how to stop iTunes from breaking up albums

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how to stop iTunes from breaking up albums

how to stop iTunes from breaking up albums? Right now if the album has songs with different supporting artists the song is put in another album, etc.

Posted on Jan 12, 2013 12:54 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

274,147 points

Jan 12, 2013 12:59 PM in response to sumar

Ideally before ripping into iTunes select the tracks displayed and press ctrl-i to Get Info, otherwise do it after the fact.

On the Info tab set the Album Artist. For compilations use Various Artists and then on the Options tab set Part of a compilation to Yes.
For a multi-disc album use the same Album title for each disc and set correct Disc X of Y values.

For more info. see Grouping tracks into albums.

tt2

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Answer 2

sumar Author

Level 1

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Jan 12, 2013 1:54 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks "turingtest2", I think I was not clear what I am asking for. I know what to do but I refuse to do it. I think if I purchase an Album, the Album in its entirety should be stored in my iTunes library in one place. Period.Same goes for the copy, rip, etc. Libraruy should be organized like this: ALBUM->DISKXXX->ALBUM ARTIST->ARTIST(feat). If the ALBUM is just a one disk, DISKXXX can be omitted.Right now it is done this way only, or in most cases for compilations.

If the user needs to do this for one album it may not be seen as a big problem but if you try to reorganize your whole iTunes library, it could be 1000s of albums. The iCloud makes it even worse as you get various iTunes libraries sync with iCloud. If I sync to my iPhone or iPad, or iPod an album, I am very frustrated if when I try to use it I see only 3 songs. I most cases you would have no iCloud access yhen, no Wi-Fi, so you are stuck with 3 songs for the whole night.

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Answer 3

AKSHA

Level 1

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Jan 12, 2013 2:33 PM in response to sumar

Breaking up the album in this way means each disk appears separately, which seems odd for an album.
When using a multi CD audio book, it is a way to distinguish disk 1 track 1 from disk 2 track 1. The recent version of ITunes will otherwise play every track 1 then every track 2 and thus be out of sequence.

This also holds true for the versions later than 5.0.1 of the ipod/ ipad software.

For music, I remove the number of the CD after I rip. For audio books I would leave it.

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

274,147 points

Jan 12, 2013 2:50 PM in response to sumar

I don't write the software. I'm a fellow user trying to help you get the best out of it the way it is. I'm here because when I first started uploading my media to iTunes I was frustrated over the same sorts of issues and had to work out the answers for myself. I stuck around to share. You're welcome to let them know at iTunes Feedback that you'd like improvements, but they are likely to be slow in coming.

iTunes uses the Gracenote CDDB database to fetch track information for CDs you insert. Last time I checked Gracenote doesn't supply the Album Artist field, but you can complete it in a few seconds when you want to. CDDB often names multi-disc albums something like The Album - CD1 and The Album - CD 2 but using the scheme I outlined above will merge them into one.

iTunes sees each unique combination of Album and Album Artist, or Album and Artist if Album Artist is blank, as a separate object. That is why including "Feat. Artist" in the Artist field with no Album Artist set breaks things up. You either live with the way it works or workaround it. If you set up iTunes with the column browser showing you can display the relevant fields and rapidly step through each Album title fixing problem albums as you come across them...

tt2

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

274,147 points

Jan 12, 2013 2:48 PM in response to turingtest2

See Audiobooks on iPods and One cover for multi-disc album for more thoughts on both topics...

tt2

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Answer 6

sumar Author

Level 1

1 points

Jan 12, 2013 3:10 PM in response to AKSHA

That is another problem, keeping ALBUMS fragmented not ALBUM-CD1, etc the playlists are ruined. The playlist should also be organized per real ALBUMS as priority, unless user like to reorganize it some other ways. If I have in iCloud several versions of the same album, lets say one device plays ACC file but the other only MP3, you may end up having both versions grouped together with no means of spliting this using playlist, etc.

Also please note each time you modify anything in your library, the iTune Much will upload/download it to iCloud and each transfer costs $$. I used to be fine with about 30 GB each month, now 120 seems not to be enough. And I am not even talking about movies, just the music.

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Answer 7

sumar Author

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1 points

Jan 12, 2013 3:10 PM in response to turingtest2

Yes I understand you are trying to help, I do apreciate that, and I think we all do. Thanks for that.

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Answer 8

turingtest2

Level 10

274,147 points

Jan 12, 2013 3:23 PM in response to sumar

I don't have Match so that isn't an issue for me, but I can see how that would aggravate the problem. Different people have different uses for playlists, but clustering albums together in the correct track order can be done using the suggested naming scheme and sorting on the Album column. To keep different versions of the same album separated you need to give each a distinct album title, e.g. The Album [AAC] and The Album [MP3].

tt2

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