iTunes 12 combinbing albums with same name

Use the "Sort Album" field.

Let's say you have two albums both named "XYZ". You have put XYZ in the album field, right. Now put into the sort album field something like "XYZ (2005)" and "XYZ (2010)" accordingly and the two albums will be separated for sorting purposes but/and they will both still appear with only "XYZ" as the album title.

You are right, just tried it, does not work that way. I have never had your exact case, but something similar. For some albums I have two versions of the same exact album in my iTunes library, for example one ripped from CD and one ripped from vinyl. With one minor drawback I solve this like that:

For one version I append the "Sort Album" field and the "Album Artist" field (NOT the "Sort Album Artist" field!). This way I get the same album in two instances, both displayed with the same (correct) album name. Minor drawbacks: the album artist is displayed in the appended version under the album title, but that does not affect sorting, because "sort album artist" is the same. Also the artist name will be shown under every track, because it is different from the album artist, but I can live with that, distinguishing between the two albums is more important.

Also, if you care: This method is last.fm-compatible, you will still scrobble with correct tags, because the sort album and album artist fields are not used for scrobbling purposes.

I am still on OS X 10.9.5 and have the same issue.

Related: before itunes 12 I was used to put blank spaces as titles and itunes recognized them. For instance the first Peter Gabriel albums are untitled, so I had one blank space for the first, two blank spaces for the second, etc. and itunes did recognize these "titles" and sorted them out as different albums. It is rare that artists issue two albums with the same name but they often issue an album with no name, an eponymous album (think the 1983 Genesis album for instance or the first Iron Maiden album, as many other first albums). So it is quite annoying that blank spaces are not recognized anymore.

See One cover, too many tracks for my take on this issue.

tt2

Yes, this is a real pain in the backside for me too.

I have the first 4 Peter Gabriel albums on iTunes (all called Peter Gabriel), 2 Fleetwood Mac albums titled Greatest Hits (one released 1971-ish and one in 1988) and 2 Adam & The Ants albums called Dirk Wears White Sox (1979 original release and a post success cash in compilation of early singles in 1983).

...not to mention all the BBC Sessions / Greatest Hits by different artists I have, I have as well as Peter Gabriel (him again!) and R.E.M. both titling an album called Up.

The beloved space bar seemed to work wonders at the end of the title in pre iTunes 12 to separate them as intended, and now I can no longer use it. This must be a bug that I hope gets rectified in the next release?!?! Can anyone offer me help in the meantime?

I thought I would be clever and type the title (with space at the end) into a Word document and then copy and paste it back into iTunes. No joy 😟