iTunes 7.3: Ignoring symbols in browser (sorting) is not always a good idea.

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GadgetGuru72

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The new version of iTunes 7.3 no longer sorts artists' names that begin with numbers ahead of those that begin with letters. For example, "50 Cent" used to be listed before "Aceyalone." iTunes 7.3 now would put "50 Cent" (and any other artist that starts with a number) at the end of the list. While a little odd, I can live with this.

However, the purpose for this thread is that iTunes now also ignores symbols at the beginning of an artists' name, and sorts it according to the first letter in the name. This, quite frankly, sucks.

For certain artists, it doesn't matter, and actually makes sense. For example, an artist like "Weird Al" Yankovic would no longer be at the top of the artist list based upon the quotation mark. Instead, it ignores the quotation mark and sorts it under "W." That's fine.

However, it falls apart when you have artists with other symbols. One of mine that got botched up was ?uestlove -- one of the guys in The Roots. It starts with a "?," but is pronounced like "Questlove." Before, he was at the beginning of the list of artists. Now, iTunes 7.3 wants to sort him under the "u" because that's the first letter. That's not workable, as I'd never think to look for him under the "u." So, to make it workable, I had to change it to "Questlove," even though that's technically not correct.

Perhaps there aren't enough artists like this to warrant a special rule, but it kind of sucks and I just thought I'd mention it.

-GG
 

kylo4

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I thought some albums were missing when '74 Jailbreak, 2007 Grammys and #1's were missing from the top. I found them at the very bottom while scrolling and thought this was a strange decision.
Thanks for informing everybody about it.
 

Code Monkey

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kylo4 said:
... and thought this was a strange decision..
It's not just a "strange" decision, but a downright moronic one. First off, anybody bright enough to use a computer knows that symbols and numbers sort before alphabetical characters. Second off, what was the whole point of introducing the ability to customise sorting in 7.2 if they were just going to turn around and bork it with 7.3?

Now I've 10,000 Maniacs at the end and no way to restore basic alphanumeric order without changing the name. Beautiful.
 
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It's actually worse than that... If you adjust the "Sort Order" fields for some, but not all of your tracks from a given album, iTunes will actually create two entries in your album listing (in the browser) for that one album, with the tracks that have a different set of sort order fields defined listed separately.

Sounds like somebody messed up somewhere along the way, and I'm actually wondering if all of this weird sorting is deliberate, or is a side-effect of some other changes that weren't supposed to be as widespread.
 

GadgetGuru72

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jhollington said:
It's actually worse than that... If you adjust the "Sort Order" fields for some, but not all of your tracks from a given album, iTunes will actually create two entries in your album listing (in the browser) for that one album, with the tracks that have a different set of sort order fields defined listed separately.

Sounds like somebody messed up somewhere along the way, and I'm actually wondering if all of this weird sorting is deliberate, or is a side-effect of some other changes that weren't supposed to be as widespread.
I hope you're right. I guess it could just be a mistake, because like Code Monkey said, the numbers should come first.
 

kylo4

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You're exactly right. Apple was really jacked up about quickly adding the iPhone feature for it that they just sent out a bugged version. They're going to get a lot of complaints for this one. Numbers come before letters, its basic knowledge when organizing.

I feel bad for users like Code Monkey who says he has 10,000 tracks with numbers at the front and symbols. Damn. I see a 7.4 being released very soon.
 

huyi

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jhollington said:
It's actually worse than that... If you adjust the "Sort Order" fields for some, but not all of your tracks from a given album, iTunes will actually create two entries in your album listing (in the browser) for that one album, with the tracks that have a different set of sort order fields defined listed separately.
that's already annoys me now when i have a misspelled artist name from badly tagged songs, now this will annoy me even further because not all of my songs are not numbered by track number, will i be affected?
 

Essin

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jhollington said:
It's actually worse than that... If you adjust the "Sort Order" fields for some, but not all of your tracks from a given album, iTunes will actually create two entries in your album listing (in the browser) for that one album, with the tracks that have a different set of sort order fields defined listed separately.
Aren't you supposed to set ALL songs of an album with the same sort order? Possibly using the "Apply Sort Order..." command.
 
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Yes, one would expect that you're supposed to do this, but not only is this a weird thing if you don't, but the "Apply Sort Order..." command no longer works either, since iTunes now sees the entries with different sort orders as different albums.
 

Anachronism

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Are playlists that start with characters also affected? All my favorite playlists start with special characters so they end up at the top of the list.
 

Code Monkey

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Anachronism said:
Are playlists that start with characters also affected? All my favorite playlists start with special characters so they end up at the top of the list.
At least with all the special characters I use for my playlists, no.
 

melsmusic

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Glad I ticked "No" tonight when I opened iTunes. I assumed it would be iPhone related, and not too helpful to me. Not that I ever tick yes before coming here first to check out bugs, but I was hoping it was going to fix a bug I seemed to have picked up since 7.2. For some reason when I open iTunes, and only on rare occasions, it takes me through the set up procedure and goes about adding all files again. The painful part of that is, I have a folder for music I've deleted out of iTunes ready to throw on my external due to my library getting too large, and it keeps adding it back in. Not a biggie though, I just change the folder name, I eventually get to the ! and delete them out. A little frustrating though, as I like to keep it neat, but sick of going right through it to take them out now.
 
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Yes, unless you have an Apple TV or an iPhone, or wnat to reverse-transfer purchased iTunes Plus tracks (from iPod back to library), there aren't really any other significant reasons to bother upgrading.

Even the Apple TV support is only useful if you want to stream photos from your library rather than syncing them to the Apple TV.
 

GadgetGuru72

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Code Monkey said:
At least with all the special characters I use for my playlists, no.
I can confirm this, too. My playlists that start with special characters are still at the top of the list.

This may be wishful thinking, but this does seem to imply that the issue with browser sorting was simply a mistake that will be fixed in the next update.
 

crash613

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is it just me, or has Apple gotten to the point that each update is worse than the last? this seems to apply not only to itunes, but to firmware versions of my 5 gen 60gb ipod video and my 2 gen ipod nano as well
 

DjRags

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Artists beginning with numbers now at bottom of list...HELP

Hey everyone. I have had my ipod for 2 years and have never experienced this problem before. Before, artists beginning with numbers (3 Doors Down, 2Pac, etc) all appeared at the top of my artist list on my ipod. However, now the artists with numbers appear below artists starting with "z"...this is both on the ipod and when I view the music in itunes. Click on the name tab at the top doesn't fix this...is there anyone who has a solution for this? Thanks for any help
 

Sparkee

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This is a known issue with the latest version 7.3 of iTunes, right now the only fix would be to downgrade to 7.2. Hopefully Apple will fix this soon.
 

bluejacket

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The sorting also applies to the genre titles. This is very annoying as I had it set up to always have some genres at the top for ease of finding them.

This is bloody stupid. Is there a character that sorts before 'a'? I've been using 'å'. I think it sorts just after 'a'.

I'm also ####ed about '!!!' being right at the end of my artist list.
 

DjRags

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Ok, thank you for the info...and yeah hopefully Apple will fix this
 

GadgetGuru72

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DjRags said:
Hey everyone. I have had my ipod for 2 years and have never experienced this problem before. Before, artists beginning with numbers (3 Doors Down, 2Pac, etc) all appeared at the top of my artist list on my ipod. However, now the artists with numbers appear below artists starting with "z"...this is both on the ipod and when I view the music in itunes. Click on the name tab at the top doesn't fix this...is there anyone who has a solution for this? Thanks for any help
I merged your thread with this one since they dealt with the same issue.

Although there is no confirmation of this, the hope is that this was not something Apple did intentionally, and that it will be fixed in the next release.
 
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