When a song is marked as part of a compilation I can't search on artist

I just bought a 160GB iPod to sync with my car and have all my music available. However, the seems to be an ongoing issue with the iPod software (Ver 4.3.5).

When I list the library by artist or search for songs by a specific artist the songs won't show up if the songs are marked as part of a compilation. A search of discussions shows this problem has existed since 2006 (see excerpt below) and hasn't been resolved. Any chance Apple will fix this?

This same problem is not evident on my iPhone 4.

I have completely organized my itunes library so every song has an artist, but when i go looking for that song in my ipod under that artist it is not there. It is though in the list of songs. Why is the song not showing up under the artist?

Also, sometimes a particular artist will show up two times in my ipod with different albums correlating to each artist listing. What the ****?

ipod 30 GB 5th gen; Dell XPS 400, Other OS, Windows XP Pro Media Center edition

Correct Answer by Zevoneer on Jul 29, 2006 10:56 AM

This isn't foolproof but there are usually two things that contribute to songs not appearing under Artist on the iPod, both due to information either in or missing from the Get Info>Info tab against the song in iTunes. 1) the song is marked as part of a compilation or 2) it is missing an album name.

If the tracks are ticked in the Get Info>Info tab as part of a compilation, they will not appear under Artist on the iPod. Highlight a song in iTunes that you know is not appearing correctly on your iPod. Right click on it and choose Get Info and click the Info tab (alternatively choose Get Info from the File menu), if "Part of a Compilation" is marked untick it and afterwards update your iPod, you should find it now appears as normal. Compilations are stored in a separate folder in iTunes so the songs don't appear inside the normal Artist>Album folder which may be why this happens.