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iOS 10 Music App Sorting

While i have never been exactly impressed with the sort options inside the music app, it seems they have gotten worse with the update.


I would like to sort by Album Year under Artist. Is that possible or are we just doing the bare minimum?

iPhone 6s Plus, iOS 10, Music App

Posted on Sep 13, 2016 4:59 PM

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25 replies

Jan 15, 2017 3:43 PM in response to danielfromport elizabeth

app looks nice, i see why you may be hinting at it in perfectly good faith, and i appreciate it.


trouble is, in a case that's not (globally) just personal, when interfacing your own iOS device to a car audio system (of the wired variety) the only music-playing app that's supported by many a-car built-in systems it's the iOS' native Music app.


sure enough, any other app may and/or will work if you choose to play songs via bluetooth audio, but in terms of audio quality it's like shooting yourself on a foot before trying to run 100m at the olympics (provided the matter is of any relevance to your own listening capacity, ça va sans dire).


i only just found out now and today that in the iOS Music app when viewing your Library by Artist, now the SORT option aside each Artist's content sticks to "oldest first" for ALL Artists/Albums by default, after you've set it once on any single Artist.


too bad, you still can't sort Playlists' content to play the same way, it still seems to only play alphabetically (as opposed to my now retired iPod Classic, sigh). so i'm only half-way through, but given the hours i spend driving any day and week of each month, even if i've only partially solved my problem, i'll see the world through a clearer and neater windshield now.

Sep 15, 2016 12:57 AM in response to razetepes

Strongly agree - for MANY people sorting Albums in both Albums view and Artists view by Album Year / Release Date make SO MUCH MORE SENSE than having them completely out of order based on the apparently-now-non-adjustable alphabetic sort order.


Is it so difficult to allow users the option to sort albums via year / release date OR album title?

Sep 15, 2016 1:06 PM in response to razetepes

I went to Settings / Music and changed "Sort songs and albums" to "By title" instead of "By artist".


Now, when I from Library choose an artist the albums show up in ascending order by year! Also when I choose a composer or genre it works (I use custom genres to sort some artists, a convenient way to group for example The Forminx, Aphrodite's Child, Jon & Vangelis etc all as "Vangelis" to get a complete discography).


I hope the above works for you too. I keep my music in iTunes on my iMac and sync from there. Note: I am careful to fill out "Sort / Album - Sort as" under "Show info" on all songs in iTunes. I put the year there too in front of the title; for example, for Vangelis Oceanic album it says Sort as "1996 Oceanic". I did this because I was annoyed with iTunes sorting getting worse, and found it helps in IOS Music too. I think this is why this works, that entry is the title Music looks for when sorting.


Some reservation about the wording in English in different Settings… my IOS is in Swedish… but you'll figure it out. :-)

Sep 15, 2016 2:22 PM in response to etois

No, I haven't added the year to the album title or screwed up anything. Albums show with only the title as they should. Sorry if I was not clear.


What I've done is to add the year in the sorting option under album info in iTunes. This is an option to refine sorting. It is hidden in the metadata and only seen by iTunes / Music app.


It is easily done at the album level in iTunes (not necessary to do for each song individually). Less quickly for a very large collection, obviously…


It's a workaround, some effort needed initially sure, but my albums are listed by year as I want. Even in IOS 10.

Sep 15, 2016 7:22 PM in response to Christopher_E

I too type the album release year in the "Sort Album" field, unlike you Christopher I only put the year, don't see a need for the name or part of the name. But when an artist releases two albums in a year I just add a -1 and -2 etc (example 1999-1).


Time consuming but by using the Songs list view and column sorting by the Year field, activating and dragging the Sort Album field next to the Year column the process is made much faster because you can select all the songs of a given year, hit CTRL-I and do a multiple item Sort Album edit/entry.


Now that iTunes has added sorting by year it's not necessary there anymore, but IOS only offers Artist or Album sorting and placing Year in the Sort Album field appears to be working, even in IOS 10 Music which I just updated to today. (Select Sort Songs & Albums "By Title" in Settings > Music)


A related complaint is so many digital albums now come with a re-release or remaster etc Year entry which throws the order off, so I usually go in and edit that back to the original release year. Fortunately those manual year changes sync across devices. I also change the Sort Artist and Sort Album Artist to last name first name and that also syncs, but if you download it after changing the year it will overwrite the edited year, but you can change it back after downloading.

Sep 15, 2016 7:35 PM in response to razetepes

I just typed a long answer related to your original question but didn't address it directly. Agree sorting is not flexible in IOS 10 but if you have iTunes installed in a computer synced to the same Apple music account type(s) as your IOS device you can get there, just takes extra work that wouldn't have to be done if as you say Apple would just provide year as an option.

iOS 10 Music App Sorting

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