Lately CDs I am importing are coming up as compilations even though they are clearly not. Used to happen infrequently but now it is almost every CD. Have to remember to go in to Options to change. Any ideas why this is happening?
When you import a CD into iTunes, iTunes gets the information about the album from another wesbsite - Gracenote, which has nothing to do with Apple or iTunes.
Information on Gracenote is compiled by the record companies, musicians and fans. Hence, the reason the quality and standard of information can vary.
Specifically, the record companies tend to regard an album consisting of songs by one artist, but from different stages in their career, as a compilation. However, iTunes would not refer to that as a compilation. A compilation album is a collection of songs by different artists, on one album.
So Greatest Hits of "band x" may come up as a compilation when imported into iTunes. The solution for an album you are about to import is highlight the CD and select Get Info. On the pop-up that appears, make sure Compilation CD does not have a tick in the box.
For an album you have already imported, highlight the complete album and then select File/Get Info/Options and change Part of a compilation to No in the drop-down box.
My apologies, you did indeed say that you knew how to change the option.
As I stated though, Gracenote has nothing to do with Apple, and I think it's very unlikely that Apple would do anything to correct a Gracenote issue.
An album may well be new - but if whoever submits the information to Gracenote decides to mark it as a compilation, that's what it will show up as in iTunes. While it is not impossible for there to be an iTunes problem, it's more likely to be at the Gracenote end of things. So it's a matter of ruling out other causes, and hopefully narrowing down where the problem lies.
I have just imported a few albums to my iTunes, but so far I haven't experienced any issues:
When I originally imported the Kate Bush album into my Library, I recall that it showed up as a compilation. It didn't do that today, so something has changed (although it takes us no further forward).
Which albums have you had trouble with - perhaps that may help identify a common factor?
Wow, thanks for the turorial but...
I thought my post was clear that I know how to change it under Options when it comes up as compilation but I want to know why almost every CD is now coming up as a compilation? These are not Greatest Hits or anything else that could remotely be considered a compilation. These are new CDs for the most part.
I am familiar with Gracenote but again this is something more than the occasional mistake, this is happening all the time.
As I said this used to happen very infrequently but now it is practically every CD I import. If it is a Gracenote issue there is an error somewhere and Apple should get it fixed.
It is not uncommon for people to set the part of a compilation flag when there are guest/featured artists on an album as this can keep things together, however using a common Album Artist is preferred. If that data has then been uploaded to Gracenote that is the information that iTunes would download. Note that Gracenote doesn't support the Album Artist field.
tt2
Maybe it is related to if it has a "Featuring ..." . Sting's The Last Ship came up as a compilation and it has a couple featured artists.
I do a lot of importing and many do have featured artists and I don't recall them all coming up as compilations. I'll keep an eye out. Of course the batch I have to do now don't have any featured artists and all come up correct so maybe that is it.
As an aside what I've always done is delete the "Featuring ..." from the artist name and put it in the song title. So it becomes Wildfire (Feat. Frank Ocean) by John Mayer and I reenter the Artist name for the entire album so it shows as one album. The only time I do Album Artist is when it's a whole album with "Featuring" like John Fogerty's most recent. Too much trouble to change every track. Also used Album Artist for Paul McCartney when many things were Paul & Linda or Paul & Wings. Maybe a few other times but very rare. Just how I've always done it. 90GBs later I'm not going to change.
CDs coming up as compilations
