iTunes frustration

[US Marine]

After making the switch to Mac, I am being reminded of why I loathed iTunes so much. I've been using Winamp for 13 years, and it does not operate in any way similarly to iTunes. I've got a couple of questions that hopefully y'all can help me with.
First, is there any way to sort the album column by album year? I know you can sort the list on the bottom (with the tracks) by album title, artist, or album year, but I want to sort the ALBUMS column itself by year (rather than alphabetically) so that I don't have to have all songs of a particular artist listed just to see them chronologically.
Also, is there any way to browse my library without causing an interruption of music between tracks? That is particularly annoying! In Winamp, whenever you double click an album, the whole album is sent into a playlist, and you can continue to browse your other music while the playlist plays through. It's very convenient, but I don't see any sort of similar functionality in iTunes.

 

[Kyffin]

Yeah you'd have thought being able to sort albums chronologically by artist is reasonable for a music library- unfortunately I've not found a way to sort hierarchically, but its a good point and interesting question, aye.

Not having used winamp for a while not 100% on what you mean by your second point; from what I gather you're talking about a different way of queuing up your music- say if you're starting a session in iTunes I find the best way is to start a playlist on the left sidebar and add/rearrange the tracks from there, should work but a different way of going about it. (Then again if you're looking in Grid view its very easy to press the 'play' button instead of going into the album- too easy and irky)

 

[US Marine]

You would think that if you queued up an album or played a song from an album, the whole album would automatically be placed into a sort of "now playing" playlist (that's the behavior with Winamp), but that's not the case.

 

[emw]

If you -click on the Album header, you can change the sorting to Album by Artist/Year. Not sure if this is exactly what you're asking for or not.

 

[Kyffin]

If you -click on the Album header, you can change the sorting to Album by Artist/Year. Not sure if this is exactly what you're asking for or not.

Hi, thank you very much! Can't speak for the OP but this is exactly the solution I was looking for, cheers

 

[US Marine]

I'm sorry if I'm being ambiguous. I've included a screen shot to show you what I'm talking about. The circled (red) column is what I want to be listed chronologically rather than alphabetically. I understand it can be listed chronologically by artist/year on the bottom window, but that's not what I'm talking about. Keeping it chronological makes it easier to sift through, but I don't want to have to scroll through five or six albums (or more depending on how much stuff I have from that artist) worth of tracks just to get to the one I want.
On an unrelated note, why are there TWO track number columns? Only one is sortable, and the unsortable column only exists in the "list w/ album art" view.

On another unrelated note, iTunes is behaving strangely with a compilation album of mine. See the second screen shot. Most albums that I own that come from compilations have "Various" as the album artist. iTunes, being smart, realizes that the track artist is actually within the title instead. That's cool and all, but it throws off the sorting. It is no longer listed by track number but alphabetically by artist (or track title...not sure which because the track titles have the artist names in them). Sure, I could click the track number column to resort it, but then if I browse to another artist with multiple albums, it sorts the entire artist's collection by track number and I have to resort it chronologically to make sense of it. Maybe I'm just being picky, but this bugs the hell out of me!!!

As for one of my original problems, I still see no way to keep continuous playback while browsing my library unless I manually add the album to which I'm listening to a playlist (which I would have to remove later when I want to listen to a different album)

I miss Winamp

 

[emw]

Okay, I see what you're saying. I do not believe there is any way (at least that I've seen or found) to sort the column browser as you're looking to do.

As for the other points:

1. With the extra track number, I'd suggest going to View > View Options... and looking to see what's checked. Maybe uncheck and recheck Track Number to see if that clears it up.

2. I have no issues browsing other songs in my library while another song is playing as long as I don't double-click a different tune, it seems to be all good.

3. No idea about the compilations. May just be a limitation of how iTunes can deal with the "Various Artists". There are a number of "Sort by" fields in iTunes where you could change how those songs are sorted, but it would be more of a manual effort to add that info into the songs.

 

[US Marine]

1. With the extra track number, I'd suggest going to View > View Options... and looking to see what's checked. Maybe uncheck and recheck Track Number to see if that clears it up.

I can get rid of one of the columns, but that just leaves the other one, which isn't sortable. Strange.

2. I have no issues browsing other songs in my library while another song is playing as long as I don't double-click a different tune, it seems to be all good.

Oh I can browse. It's just that if I'm browsing and a song ends, rather than continue on to the next song in that album, it just stops playing.

 

[Consultant]

I can get rid of one of the columns, but that just leaves the other one, which isn't sortable. Strange.

Oh I can browse. It's just that if I'm browsing and a song ends, rather than continue on to the next song in that album, it just stops playing.

iTunes is designed for playlists / smart playlists.

You should play songs from a playlist when you are browsing.

 

[US Marine]

iTunes is designed for playlists / smart playlists.

You should play songs from a playlist when you are browsing.

Right, that's what I thought. I don't suppose there is a way for iTunes to automatically add an album to a playlist whenever I double click a song from that album, eh?

 

[Blue Velvet]

Right, that's what I thought. I don't suppose there is a way for iTunes to automatically add an album to a playlist whenever I double click a song from that album, eh?

No, but you could set up a smart playlist that automatically adds your album if you maybe rate it or add a specific comment to all the tracks in the album, for instance. Or you could just drag and drop the album into a standard playlist, if you want, which is almost as quick.