iPod/Music App in iOS5 not sorting artist list alphabetically

JarrettZerkowski wrote:

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

Wow...So much for Apple QA 😟

This is ridiculous. This bug has been around forever and "They" cannot fix it. I seriously cannot add artists let alone songs with out is screwing up my artists order and having to to delete that sql file abd having to rebuild my whole iPod. I have about 12k songs and it is a monstrous rebuild. This bug has been out since 5.0 and they still neglect to fix it. They had 5.0.1, 5.1, 5.1.1, 6.0 b1, b2, b3, b4, and GM to fix this AND NOTHING. They cannot have the lame excuse that they didn't know simply because it is on their own website!!! This is why a lot of people hate apple. Quick to shove a product out but neglect to fix past problems in the older versions or just take forever to fix them.

I know it has already been explained to me that my experiences have been the product of luck but I have completely eliminated this problem for myself by simply never using "Get Info" in iTunes to modify the id3 tags on my mp3 files. While I really do trust that you guys know a heck of a lot more than me about this stuff I have to trust my experiences more. They are as follows:

First encountered the problem when I added Florence and the Machine Ceremonials to iPhone. Everything was fine until I used iTunes to add the album art for the album. After that everything got out of whack, everything that I added after that was sorted incorrectly. I corrected the problem by restoring and once again encountered the problem when I used iTunes to modify the meta data on a file...I think the artist name this time. I fixed it again with a restore.

Since then I've added and subtracted dozens of songs/albums without ever encountering this issue again by using some other third party application to modify the id3 tags and album art before I sync the songs to my device. It was explained rather well how these two things can't possibly be related but I can't help but feel like the must be based on my experiences over the past months. I've gone months without any problems by simply not using iTunes to modify the files once they are synced to my phone. And I can't think of any other changes that could account for this. Additionally, I've synced and re-synced several of the "problem" songs/albums from before without any issues whatsoever since then.

This problem is infuriating.... like the original post, I have only been able to get rid of it by deleting all of the music on the phone and resyncing the library. I can't believe a bug like this introduced by ios 5.0 has not been fixed as of 6.0!

I have even rebuilt my whole library thinking it were corrupt and it did not solve the problem. What the **** Apple. Fix this already.... I'm just getting ready to ditch my iDevices and moving to Android. I bet they dont have this problem or had a problem like this for this long. I am FED UP

Good news (not really)! I just upgraded to an iPhone 5 from a 4S and the problem is back.

Like someone else mentioned, I switched my language settings to another, in this case Japanese, then I switched back to English. The 'artists' category was sorted properly. Now if I could only get the 'Search' to find songs I know are there but doesn't seem to find!

The only way this can be fixed is if you, and everybody else keep contacting Apple to report this critical bug.

Switching languages and finding other workaround is not an acceptable solution for a device which cost $500+.

Face it, this bug will not be fixed. Going to the Apple store will not bring it to the right attention. Following Apple's mode of support over the phone will never get you to the engineers. Replying to this thread with useful information will not progess it.

Honestly, if you want Apple to fix it, you will have to make it worthwhile to their reputation to fix this agreeably critical bug. Start bloging.

They clearly don't give a flying f*** once a product has been sold.

i had the same problem with songs

i went to itunes -> devices -> music

unchecked the box " automatically fill free space with songs"

this solved my problem even though it doesn't have much to do with the alphabetic order

hope this might help..

FINALLY FIXED!!?!?

I just upgraded to iTunes 11 (on PC), and I'm no longer having this problem. I tested by adding songs to my library, editing their tags, then syncing them. The list is no longer messed up, and no matter what I do I can't get it to mess up again!

Can others confirm that iTunes 11 fixes the problem?

ETA: I'm using iOS 5.1.1 on an iPhone 4S

I have had the same exact problem, just on a much...larger...scale. I have artists, songs, and albums "organized" seemingly at random. I have a groupd of "G's" in the Q section, The Red Hot Chili Peppers seperately put inbetween "The Killers" and "Korn"....
I don't know what to do, and im fed up. I have resynced my ipod 6 times, deleted my itunes library and reimported it, reset my ipod completely....somebody PLEASE help!

I have this same exact problem. Does nobody have the answer??

digitalscarecrows wrote:

I have this same exact problem. Does nobody have the answer??

Did you bother to read my post https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3460345?answerId=18840931022#18840931022 ?

Can anyone else confirm/deny that upgrading to the latest iTunes fixes the problem? Maybe try erase and re-sync to device after that.

It worked for me, and I had been experiencing this problem for over a year.