iTunes 12.7, it's impossible to put in order artist. My library was set to sort Artist by surname (ex. Meyer John instead John Meyer) it sort at "J" letter instead at "M" letter. Now all my artists sort by name even if in the song information it's written "sort by Meyer John". Thanks for help.
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017), High Sierra 10.12.6
I have done alot of this since i got my Mac. I had the very same issue, and the one where a bands name starts with 'The'.
I found that it is very difficult to order the artists name alphabetical because of the same sort of thing. iTunes has its own way of indexing the artists and albums. Often it is quite involved to put them into a particular kind of order. I think some of this is caused by Genius; it may know your artists name in a different way than you have it entered. I found i had hundreds of bands in T, because of their titles, The, Enid, The Rolling Stones eg. I simply went to the artist in iTunes and clicked on the drop down menu for artist info and removed the word "The"; i then simply listed the band as, say 'Rolling Stones', its now listed under R; similarly, The Enid, now listed in MY iTunes as simply "Enid".
Bands like the rolling stones can be listed as 'Rolling Stones' Not having "the" prefix doesnt change who they are; we know them as the rolling stones, but they can be listed in R instead of having hundreds of "the" bands.
All of my bands are saved to an external HDD; this is my back-up library. In there, i have also changed things, again i removed "the" for many artists; i also paid attention to the personal artists name such as 'Huey Lewis and the news'; i listed it it as you see it but its in L (for Lewis)!
To do this i went into iTunes and looked for the artist; seeing things like The Alan Parsons Project, and further down as Parsons Alan Project, further UP as Alan Parsons; can you see how confusing it can be just for one artist?
I went into The Alan Parsons Project; in the top line where the band name is; i clicked on the circle with three dots in it (in line and horizontal), and in the drop down menu i clicked on Artist Info; it will ask if you want to edit the info for multiple objects, you click (Edit Details).
A box will appear on screen with the artists name, how many albums are in there etc. Now, I was looking at The Alan Parsons Project; so i click the artists name in the first line in the text boxes, and simply removed "The". Click on OK and the bands name will now become Alan Parsons Project.
I also mentioned the other way that the same band is listed; i do the same, go to 'The Parsons Alan Project' and in the same way as above, i changed the title to "Alan Parsons Project", simply by removing 'the' and by moving 'Alan' to the front. This will not only change the title to Alan Parsons Project, but it will move ALL the albums in that folder to be moved to the rest of Alan Parsons Project. This will bring all their albums into one place. Be aware that this listing is case sensitive; even a misplaced ' " . or , can drastically change the title, so just keep it simple. If you have to, you can remove the full stop at the end of that line; but then make sure that ALL the others do not have the full stop!
Its all to do with the way the info is displayed from the back up and how iTunes wants to display them; but it IS possible to control it.
I hope this helps?
Artist sort order is controlled by the first non-empty value from Sort Album Artist, Album Artist, Sort Artist, and Artist. If Sort Album Artist or Sort Artist are blank and the name begins with A, An, or The, or equivalents in other languages, then the sort value is auto-populated with the remainder of the name.
tt2
Thanks but before the upgrade all my artist were listed right....John Meyer at M and Bob Dylan at D.....suddenly are all listed by name and it’s impossible to change it because in the info tab of all my songs (140.000) is written: sort artist as Meyer John and Dylan Bob etc etc. The Bands with suffix THE are listed right. I think it’s a bug of iTunes 12.7
Yes, it does sound like a bug of some kind; and i agree, iTunes does tend to do some strange things; i look through my library regular in iTunes and find duplicate albums appearing here and there. I think its iTunes Match or Genius that does that. I have removed all the mp3 albums in my collection IF (and ONLy IF) i have the same album lossless format. However i do tend to find the odd duplicate album that iTunes added in AAC format. (Apple Audio Codec), i just delete that copy.
I think it might be a good idea to contact apple support with this issue, they have lots of good people but you can ask to speak to a specialist in iTunes. They have helped me to correct all sorts of issues in my iTunes library. Sorry i cant help much more than that, but it does sound like some kind of bug. It may also be a good idea to check the App store for any system updates.
Did you recently update your computer to a new OS? I did recently; i updated to Apple OS High Sierra and let it complete, i then waited a few days and found an update patch for the last update. it sorted my issue straight away.
Sorry , i cant suggest anything else. I hope you get it sorted. Mark.
artist order ???
