how to add song to an existing album in itune windows

Question

how to add song to an existing album in itune windows

I have an existing album ABC, which comes from folderABC on a windows machine. I copied another song XXX to folderABC. How do I get XXX to show up inside album ABC in itune? I tried various things, such as 'add file to library', delete album ABC and re-add folderABC to itune etc.. none of them work. XXX always show up in its own album. I even tried renaming the album name of XXX to match ABC, doesn't work either. Any tips for an itune newbie?

Posted on Jan 25, 2016 8:29 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

278,143 points

Jan 26, 2016 3:39 AM in response to want2retiresoon

iTunes pays attention to the track metadata, not the physical location. In iTunes an album is usually a collection of tracks with the same Album title and the same Album Artist, although interactions of other values such as Artist, Sort Artist, Sort Album, Sort Album Artist and Part of a Compilation may still break up an album. For full details see Grouping tracks into albums.

tt2

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Answer 2

Jan 26, 2016 9:24 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for the reply. I read the article but I am totally lost. I just want to have audio and songs within the same folder to show up as a single album. In fact all I want to do is to be able to listen to them from iphone. I didn't even want to use itune but was told it is the only way. Is there a simple and straight forward way to accomplish what I need?

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

278,143 points

Jan 26, 2016 9:35 AM in response to want2retiresoon

To give you the best advice I'd need to know which album you're talking about, or at least if it has the same artist on every track.

Renaming the Album name of XXX to match ABC is half the battle.

The track's Artist or Album Artist should also match the rest of ABC's Artist or Album Artist.

Artist can be different for different tracks from the same album as long as Album Artist is always the same, or part of a compilation is always true.

tt2

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Answer 4

Jan 26, 2016 11:31 AM in response to turingtest2

The files inside the folder are a mix of songs and audio files. What I end up doing is delete the album from itune and re-add the folder back to the library. I had to repeat these 2 steps a few times in order the folder content to show up properly. First time they show up as 2 separate albums. Second time one album shows up with 20% of the content. Third time the all files in the folder show up in one album. My bigger concern is, if I had to add audio files to various folders, and each folder was added as an album in itune, doing the above steps (and not sure if they will work) will be very time consuming and counter productive.

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

278,143 points

Jan 26, 2016 12:00 PM in response to want2retiresoon

As I said before iTunes really doesn't care where the files are stored. It reads any tag that is embedded in the file. Tags record the name, artist, album, etc. If removing them from iTunes adding them back again has made them cluster together that might be a function of the various view options that are in place, and perhaps the lack of proper tags. Untagged files are treated as unknown artist and unknown album. iTunes cannot tell the difference between a "song" and an "audio file".

tt2

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