Compilation album issues in iTunes and iOS7

So it seems that Apple changed something in iTunes 11.?.? and iOS7 that affects compilations and the way they're indexed in the library.

Just so you know who you're dealing with here I'll start out by saying that I'm a music library nerd. I make sure all of my tags are good and proper before I add stuff to my library. I'm also the kind of guy that likes to make my own compilation albums. I'll choose a bunch of songs I want to hear, adjust the sound levels, sort out proper mp3 tags, make an album cover and add it to my library with my name as the Album Artist and the album marked as a compilation. This lists them all under "Graham" so they're easy to find in my library and it was a good way of doing things for a long time, but since a recent iTunes update there are a lot of issues doing it this way.

iTunes Issue 1: If I search for a band that has one song on the compilation using the search box, it finds the band but says there are 20 songs by them. In other words, the search returns all of the songs on the album as being by that artist, even if the Album Artist is completely different from the song Artist.

iTunes Issue 2: If I go to the Artists tab, it lists my name as an artist and all of the compilation's songs as being by me, rather than the individual artist of the song. It used to list all of the artists on the compilation, now it seems to list the artists by Album Artist instead of Artist, if the file has an Album Artist in its tag. Adjusting the View Options does nothing to change this.

So to try and remedy the situation I experimented with different mp3 tag strategies and various view options, and the solution that I found is to remove myself as the album artist, leaving it blank. This causes the compilation to be listed under Various Artists, which I can deal with, and it seems to solve the search issue (it returns the correct number of songs) as well as the artist listing problem (all artists appear in the artist view) . So that's good.

BUT...

If I copy the compilations that are properly listed over to my iPhone 5 there are still issues with them in the iOS7 Music app.

iOS7 Music app issues: Because the compilations have no album artist (removed to get the compilations listed properly in iTunes,) in the Album view they're listed under Unknown Artist (why not Various Artists like in iTunes?), and in the Artist view none of the artists show up at all if Group By Album Artist is turned on, which I believe it is by default. If you turn it off, it lists all of the artists, great, but that's when things get really weird. If I click on an artist that has a song on one of the compilations, the next screen I get seems to be for any other random artist on the same compilation. For example, I click ABBA and the page that opens is titled Air Supply. There are some ABBA songs in the list, but there is also an Air Supply song. If I click on Alan Parsons Project the next page that opens is titled Ace. If I click on Ambrosia the next page that opens is titled Alan Parsons Project, and it lists 1 song by Alan Parsons and 2 songs by Hall and Oates - no Ambrosia songs at all! It's totally crazy and seems completely random.

All of this feels really buggy.

Has anyone else experienced it? Anyone have a solution? Should I submit this as a bug?

And now my two cents: Apple, please let us know when you're going to change stuff like this. There are a lot of people out there who have spent a lot of time organizing their potentially vast music collections using your software, and when you make a bunch of big changes it would be great if you could let us know. That's all.

Thanks to anyone who has any feedback or advice.

Graham