value. E.g.

yyyy-mm-dd.tt

This scheme won't be able to fix the general ordering in iTunes, but it would let manage a custom sort order in a playlist of all your Glee tracks.

tt2

Reply

Answer 2

rhatchell73 Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 29, 2011 5:23 PM in response to turingtest2

I'm actually kinda confused on how to manually sort by field. I've input the dates in the comment field for several different singles, but how do I let iTunes know to sort using the comment field, after Artist/Year?

Reply

Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Mar 29, 2011 5:28 PM in response to rhatchell73

iTunes doesn't let you sort by one field and then sub sort by another. Most columns sort just on the field they contain and the order of items with the same value is fairly unpredictable.

tt2

Reply

Answer 4

rhatchell73 Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 29, 2011 6:06 PM in response to turingtest2

So what would be the purpose of putting data in other fields? How would you solve this situation?

Reply

Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Mar 29, 2011 6:15 PM in response to rhatchell73

The scheme I gave you above would put all the data necessary to organise your desired sort order into one field, provided you create a playlist that only contains the tracks you want to tag in this way.

tt2

Reply