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stefanwever

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 1, 2011
8
0
Hi, If I download a soundtrack album (e.g Dirty Dancing), itunes separates the different songs from different artists each to his own album, which clutters my music library. Is there a way to make it so that all the songs will be in one album?
 
Hi, If I download a soundtrack album (e.g Dirty Dancing), itunes separates the different songs from different artists each to his own album, which clutters my music library. Is there a way to make it so that all the songs will be in one album?

I do not know if this is part of the same problem but here is mine, which I find quite similar.

Sometimes, when I add an album to my iPod from my PC downloaded music (not through iTunes Store), I get iTunes add each separate song in its own album. The albums here all have the same name.

So I end up having 14 separate and identical albums on my iPod, each one containing a single track - very annoying.

What would help, and why is that occurring? Note that it doesn't happen always (with each album I add), but more than enough to keep me pissed off at iTunes.
 
I do not know if this is part of the same problem but here is mine, which I find quite similar.

Sometimes, when I add an album to my iPod from my PC downloaded music (not through iTunes Store), I get iTunes add each separate song in its own album. The albums here all have the same name.

So I end up having 14 separate and identical albums on my iPod, each one containing a single track - very annoying.

What would help, and why is that occurring? Note that it doesn't happen always (with each album I add), but more than enough to keep me pissed off at iTunes.

This is exactly my problem
 
This is exactly my problem

The only thing that works for me is to change the view to grid and then separately name the songs all the same album (area below the song title). That works but is very labour intensive. Any faster method?
 
You can select multiple songs and press cmd + i to edit them all at once.

Tried that. I would select all the songs from the problematic album and CTRL+i on them. It would show me that all the selected songs are part of the same album for each one of the songs. Even if I delete and replace the "Album" field with the same album again, the songs would still appear in separate identical albums.

This drives me nuts, if not solving it, I would really want to know where the issue comes from....:confused:

Edit: I missed Mawal's post on top. It seems to solve the issue: genius! How on earth would somebody have thought of this? I still do not know why the issue would randomly occur though. Explanations for causes are more than welcome!

Mawal, thanks once again!

mark all tracks the album

CMD +I

mark as compilation
 
iTunes uses 4 tags to group albums together:
  • Album
  • Album Artist
  • Sort Album
  • Sort Album Artist
As long as the data in those 4 fields matches in all tracks of the album (note that they're case sensitive), the album will sort together.

On rare occasions, iTunes may not read tags correctly. If the fields above are matching, and the album doesn't sort together, remove the album from your iTunes library and add it back.
Hi, If I download a soundtrack album (e.g Dirty Dancing), itunes separates the different songs from different artists each to his own album, which clutters my music library. Is there a way to make it so that all the songs will be in one album?
On albums like soundtracks with many artists, change the Album Artist field to show "Various Artists".
 
Last edited:
GGJ, thank you so much for the explanation - you must have spend a lot of time with iTunes to know all that. (Bow)

One think is sure, iTunes is a very mysterious piece of software which I bet most of the common users (including me) don't fully understand.

Thanks again!
 
GGJ, thank you so much for the explanation - you must have spend a lot of time with iTunes to know all that. (Bow)

One think is sure, iTunes is a very mysterious piece of software which I bet most of the common users (including me) don't fully understand.

Thanks again!
I'm glad I could help! I'm not sure I fully understand iTunes either, but I have spent quite a bit of time with it, building and refining my music library... and occasionally listening to it! (part of it, anyway!) :)
 
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