Play all songs of an artist

wahoo10 said:

On the iPhone there is a "Play All". I don't see that option on my iPad and want to play all of Colplay on shuffle/repeat help?

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Create a playlist folder with all of your Coldplay albums inside, and then you can play that playlist, which should effectively accomplish what you want.

so the iOS is different for iPad and iPhone.

TheWheelMan said:

Create a playlist folder with all of your Coldplay albums inside, and then you can play that playlist, which should effectively accomplish what you want.

Click to expand...

I've never used "Play All" on my iPad (I don't own a iPhone). So unfortunately I don't know the answer to that. Do you have the same version of IOS on your iPhone and iPad?

wahoo10 said:

Yup, both are fully up to date (iPad 3 and 4S iphone). On the iPhone when you click on an artist, it shows the albums and then "All Songs". Click on "All Songs" and they're all alphabetical by song title. On the iPad, when you click on an artist name, you can see all of the albums/songs, but when I click on a song to play, it only goes through the rest of the album.

I figure there has to be a way...

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Unfortunately, the iPad music app doesn't have many of the functionality that's on the iPhone app. Playing all songs by an artist is missing, so is playing all subfolders within a parent playlist folder. Oh, and display lyrics is missing too. This all used to work in 4.x, but they got broken in 5.0. Grrrrrrrr.

I have no use for playlists. I was never one for creating mix tapes back in the day either. I like to listen to entire albums in track order. I also like to listen to all songs for a given artist this way. In iTunes I use the column browser which allows for keeping playback self-contained within a given album or allowing playback to flow from one album to the next. I can also have the albums playback in order by year as well which is my preference. All depends on the selected view at the time when one track ends and the next track is to begin. Naturally I wanted this ability with the music apps for the iPhone and iPad as well. Unfortunately neither music app allows for these things. Once playback of a given album is finished you then have to back out and start playback of the next album. Also, even if this was possible there's currently no way to sort the albums for a given artist by year which is my preference. Of course Apple's only answer to my dilema is to create a playlist which I find ridiculous when all I want to do is play a given artist's albums back to back by year/album/track. It's simple enough to do this in iTunes. Would not be difficult for Apple to provide a way to do this with their music apps for the iPhone and iPad in addition to providing a "sort albums by year" option when viewing the albums for a given artist. That being said, I did find a very simple solution which allows for both of these things with the iPhone and iPad music apps. Using Mp3tag and the "Format Value" action I've simply updated the "ALBUMSORT" and "TITLESORT" tags for each of my songs to use the value "Artist | Year | Album". While I'm no longer able to browse my albums or songs across the board in alphabetical order as a result I'm still able to perform a search for a given album or song. I never browsed my albums or songs across the board alphabetically anyway. Not once. More importantly, with these tags updated in this fashion my albums are now displayed for a given artist by year instead of alphabetically. I'm also able to start continuous playback now for a given artist in year/album/track order without having to create a playlist. Using the iPhone music app this is done by selecting the "All Albums" and then "All Songs" option under a given artist. The iPad music app doesn't offer the "All Songs" option unfortunately. As such, I simply select the "Songs" category, then browse to the artist/album/song where I'd like playback to start.