iPod Album track numbering

splacid · May 30, 2007

I tried searching for this particular issue and I couldn't come up with anything.

I recently purchased the new Maroon 5 album, having already purchased the first single when it became available a few weeks before the album was released. While I was happy to find iTunes did not charge me for the single again when I purchased the album, there seems to be a problem with the way the album tracks are displayed in my library.

Even though I sequenced the single with the correct track number, it continues to be displayed at the end of the album rather than as the second song, which is how it should be displayed. How can I fix this?

(Let me know if my question isn't clear and I can try to explain again.) Thanks!

mkrishnan · May 30, 2007

Usually, this arises because of one of the following:

- One of these tags is filled on the album tracks and not the single track or is different -- Disc Number, Number of Discs, Year, Number of Tracks

So if you have the track as, say, 6, and there are 13 tracks on the album, make sure that the single also has the number of tracks field filled in with 13 just like the album.

- The album / artist information is not exactly the same.

Try looking at the tag info a little more carefully and see if any of those apply?

This annoys me sometimes too. It's too bad iTunes doesn't automatically catch and fix it for you.

splacid · May 30, 2007

Thanks for the quick reply. I checked the tags again and everything is identical, except for the album artwork. The problem remained even after I changed the single artwork to that of the album.

I did find that the record company information displayed in the Summary tab of the single differs from that of the album, but since that's not editable I'm not sure if it makes a difference.

mkrishnan · May 31, 2007

Hmmm, strange. Any chance you can post screenshots of the info window? Sometimes, even though something appears to be the same, there's something subtly different. It's really a pain.

wyatt23 · May 31, 2007

highlight all of the songs, and edit info at the same time. even if its the same info, just retype it all. hopefully it will rewrite it all.

splacid · May 31, 2007

wyatt23, thanks for the reply but after deleting and rewriting all the tags together, the problem remained.

mkrishnan, I have attached screenshots of the first song from the album ("If I Never See Your Face Again") and what should be the second song on the album ("Makes Me Wonder").

wyatt23 · May 31, 2007

wow, that's a bitch. if there's one thing that erks me, it's improperly tagged music.

mkrishnan · May 31, 2007

You've got your organization by album or artist-by-album, right? Weird problem!

splacid · May 31, 2007

wyatt23 said:
wow, that's a bitch. if there's one thing that erks me, it's improperly tagged music.

You and me both, if everyone couldn't already tell!

mkrishnan said:
You've got your organization by album or artist-by-album, right? Weird problem!

Right, and searching for Maroon 5 yields only one instance of the artist, not multiple. Weird and annoying! Thanks for your help, though.

kalisphoenix · May 31, 2007

I've seen this bug randomly ever since upgrading to iTunes 7. The only thing that seemed to work was to remove the entire album from the library and add it again. I'm rebuilding my library from scratch, and thusfar it hasn't come up yet -- so I'm thinking that if there is a conflict in non-viewable tags (like ID3v1 instead of ID3v2 in mp3s), that might cause the problem. Since I do everything Apple Lossless now, I suppose I don't have to mess with tags that I / other people did with Winamp, Audiograbber, etc etc etc back in the day.

macfaninpdx · May 31, 2007

Did you check the fields in the Sorting tab?

splacid · May 31, 2007

kalisphoenix said:
The only thing that seemed to work was to remove the entire album from the library and add it again. I'm rebuilding my library from scratch, and thusfar it hasn't come up yet -- so I'm thinking that if there is a conflict in non-viewable tags (like ID3v1 instead of ID3v2 in mp3s), that might cause the problem.

I think adding the album again is what I'm going to have to end up doing. A few other albums exhibit the same behavior when I purchased a single first, but I didn't expect to have this problem since the only songs that have this issue were all purchased from iTunes.

macfaninpdx said:
Did you check the fields in the Sorting tab?

Good suggestion, I didn't even notice that tab. What does modifying the Sorting fields do?

macfaninpdx · May 31, 2007

splacid said:
What does modifying the Sorting fields do?

The sorting fields can override the Album, Artist, or other info for the purpose of sorting. It is most useful when you have an album with featured artists. For xmaple, a song with an artist of "Maroon 5 feat. Paul McCartney" can be set to sort the same as the rest of your "Maroon 5" tracks.

FWIW, I doubt that this is your problem. It seems to be a bug in the new version of iTunes. But there are two other things I just thought to check.

1) Did you purchse the remainder of the album as DRM free, where the original track purchas has DRM?
2) Try re-typing the single apostrophe mark in the "It Won't Be Soon Before Long" field. I have had weird problems in the past with a "smart" quotation mark being listed separately from a "non-smart" quote.

splacid · May 31, 2007

macfaninpdx said:
1) Did you purchse the remainder of the album as DRM free, where the original track purchas has DRM?
2) Try re-typing the single apostrophe mark in the "It Won't Be Soon Before Long" field. I have had weird problems in the past with a "smart" quotation mark being listed separately from a "non-smart" quote.

Both the single and album were purchased with DRM, though as I mentioned before, the single seems to have different record company information embedded than the album tracks. I tried changing the apostrophe mark as well but that didn't seem to help. (I'm having the same issue with James Blunt's Back to Bedlam album, also purchased on iTunes.)

macfaninpdx said:
For xmaple, a song with an artist of "Maroon 5 feat. Paul McCartney" can be set to sort the same as the rest of your "Maroon 5" tracks.

Maroon 5 and Paul McCartney? Now that would be an interesting song!

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