iOS 7: iPad Music Album Bug

I'm in complete agreement that the Albums view on the iPad for iOS 7 is in need of serious rehab; i.e., the single criteria for ordering the Albums view should be the album name. Compilations, various artists, unknown artists, etc. are extraneous attributes.

iTunes itself proves out this point in the Albums view of iTunes 11 with the movie soundtrack, "The Insider." In the Albums view of iTunes 11, this album appears alphabetically within the I's. The album artist is blank, and each song displays the artist performing that song. No songs are unattributed to a specific artist.

On my iPad with iOS 7, the Albums view supposedly sorts by artist first. However "The Insider" appears at the top of the albums list with Unknown Artist in the center column.* Two issues are exposed in this result: Albums should be sorted by album name even if the iPad's Music app has not duplicated the "Various Artists" tag or doesn't have logic to sort Compilations. At the very least, albums with Unknown Artist should appear in the U's alphabetically.

Finally, in any view displaying tracks for a single album, the track listing should remain in tact numerically and the artist of the track should be displayed as in iTunes 11 on the Mac. Instead, the Artist view of, "The Insider" displays the following, and this album cannot be played in track order because the tracks are not sorted numerically in any view:

After taking the leap to update my iPhone 5 with iOS 7, I've got good news for the iPhone but more bad news for the iPad:

1. The iPhone iOS 7 Music app correctly sorts the Albums view by Album Title alone.
2. The iPad iOS 7 Music app is not only sorting albums by artist then sorting the tracks within that album also by artist... The iPad iOS 7 Music app is not correctly sorting the tracks of albums with a single artist.

Example of this additional issue of track sorting: Jonny Lang's, "Fight For My Soul." Jonny Lang is the single artist on every song, and the iTunes purchase also placed his name in the Album Artist field.

Yet on the iPad, the tracks are not listed in numerical order, and there is no way to resort the album. I cannot find the attribute that causes these tracks to be sorted in this order.

Same thing for me. I am really surprised as it seems a very basic feature. I can't understand Apple did not spot it yet.

A setting reset (Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset All Settings) cured all these issues for me. You'll have to re-enter your Apple ID and other passwords again, but it's worth it to have the Music app function correctly. I actually like the new Music app now 🙂

great, thanks, that has been the solution for me too!

Now, something I can't do anything about it, I find IOS 7 quite slow on iPad 2 :-(

Personally, I'd rather not have Albums sort by Albums alone.

The reason for this is that under the Artists view, Apple has decided that playback should carry over from one album to the next automatically. Thus, the Albums view is the only way to play a single Album. Hence, I still prefer to have my Album view sorted by Artist first, Album second (actually, I'd really prefer it to have Artist first, Year second like in iTunes 11, but I digress).

iTunes 11:

If we could disable the automatic carry-over from one album to the next under "Artists" view, I would agree with you whole-heartedly.

Just my $0.02.

Thanks AndyL1966, this sorted the issue for me perfectly. I was sceptical at first and essentially in denial - it kind of annoys me that all those finely tweaked settings are gone now (wifi passwords, wallpapers and countless other things) but you are dead right - it is a small price to pay for properly sorted albums!

Great, this has been breaking me since I updated my iPad too. Again as others mentioned iPhone is fine. Also I hate how the albums don't display in a grid form like in previous iOS.

This is driving me nuts and Andy's suggestion didn't work for me. 😟

For movies, broadway shows, operas, symphonies, etc., sorting by track number is important. Not so good sorting by artist.

Since all my albums are broadway shows and operas, I am very very frustrated. Almost to the point of admitting my wife's choice of alternate product seems appealing.

Wholeheartedly agree with you there re:artists then year; after all, this is how I have my physical CD library sorted at home.

I was hoping a minor update from Apple would resolve the issue, but I finally gave in and performed the Reset - Reset All Settings. All is well.

it's sorted by noob DESC !!!

Simple work-around that doesn't require "Reset all Settings" (or even a reboot), but only works for one album at a time:

1. Open the album in the Music app (so that its out-of-order track listings are visible).

2. Double-click the home button, so that you see the scrollable view of open apps.

3. Flick the Music app upward so that it is unloaded from memory.

4. Re-open the Music app. The first thing that it does when it loads back into memory is sort the visible album by track number.

5. To do this for other albums, repeat the whole procedure.

This is clearly a bug and the work-around is some kind of accident that takes advantage of a check that the Music app performs when it is first loaded. I don't plan to do this for all my albums at once (what a pain that would be!), but it's not too much of a burdon to do it right before listening to one. After all, an album takes about an hour to play, and this voodoo dance takes a couple of seconds. In a few years, I might fix my whole collection.

Deleting all the music and re-loading it onto the device would probably work too (seeing how this is such a transient thing), but I haven't tried it.