How to combine songs into one album...

Select all the songs together in iTunes, press Command+I or right click, then click Get Info. Go to the Options tab and change "Part of a compilation" to "Yes".

macsarethebest said:

Hi,
I have an album with songs that have different artists. How do you make them into one album, so they aren't separate in coverflow?
Thanx

Click to expand...

Change the "Album Artist" to "Various Artists". Leave the "Artist" tag as it is, with each individual artist there. iTunes uses "Album" and "Album Artist" to match album songs.

Odd that it didn't work. I tested it personally on two compilation albums I have. And contrary to GGJstudios, I have nothing entered in the Album Artist field.

A final place to check would be the Album and Sort Album fields. Any difference, even a stray space, can affect the sorting.

Grey Podder said:

Select all the songs together in iTunes, press Command+I or right click, then click Get Info. Go to the Options tab and change "Part of a compilation" to "Yes".

Click to expand...

This has never worked for me either. Do what GGJstudios said. That's how I have mine setup and it keeps various artists compilations together.


James

Grey Podder said:

Odd that it didn't work. I tested it personally on two compilation albums I have. And contrary to GGJstudios, I have nothing entered in the Album Artist field.

A final place to check would be the Album and Sort Album fields. Any difference, even a stray space, can affect the sorting.

Click to expand...

The reason the compilation works for you is that you don't have the Album Artist field properly filled out. Using your method, there would be no way to sort by Album Artist. The OP wants to keep albums intact, not to abandon the Album Artist information.

GGJstudios...

Beg pardon, but I wrote that I had nothing in the “Album Artist” field. My Album field is filled in, Album Artist is empty and the songs are set to compilation. Using this setup cover flow displays the album as having Various Artists and correctly groups the songs together.

Grey Podder said:

Beg pardon, but I wrote that I had nothing in the “Album Artist” field. My Album field is filled in, Album Artist is empty and the songs are set to compilation. Using this setup cover flow displays the album as having Various Artists and correctly groups the songs together.

Click to expand...

I've corrected my previous post. The facts are the same, whether it's the Album or Album Artist field. iTunes uses Album and Album Artist to group albums. If multiple songs have the same Album and the same Album Artist (with appropriate Sort info, if applicable), the other fields can have anything in them and they will still sort together in Cover Flow.

Well, I'm stumped. The reason I never bother manually entering Album Artist info is because marking them as part of a compilation has always worked. As long as I have the columns in iTunes sorted by either Album, Album by Artist or Album by Year they remain a single entry in cover flow view.

Afraid I'll have to admit defeat on this one. I understand the reasoning behind your method, GGJstudios, although I'm still curious as to why my method works for me but not for the original poster.

Grey Podder said:

... I'm still curious as to why my method works for me but not for the original poster.

Click to expand...

It's probably because they have info in both the Album and Album Artist columns, which you don't have.

Thankyou GGJstudios

I spent 3 hours trying to figure this out, not even apple support could not help me, although they tried - I knew the answer would be something simple but you don't know what you don't know and yes, your fix worked immediately - thankyou so much.

This worked for me:

Batch-changed Album Artist to the name of the album