iPod/Music App in iOS5 not sorting artist list alphabetically

I think it might be how many songs you have, my cousin has the IOS.1.1 update and she synced her iPod and it put about 1000 songs, then when she synced it again to put the whole 5000 ish songs on it it jumbled the artists up. So until they fix it, limited songs I guess

I think it has something to do with when you edit the tags on the files by using the Edit Info (or whatever it's called) option in iTunes. And I think this has been mentioned in this thread previously.

For me the problem first started when I synced a new albmum to my phone and then used iTunes to add the album art. As soon as I did that everything was out of whack, everything that I synced after that went out of order.

I wiped and restored and everything was fine for a while, I was syncing new stuff and it was staying in order, until I again used iTunes to update the tags on a file (or multiple files I don't remember). This time I think I was trying to change an artist name. And things got all out of order again.

So then I wiped and restored one last time, and I have synced a fair amount of new stuff since, but I haven't ever used iTunes to modify the tags on the files and all has been well. Now I make sure that the tags and album art are all accurate before I sync. There are plenty of tools for ID3 tag management. This has been my solution and I suspect for others as well as I believe this has been mentioned maybe even a few times throughout this thread. I haven't read through the whole thing since I first found it.

rubberchicken17, the problem with that approach is if you edit your files outside of iTunes, it's somewhat of a crapshoot if iTunes will pick up the changes.

From my further investigation, it seems like the problem is with iphone/ipod sqlite db's index. The order in which you see your albums/artists/tracks is how it is in the index. Whatever generates that index, does it wrong. So far I'm not sure yet if iTunes generates it and uploads it to the device or if device generates it on its own.

That's interesting about the sqlite db index. I'm not a DBA or a developer but I'm enough of a technologist to know that sounds like a place that would cause behavior like this.

I don't think it's a crapshoot though..before I sync the files I get them updated the with all of the correct information. Then I'm transfer files with known-good ID3 tags and album art and not relying on iTunes to edit them after they are synced. Maybe I've just been lucky so far but this approach seems to be working for me.

I think you've been mostly lucky here.

The problem with your "solution" 😉 is that iphone/ipod does not read ID3 tags directly from each file. It reads music data from that sqlite db.

If you can download /User/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/MediaLibrary.sqlitedb from your iphone/ipod, you'll see that it contains all the metadata about your music/videos. If you modify that file using an appropriate sqlitedb tool, re-upload it, reboot your device and after it rebooted you'll see your changes, even though you did not modify ID3 tags.

When you transfer music with iTunes, in addition to sending files, what it also does is somehow update or tell your device to update that MediaLibrary.sqlitedb file.

Hmm...ok. Well in that case, I'll just keep wiping and restoring every time it goes wonky.

I think what you have described might explain the behavior I was experiencing when I was experimenting with files when I first encountered this problem. I dunno, I used to really enjoy digging into stuff like this and figuring it out but I guess I'll just keep waiting for somebody smarter than me to figure it out and keep hoping I stay lucky or just avoid syncing new stuff for a while.

Instead of doing a full on wipe and resync, just delete that sqlitedb file, reboot and sync. You won't have to waste time re-uploading/re-encoding all of your music. iTunes somehow detects that the actual files are already there and it will just resend metadata. That kind of proces takes 5-10min vs hours I'd have to spend to re-encode/upload all my music. See my post here http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/52977/after-ios-5-1-1-my-ipod-doesnt-li st-artists-albums-in-the-correct-order/53079#53079

That makes sense. I will do that! That should also fix the problem I'm having now where my phone thinks a song is synced when it in fact is not.

Hallelujia! I did the language thing and it worked! Here's what I did; so everything was nice and organised until I added new music and the Artists all got out of order. I only added 3 songs and it became a disaster. So I closed the music app in the background, I went into the settings and changed the language to Chinese (be sure to memorize the path to get there cause unless you read Chinese, it will be difficult to navigate yourself through the menus and set it back) and rebooted. Then went back to settings, put it back to English, and rebooted again. Now it worked for me, I hope it works for everyone else who has this issue, but I hate that we have to jump through ******** hoops to get a $600 iPhone to do something so basic that requires burning calories to fix. C'mon Apple, ***?

This is all well and good, but how can I delete the sqlitedb file from my iPhone without jailbreaking it?

thisproductisbroken wrote:

This is all well and good, but how can I delete the sqlitedb file from my iPhone without jailbreaking it?

Tried iphonebrowser as is?

If it doesn't work, I guess the other choice is to bug Apple to fix this problem.(Doing factory reset and resyncing each time is not an acceptable solution.)

What the heck is iphonebrowser???? Whenever i try search info about it, it just tries to sell me some crappy web browser.

Please help me understand this SQLite thing! I am a developer n00b (ie, never done any before) but I simply must get this fixed. I have already got a new phone under warranty once so they won't give me another one, and dealing with apple is a headache (and by the sounds of it, they really don't care about this problem)

Okay, after a bit of hunting I found out what iPhone browser is. Unfortunately looks like a windows product (I have a Mac). And at any rate, iphonebrowser looks like it is only geared up for jailbroken iPhones anyway.

Eureka! I did it!

I pretty much did everything you said in the link to in your post (I used iPhone Explorer, I had to hunt for an app that worked on 10.5.8). Deleted the sqlite file. Rebooted, didn't even have to change the "Sort Show" field, the genius backup seemed to redo it all for me

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS WORKAROUND. (although the fact that this issue has persisted for almost 6 months with no resolution in sight, this will be the last apple product I ever buy)

This bug is still prestent in iOS 6 GM with iTunes 10.7