Music app showing artists in wrong sort order

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Level 1

49 points

Music app showing artists in wrong sort order

I'm running iOS 8.2 on an iPhone 6 128GB.

In the Music app, I've noticed that some of my artists are listed under their first name when I specified their last name within my iTunes library.

I have populated both Artist and Album artist sort fields and it seems to be happening at random.

For example, I have a song by Paul Simon to which I have applied the sort "Simon, Paul" and this appears under 'S', as you'd expect. However, another track by Carly Simon (and sorted as "Simon, Carly") appears under 'C'.

Within iOS, I have my music set to 'Group by Album Artist'. I've tried removing the affected artists and re-syncing, changing the sort fields in iTunes and back again, even deleting all 4,000-plus songs and adding them back. Alas, the problem remains.

I don't particularly want to do an erase and reset to factory settings. Any thoughts?

iPhone 6, iOS 8

Posted on Mar 9, 2015 5:54 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 10, 2015 2:12 AM in response to MacChris42

Unfortunately, this is a big introduced with iOS 8.2. I, too, have the same problem. Quite frustrating, to say the least.

I highly, highly encourage you to file a bug report on this using Apple's Bug Reporter (also known as Radar), which is a direct path between you and Apple engineers. The more people who file a bug report on this, the higher priority it will be for Apple engineers to fix. All you have to do is register as an Apple Developer, which is free.

https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/using-bug-reporter/

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Answer 2

MacChris42 Author

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49 points

Mar 10, 2015 12:27 PM in response to Mr. Bellamy

Thanks for your reply. I've done as you suggested, so here's hoping... !

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Answer 3

Mar 11, 2015 12:36 AM in response to MacChris42

I have also noticed bugs with the music app after updating to iOS 8.2, though not exactly the one you mentioned.

Soon after updating my iPhone 6 to iOS 8.2, I connected it to my computer via USB cable because I wanted to transfer new music from my iTunes library to my iPhone. My iPhone, before I connected it to my computer, had about 5000 songs on it. However, after my iPhone 6 synced with iTunes, all of a sudden the amount of songs on my iPhone went down to about 2500 songs. When I looked through the Music App, I realized that only the music I had purchased from iTunes remained on my iPhone, while music ripped from my CD collection had somehow been deleted. I ended up having to transfer my whole iTunes music library to my iPhone again! This issue has to have something to do with updating to iOS 8.2, because it has never happened to me before, and iTunes hasn't been updated lately but is up to date and has worked fine.

After transfering all my music back on my iPhone again, I started noticing a major bug within the iPhone Music App. The incorrect Artist Info is displayed for many songs I purchased from iTunes. For example, I have the album "My Everything (Deluxe)" by Ariana Grande on my iPhone. Only one song from the album, "Love Me Harder", is by the artists "Ariana Grande & The Weeknd" and supposed to display as such in the artist info section in the music app. However, 13 of the 15 tracks from the album all incorrectly display "Ariana Grande & The Weeknd" in the artist info for each track in the Music App (the exception being the track "Bang Bang" which actually does display the correct artist info for that song). All these songs display the correct info on iTunes, and I even tried removing the album, and then retransfering it back to my iPhone, to no avail. This bug occurs on many tracks and albums I've purchased from iTunes, but only in the iPhone Music App, and only started after updating to iOS 8.2. Tracks ripped from my CD collection seem to be unaffected.

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Answer 4

MacChris42 Author

Level 1

49 points

Mar 11, 2015 5:32 AM in response to JorgeHeyZeus

Try 'Settings - Music' and turn on 'Group By Album Artist'. Or if it's on already, turn it off and back on again. Alternatively, double-check the 'Album artist' field for all tracks on that album in iTunes. If it says 'Ariana Grande' on each of them then it's definitely a bug that needs reporting.

For what it's worth, I also experienced the re-syncing issue, but as I was too busy trying to get the correct sort order to appear, I didn't pick up on it at the time.

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Answer 5

Mar 11, 2015 7:02 AM in response to MacChris42

All the song information is correct, the album artist is "Ariana Grande". "Group By Album Artist" is already on and turning it off and on again doesn't do anything. On the Music app, when you sort the library by album artist, all the songs are listed under "Ariana Grande", but when they are played, the artist info is incorrectly displayed as "Ariana Grande & The Weeknd". This is just one example though, and the bug seems to occur mainly when there is more than one artist on any track of an album, causing all or multiple of the album's tracks to incorrectly display as though they also have featured artists.

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Answer 6

MacChris42 Author

Level 1

49 points

Mar 11, 2015 8:10 AM in response to JorgeHeyZeus

Just a thought, but have you perhaps got your iPhone set to 'Show all music'? If so, it could be picking up the artist name from the iTunes Store rather than your library. If not, I'd suggest another bug report per the reply from Mr. Bellamy above.

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Answer 7

MacChris42 Author

Level 1

49 points

Mar 24, 2015 2:29 PM in response to Mr. Bellamy

I submitted my bug report and after a request for additional information, Apple's engineers told me that it was a duplicate of a previously submitted issue and closed it. The report which mine duplicated is also closed, so here's hoping that they've resolved it and will fix it in the next update.

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Answer 8

hardcle

Level 1

9 points

Jul 28, 2015 7:31 PM in response to MacChris42

I ran across this issue in 8.4 and through trial and error, I figured out how to fix it. It's a pain, but it works. In the affected files, delete the artist, album artist and the related sort fields. Sync. Re-enter that data. Sync again and it should now be sorted properly. I hope this helps anyone else with this issue.

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Answer 9

MacChris42 Author

Level 1

49 points

Aug 23, 2015 3:09 AM in response to hardcle

iOS 8.4.1 was supposed to address this issue but it hasn't. However, I found a more streamlined temporary workaround.

1. In the iTunes device summary tab, ensure that 'Sync only ticked songs and videos' is ticked.

2. In the iTunes Songs view, cmd+click or shift+click to highlight the affected tracks, right-click and 'untick selection'.

3. Sync device to remove those tracks

4. In the iTunes Songs view, right-click the tracks again and 'tick selection'.

5. Re-sync the device

All the artists go back to the correct order — until the next time you plug in the device when, in all likelihood, the bug will happen again regardless of whether or not you changed any music content.

With the release of iTunes 12.2.2, this bug has now been extended to the iTunes interface itself. After the update, I clicked on 'View/Only music available offline' to hide all the purchased tracks that had appeared. Within the local library, several solo artists were moved out of order and I can't get them back no matter what I put in the sort field; they stay sorted under their first names.

I've submitted two bug reports to Apple about this issue.

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Answer 10

hardcle

Level 1

9 points

Aug 23, 2015 2:53 PM in response to MacChris42

I tried your method on an artist I hadn't yet had an opportunity to fix yet and it worked. Much easier than what I described. I had to make the checkboxes visible again, though as I had never used them for anything. I disconnected my phone and synced again and the fix remains. Thanks!

I'm not seeing your issue in iTunes, however.

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Answer 11

MacChris42 Author

Level 1

49 points

Sep 27, 2015 7:31 AM in response to hardcle

Apple's engineers sent me an error reporting profile to install on iOS, in order to get to the root cause of this bug. Once I'd managed to replicate it and sync with iTunes, I checked out what it had to say.

It seems that it doesn't happen during a sync at all, but when the iOS device periodically contacts Apple to update the artist 'hero' images that appear in the Music app.

Once again, they closed my report as a duplicate of a 'known issue'. Since it's still happening in iOS 9, I hope they get on to it. As straightforward as it is, the workaround is still an inconvenience.

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