Album and artist sorting all messed up

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Level 1

4 points

Album and artist sorting all messed up

Running Mavericks version 10.9.5 with iTunes version 12.2

I have been using iTunes to convert my vinyl to CD for many years. I now have this new Mac and managed to import my library back from iPod. Trouble is many of my collection have automatically gone into a compilations folder some of which aren't even compilations, e.g. Frank Zappa, Absolutely Free. Not all artists are listed under the 'All Artists' column and the albums they are on appear under the 'All Albums' column but the trouble is these albums are not necessarily the name of the artist just the name of the album. with so many bests of and collections of different genres of music so there's no knowing which album I need for a particular artist or song. It's a complete mess and I'm having big problems finding what I want to play. I've looked at the folders in the iTunes music folder but very often there isn't a folder for the artist, just the albums.

Posted on Jul 26, 2015 3:58 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

richard grant

Level 4

2,923 points

Jul 26, 2015 5:22 AM in response to Joel Cairo

Joel, as a first step, it will probably be easier to find the songs you're looking for by using the pull-down menu in the upper right corner of the Music window to set the view to Songs. This should give you the traditional column view that you can sort by Artist, Album, Title, etc. by clicking the column header.

It should be easy -- though it may be time-consuming -- to fix the compilation problem. You can do this one album at a time, or you can create a temporary playlist, add the albums that have been incorrectly changed to compilations, and fix them all at once.

Select all the tracks of the album(s) in question, then File > Get Info, or Control-click and select Get Info from the popup window. You'll probably get a window asking "Are you sure you want to edit information for multiple items?" Select "Edit items." You'll see a line near the bottom saying "Album is a compilation of songs by various artists." Change that so it's unchecked, click "OK" and you should be good to go.

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Answer 2

Joel Cairo Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 28, 2015 9:53 AM in response to richard grant

Thanks Richard,

What a stupid problem. It's going to take a long time but at least I have a solution. Why Apple have to keep changing something that worked perfectly well before I'll never know. Do they really think we are too stupid to know whether a cd in our own collection is a compilation or not. I've been trying to DJ with this and it's been impossible to find anything quickly. Thanks again, and it's good to know there are people like you out there who are willing to help.

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