artists list ignores album artist field

This is something that has annoyed me also. As with several things on the iPod and iTunes you have to change the information around to force it to do what you want. The way I fixed this was to change all of the Artist fields to the album artist and append the contributing artist onto the track Title field in brackets. I no longer use the Album Artist field at all.

For example on the Andrea Bocelli album Sogno the tracks were listed as:

Title: Canto Della Terra, Artist: Andrea Bocelli, Album Artist: Andrea Bocelli

Title: The Prayer, Artist: Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion, Album Artist: Andrea Bocelli

Title: O Mare E Tu, Artist: Andrea Bocelli and Dulce Pontes, Album Artist: Andrea Bocelli

This worked fine on iTunes and in the Cover Flow setting of my iPod Classic, but the Artist setting showed each seperately. I then changed the info to:

Title: Canto Della Terra, Artist: Andrea Bocelli, Album Artist: <blank>

Title: The Prayer [with Celine Dion] Artist: Andrea Bocelli, Album Artist: <blank>

Title: O Mare E Tu [with Dulce Pontes], Artist: Andrea Bocelli, Album Artist: <blank>

This is quite tedious, and really should be unnecessary. After all, isn't that what the Album Artist field is there for? But there really aren't very many options that can be set on the iPod classic software.

Hope this helps

Don't need to be tedious if you want to blank out Artist Album.

You can also

1. select all the Artist - Andrea Bocello.

2. Right click (Windows) or Control (Mac) - Click on the "Get Info".

3. Click on the Album Artist field and blank out the data.

4. Click ok.

Good Luck!

This work on iTunes 8 and 9 series.

You're looking at a feature 😟. iOS 5 has finally addressed the Artists vs. Album Artists issues on iOS devices but I've no reason to expect any change in the behaviour of the classic line. IIRC iTunes gained an Album Artist field back with about version 7.1 in 2007 but the iPod firmware was never updated to allow Album Artist to link tracks with different guest artists. See my article on Grouping tracks into albums for tips on how to organise your library for best effect on your iPod.

Ah, reading your orignal post again I see you have an iPhone, in which case upgrading to iOS 5 should at least sort that one out. 🙂

tt2

I believe the recall is for a battery issue. Chance of a firmware revision is almost non-existent. I've suggested elsewhere that, since iTunes writes out the database for the iPod, it could be fixed in iTunes without a firmware update. It would just be a matter of implementing out workaround "on the fly" as the data is written out to device without actually changing any tags. Again I doubt it will ever happen.

tt2

I was having exactly the same issues, followed tee mac and Bilbo's advice, cleared the field for "Album Artist" on the tracks that were annoying me, and voila! The artist appears where/as it should, the album artwork is intact, and I am a happy boy (as in Beat Farmers). BTW do this in your Music Library as well (I know, tedious, but results make you feel better), just in case Apple doesn't get this figured out.

GO PACK

The "fix" is moving the guest/feature artist into the track name so that Artist can be the Album Artist. There is no need to clear the Album Artist field also. The iPod classic ignores the field, iTunes and iOS devices can use Album Artist, but fall back to Artist if Album Artist is empty.

tt2

Since i just got an iPod Classic too this question bothered me a lot, too!

After some researching i have fun a workaround that works for me really well!

what you do is you download the free apple script this tag that tag.

what you then want to do ist go to your itunes library go to songs ( so all your songs are shown) and sort it by album artist.

now you select all track that have an album artist and open this tag that tag and set it to copy album artist to compser. click Proceed and then it automatically copies all the album artists to the composer field

after this tag that tag ist finished go on with part 2

second part: select all tracks that dont have an album artist. go to this tag that tag and select copy artist to composer

after this you can just use the composer field on your ipod classic as the Sort by Album Artist option.

Beware that this will overwrite all your previous composers !

Also your complete Music library has to be resynced to your ipod!

other downsides are that you have to manually edit it for new tracks but thats not too big of an effort or you can just repeat the process on a playlist that has your latest added songs.

I hope i could help you !

(of course this is only my suggestion and im not resposible in any way if this messes up your itunes Library - it worked great for me though!)

Here is the link to THIS TAG THAT TAG:

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=thistagthattag

Message was edited by: bornheimarne

Now There also exists an apple script that automates keeping your iTunes playlist up to date with my method.

Credit for this Script goes to Doug Adams - i had the basic idea but used one of his scripts as my starting point and then he helped me get it working - Thanks Doug! http://dougscripts.com/itunes/

How to use this script:

Create a smart playlist in iTunes that has all tracks of the past 7 days in it.

Paste the name of the playlist in the "name of playlist" field in the apple script

Put the whole script in Apple Script Editor and save it.

Now create a calendar event that is repeated every week. In the field alarm you can choose " open file" and select your apple script in this field.

Your calendar app now runs this script weekly and automatically edits the album artist ( and if there's no album artist the regular artist) into your composer field.

i hope you guys find this usefull and it helps some people !

Regards Arne

This is the script:

tell application "iTunes"

set sel to every track in playlist "name of playlist"

if sel is not {} then -- if tracks are selected...

set ofi to fixed indexing

set fixed indexing to true

with timeout of 300000 seconds

repeat with this_track in sel

try

if this_track's album artist is not "" then

tell this_track to set composer to (get this_track's album artist)

else

tell this_track to set composer to (get this_track's artist)

end if

end try

end repeat

end timeout

set fixed indexing to ofi

else

display dialog "No tracks have been selected." buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1 with icon 0 giving up after 30

end if -- no selection

end tell