Artist vs. Album Artist in iTunes 11

Album Artist is needed to join together the tracks of an album where guest artists are involved. I suspect the new artist view is designed to reduce the clutter that would be introduced if all non-album artists were included. Note too that in the new scheme selecting an artist lists just the albums where the artist is the album artist. Tracks on compilations by the same artist are listed elsewhere under the relevant album artist. This keeps albums grouped together as complete entities. Obviously this isn't going to be to everyone's taste.

If your tracks are write protected or you lack write permissions, which can sometimes happen after migrating your library, iTunes may appear to accept an update but not actually perform it. A similar result can occur with special cases of multiple tags where iTunes updates one tag, but reads back values from another.

tt2

Select an album or two of tracks that won't behave, right-click and use Convert > ID3 Tags > None, repeat at least twice, then use Convert > ID3 Tags > ID3v2.3. You will need to reapply artwork. If you use my CreateFolderArt script first the artwork should still be in the folder, ready to be reinserted by the script after you've cleaned the tags. Tips on how to use the scripts at the top of the scripts page.

For myself I treat the composer of classical music as the Artist/Album Artist. For general tips on getting stuff sorted in iTunes see Grouping tracks into albums.

tt2

Oh drat! Another useful feature that's been removed! 😠

You should be able to achieve the same ends with MediaMonkey. Meant to add it's only relevant to mp3 files.

tt2

That's the idea... 😉

Test it with a single album first to prove the concept.

tt2

iPod classic ignores album artist, on an iOS device you can select Use Album Artists, or not. 😉

tt2

I've just stumbled across the same issue. I found that the CDs I had imported did not have the album artist populated. I set the album artist value, leaving the artist unchanged (sometimes with multiple artists if the song had some colaboration). This resolved my issue and left me with one album in the album view which is what I wanted.

Hope this helps.

For classical music, why don't you use the composer field? I am curious about how replacing the album artists what the composer does interms of organizing music?

With classical music I'm generally more interested in the composer than the orchestra, conductor or soloist. In my library I have filled out the artist and album artist for all tracks, whereas the composer field is somewhat patchy. I could use the composer menus in iTunes or on my iDevices, but then I'd be wading through a jumble of multiple composers that are listed on my many non-classical tracks for the classical composers I might be looking for. You don't have to agree with me, I'm just telling you what I do.

tt2

I see your point. I am just trying to figure out if there is a better way to organizing classical music. I might try your method. For me I have many of the same classical works but by different orchestras and conductors.

All I want to do is simply tell my iPhone to sort by "Artist" instead of "Album Artist".

In the Music app settings there is a "Sorting" section where you choose between "Artist" and "Title". However, choosing "Artist" is actually choosing "Album Artist". As the OP says, this field is USELESS for sorting...and is especially DETRIMENTAL for sorting classical music albums.

I have hundreds of classical albums and I don't want to manually go into each one and delete the "Album Artist" field for a few reasons:

1. What a pain!

2. It looks like it might revert back

3. That information is useful to know...but not for sorting purposes

It seems every time iTunes is "updated" it becomes less useful. So disappointing.

While I appreciate the poster who talked about ID3 tags, this just sounds too technical to me. This issue should not require a workaround.