How to join different artist names in one artist entry

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How to join different artist names in one artist entry

Hello everyone,
I'm trying to join different groups in Artists view in iTunes (and my iPod Classic if possible), is that possible?

To clarify the situation, I will give an example - I have J Dilla in my music library, but his collaborations with other artists are naturally listed with different artist names in their ID3 tags, such as Jaylib. I would like to see all these entries in Artist view joined together underneath the entry "J Dilla" rather than going through all these other entries in my library because they make quite a big mess, and it's becoming harder to find things in my iPod (I have to go through like 10 different entries for a single artist).
No, I don't want to change the "Album Artist" or the "Artist" tag for all these albums because they are the original tags for them

If this is possible to do, how?
Also another question regarding this one: Can we make the compilations appear in their respective album artists' entries in iPod Classic rather than individual entries created for different artists? (No, I don't want to use "Various Artists" because there is an artist who has created the compilation, so the compilation must go underneath his name in Artists view)

This capture right above is how I *must* store this compilation in iTunes in order to avoid 19 different artist names appearing in my iPod artists view. I can't put this album under the entry "Four Tet" in my iPod's Artists view unless all the songs are credited (in a wrong way) to Four Tet.

Thanks in advance

iPod classic, Windows 8

Posted on May 29, 2015 8:31 AM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

Level 10

272,761 points

May 29, 2015 8:50 AM in response to Braxium

The iPod classic doesn't process the Album Artist field. For an album to link properly on an iPod classic either each track needs to have the same value for Artist, or each track must be marked as a compilation (Album is a compilation of songs by various artists).

There are long standing limitations in the way that both iTunes & the iPod handle multiple artists, within albums and on individual tracks, that are unlikely to be addressed any time soon. Like it or not you probably need to settle on a tagging scheme that gives the best compromise between linking the tracks in a way which makes it possible to find & play all content by a given primary artist, and still preserves the significant information about each performance.

See Grouping tracks into albums for more information.

tt2

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Answer 2

Braxium Author

Level 1

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May 31, 2015 12:27 AM in response to turingtest2

Alright then, I will need to ruin my scrobbles to Last.fm D: Though it's nice to know that there isn't a solution at all. It bothered me a lot trying to find one.
Thanks

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

272,761 points

May 31, 2015 3:09 AM in response to Braxium

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

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Answer 4

the fiend

Level 7

22,506 points

May 31, 2015 12:16 PM in response to Braxium

Perhaps this might be a solution or simply give you an idea you can adapt:

Create a Smart Playlist that automatically adds to itself any song with the Artist name containing any of the variations that you encounter and name the Playlist J Dilla. Then you would simply need to look in Playlists/J Dilla to find all your chosen songs together. No need to alter any of the tags and once you've set up the Playlist, no extra work to do every time you add more songs to your Library (unless the artist chooses yet another variation). If you have a lot of Playlists, you could either:

type the playlist name in capitals, to make it obvious, or
drop that Playlist into a Playlist Folder named (for example) ARTISTS. Again, by typing the whole title in capitals, you will immediately notice it among other playlists and any similar Playlists could also be placed into the same folder.

Such a Smart Playlist would look similar to this:

Note that I changed the drop down menu option to "any" instead of the default "all", so that either of the items is included.

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Answer 5

Braxium Author

Level 1

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Jun 1, 2015 3:36 AM in response to the fiend

No, I don't want to bother with playlists. If I wanted to do so, I would've done it already. I don't want to go back and forth "Compilations", "Artists" and "Playlists" all the time, it would be bothersome to create these playlists for all the songs on my iPod (there are like 16000 songs), and manage them all the time.
Thanks for the reply though

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