itunes 11 not sorting songs alphabetically

Hello

I am going crazy.

i am in "artist" mode. I like to see the artists list in the left column, and the albums artworks in the right window, with all the songs titles next to them.

this is what happens.

case 1:

songs dont have any info in the "song number" field. that is mainly because of the way i ripped them ages ago. however songs do have sorting info in the file name, i.e. 01-title, 02-title, etc. songs are shown in the correct order. songs are played randomly.

case 2.

songs dont have any info in the "song number" field. that is mainly because of the way i ripped them ages ago. however songs do have sorting info in the file name, i.e. 01-title, 02-title, etc. songs are not shown in the correct order and are not played in the correct order.

WHY????

thanks everyone

this all went tits up since 2 updates ago. before then, everything worked fine.

please dont tell me to go from the top of my library and manually add all the info in the "songs number" field because that would make me crazy!

Downgrade to 10.7 thats what I had to do. I love when companies make decisions for me in my best interest....

filus wrote:

case 1:

songs dont have any info in the "song number" field. that is mainly because of the way i ripped them ages ago. however songs do have sorting info in the file name, i.e. 01-title, 02-title, etc. songs are shown in the correct order. songs are played randomly.

case 2.

songs dont have any info in the "song number" field. that is mainly because of the way i ripped them ages ago. however songs do have sorting info in the file name, i.e. 01-title, 02-title, etc. songs are not shown in the correct order and are not played in the correct order.

WHY????

Turn off Shuffle.

Click the blue crossed arrows at the end of the song title in the LCD area at top of iTunes.

Or iTunes menu Control > Shuffel - Trun shuffle off.

Without seeing some screenshots and the details of the sort & non-sort fields it is hard to guess exactly what is going on. Perhaps date added is being used when the proper track & disc numbers aren't there.

I wouldn't suggest manually updating the tracks, but if the relevant data exists in the sort field writing a script to copy it into the track number field would be something I could do. You can see some of my other scripts here.

tt2

I've used some of your scripts before, very helpful, so THANK YOU!

If they have a similar problem to mine the only fix I found was downgrading.

My library is almost all Live music and as such is not tagged. The files are dated in a specific way to make them sort properly. When they updated iTunes, they took that ability away and the only fix I could find was downgrade....

Good Luck!!

Thanks for your reply.

I would rule out the date/time explanation as we are talking about tracks of the same album, which were obviously added together at the same time. Also, as I said this didn't use to happen.

I tried to add screenshot but it didnt seem to work, will try again later.

Thanks for your reply.

I forgot to mention CASE 3 in which: Songs have info in the "song number" field. Songs are played in the correct order 😉

filus wrote:

Thanks for your reply.

I would rule out the date/time explanation as we are talking about tracks of the same album, which were obviously added together at the same time. Also, as I said this didn't use to happen.

I tried to add screenshot but it didnt seem to work, will try again later.

Specifically, if iTunes isn't subsorting albums on Sort Name when there are no track numbers then it is probably sorting on the order in which items were attached to the library. In general that order can be pretty random as it depends on the order in which the operating system handed them to iTunes when iTunes scanned the folder.

My general tips on organizing things can be found at Grouping tracks into albums.

tt2

I guess your explanation makes sense.

I had seen your tips page, however my point is on the note of "if it's not broken don't fix it".
Why overturning decades of solid, simple, commonly understood, universally accepted alphabetical sorting???

As I said, and probably I am making a matter of principle out of this, I can't be bothered to edit all my files. Especially given that (since iTunes 11 I believe) that nice "next" button in the info mask is now gone. What I mean is that in the past you could access the info of a song, edit them, and move to the next song (or previous) without exiting the mask, just by clicking on one of the two buttons in the bottom (right corner to go to next song, left corner to go to previous song). Now you have to close the mask, select the next song manually, re access the info, and so on and so forth. It takes ages and loads of more clicking moving fiddlign about. Plain stupid.

Id like to clarify that if I am in "song" mode rather than "artist", everything works fine, i.e. the songs are ordered alphabetically (when song no. isnt specified), or according to their song number tag when this is available. So in theory I am somehow able to play the songs in the appropriate order, but why do I have to renounce to see all the nice album covers??

Go to the location of the track on your PC, not iTunes, right click on the track and go to PROPERTIES, then DETAILS, and then unde MEDIA click # (track number) and make sure you set the track numbers in order. Its too bad you have to do it individually for all tracks but there has got to be a way to set track numbers for all tracks with one click. Okay, so as long as all the track numbers are in order 1,2,3... or however you want them to be because thats how iTunes sorts them. YOU MUST do this before you create a playlist in iTunes and if you already did, you may have to delete all tracks and follow the instrustions and then load em up in iTunes again. Hope this helps.

funjabi wrote:

Go to the location of the track on your PC, not iTunes, right click on the track and go to PROPERTIES, then DETAILS, and then unde MEDIA click # (track number) and make sure you set the track numbers in order.

Just do this in iTunes.

YOU MUST do this before you create a playlist in iTunes and if you already did, you may have to delete all tracks and follow the instrustions and then load em up in iTunes again.

Thias is not a must.

You can do all of this after the files are in iTunes.

Hello

If you want Songs within an album to appear ordered as you want you have to use the track Number, this is the way iTunes sort them, so changing the track number will change the sorting order of the song.

If you select all album songs, get info and delete track number...(checking the box and leave track empty).... Songs apear sorted alphabeticaly.

By the way it is like that (track number) that they are ordered on the CD that you have imported...... 😀

Regards

OK ... I've figured out how to custom sort iTunes within an album. I mentioned in a previous post that I liked to sort Albums my own speacial way (by Digital Booklet, then Music Videos, then Album Content, then "Bonus Tracks" or Cover Versions etc).

It was possible in i10, because the "Sort Name" field would override everything else - but that no longer works. You need to use "Sort Album" instead. Have a look at the screenshot. The Sort Artist for everything is Lady Gaga, and the Sort Album Artist for everything is Lady Gaga too. The album name is the same through the whole album, but the "Sort Album" is customised how I wish.

Digital Booklet: Album Year(1)

Music Videos: Album Year(2)

Album Content: Album Year(3)

Bonus Tracks/Covers etc: Album Year(4)

Non-Music Videos Video (Live Versions): Album Year(5)

You can obciously create your own sort order, but as long as you number the Sort Album field in some way, and and the rest of the album data is consistent between all tracks, iTunes will sort any one particular album how you wish.

It's not ideal but it let's you sort however you want, and is relatively easy to apply system wide. It's taken a long time to figure it out and put together within my own library - but there you go. Let me know if you have any questions.