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iTunes 10 Sorting Help.

A

AppleSimon

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 14, 2010
114
0
Hi, I'm having a bit of trouble with iTunes and sorting my music in the wrong order.

Basically when I import a new album, I set my library to 'Date Added' so that it shows what my most recent music is. I do it this way so that I can just sit an listen to the latest music I have downloaded without creating playlists or just searching by single artist. It's the way I'm used to doing things so I don't really want to change.

Now 2 things are going wrong. When I import an album into iTunes, it will show up at the top of my library just like I have set it too, but the tracks are ordered alphabetically not by track number!

The other thing that sometimes happens is that the album gets split up, so for example one half of the album will show, and then the other half will be in a new section?

Below is a screenshot which should show you more clearly what I mean...

Look at the NeverShoutNever album. That is fine as one album, however the tracks are ordered incorrectly. The look at the Flyleaf album, thats been split up into like 4 different albums + tracks ordered alphabetically.

iTunes.png
 
FWIW when I click on date added my album tracks show up in the order they were last added to iTunes. That is what your example is doing. If you add 2 albums at the same time the songs will show up mixed if you sort by date added.

I know you said you are happy with the way you do it. I use new playlist folder (which I name after the artist) and then under that I do a smart playlist (for that artist's albums). Works very well and my music is very organized... and it's very easy to do.
 
The biggest iTunes annoyance for me right now is that it doesn't do secondary sorting, which is what you are wanting. I don't have any ideas, other than to import your music one song at a time, last track of the album first, so that they display in order.

But that's a ridiculous thing to have to do.
 
xlii said:
FWIW when I click on date added my album tracks show up in the order they were last added to iTunes. That is what your example is doing. If you add 2 albums at the same time the songs will show up mixed if you sort by date added.

I know you said you are happy with the way you do it. I use new playlist folder (which I name after the artist) and then under that I do a smart playlist (for that artist's albums). Works very well and my music is very organized... and it's very easy to do.
Click to expand...

I might give this ago. Got nothing to lose but I guess it's just a different way of doing things.

Dimwhit said:
The biggest iTunes annoyance for me right now is that it doesn't do secondary sorting, which is what you are wanting. I don't have any ideas, other than to import your music one song at a time, last track of the album first, so that they display in order.

But that's a ridiculous thing to have to do.
Click to expand...

I am definitely not doing it that way lol. I'd rather suffer how I'm doing it now. I'm sure there will be a solution out there somewhere.
 
I might be missing something but why not use the Recently Added playlist? It's what I use when I want to listen to new purchases and seems to do what your after.
 
redscience said:
I might be missing something but why not use the Recently Added playlist? It's what I use when I want to listen to new purchases and seems to do what your after.
Click to expand...

Still does it I'm afraid. Plus it shows all the Movies/TV Shows I have recently added.
 
If you edit the Recently Added smart playlist you can get it to only show music, just to be clear though, if you go into Recently added and choose to sort by Artist does it still show the tracks alphabetically rather than by track number?

Regarding the 'split album' problem sometimes selecting all the files in the album and then putting them as part of a compilation, then changing them back can help.

But finally when I've had problems before I've ended up editing the metadata manually, perhaps try copy and pasting all the metadata apart from the track name and number from the track 'Again' into 'Chasm' and see if that puts them as part of the same album.
 
Proggy to help with this

Hey everyone.

Regarding the iTunes "Date Added" / mixing-up track order / albums problem.

I wrote a little program which should solve this problem for some people. It's free & open-source and it works with MacOS and Windows versions of iTunes.

Hope it helps anyone who was being driven crazy by this...

http://graemebell.net/software/tools/add-my-tunes
 
Last edited:
Futurama

"I don't have any ideas, other than to import your music one song at a time, last track of the album first, so that they display in order.

But that's a ridiculous thing to have to do."

Good News Everybody!

I've invented a machine that does ridiculous things, so that your music is in the right order (albums & track order) when you sort by Date Added in iTunes. It solves the 'mixed up tracks' problem when you are adding music.

It's free, open source and works on Windows & Macos.

Download here: http://graemebell.net/tools/software/add-my-tunes

Now, I'm off to post this happy message on all the other threads on the internet where people are moaning about the 'mixed up tracks when they import into iTunes' problem :)
 
Genres are different

Within the album you posted there is Metal and Rock/Pop, so that's one reason the album appears to be split up. The other think I noticed is the word (extended) applied to some of the tunes on your album. Only fix I know of is to highlight all the songs in the album and standardize the descriptions.
 
FinanceGalSF said:
Within the album you posted there is Metal and Rock/Pop, so that's one reason the album appears to be split up.
Click to expand...
The genre has nothing to do with the sort order, unless you're sorting by genre. In the OP, which was posted over a year ago, the album is split because of the album name being different. iTunes uses 4 fields to determine which albums sort together:
  • Album
  • Album Artist
  • Sort Album
  • Sort Album Artist
As long as all tracks have matching information in those tags, the album will sort together. So for albums with various artists, put the individual artist name in the Artist field, and put "Various Artists" in the Album Artist and Sort Album Artist fields. The album will sort together. If it doesn't immediately, remove the album from your library and re-add it.
 
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