PLEASE help me with organinsing... very confused!!!

[aher052]

Ok so I have the billboard top 100 album with all the songs/artists.

can someone please help me with this:

1. when i click artist on my ipod i want to see all the artists seperately

2. when i click album i want to see all the artists grouped together under the same album (ie not 60 or so different album art for the same album but under different artists!!)

but it seems like i can only do one or the other!

can someone please help me

[aher052]

if i click yes to compliation then the it sorts it all under the same album which is good!

BUT

then i cant see the seperate artists under artist view in my ipod and thats my problem

i want to see the seperate artists as well as have them grouped under the same album!!!

[kornchild2002]

Make sure that each artist field is correctly labeled for each song. In other words, all of the songs should not have the same artist. Then try clearing out the album artist field. I imagine that is where the Various Artists are coming into play. The funny thing is that when viewing by artist on my iPod touch, I don't see Various Artists at all despite many of my albums having album artists with that entry.

[aher052]

the album artist is cleared already

all the songs do not have the same artist.. they each have their own respective artists
they are currently as a compliation which shows on my ipod as all under the same album which is good

BUT it does not show each artist seperately when i scroll down my ipod

[kornchild2002]

Since the album artist has been cleared and each song has a separate artist, your iPod should not be grouping those songs together in album view. I have over 50 compilation albums on my iPod. They each are labeled as being compilations and all have Various Artists for their Album Artist field. Each album is grouped together when I look through the album view on my iPod. However, when I sort by artist, each album is then split up. So I am not sure what is going on with your iPod since I have never experienced an iPod touch grouping everything together as Various Artists before.

Have you tried deleting the songs from your iPod and syncing them back over? Auto-sync should automatically update the track tag information of your songs but it might be acting buggy. Simply instruct iTunes not to sync those albums/songs to your iPod, go through the sync process, and eject your iPod. Then plug it back in, tell iTunes to sync those songs/album, go through the sync process, and eject your iPod.

[aher052]

album artist = cleard
artist = name of the artist
song name = name of the song
album = 2011 billboard top 100

all 100 songs tagged as part of compilation

when i look at ipod under album -> all songs and artists are under ONE album - ie 2011 billboard top 100 = good

BUT

when i look at ipod under artists -> i cant see any of the artists that are a part of the album.

ive tried deleting and resyncing but getting same result..
am i doing something wrong or is what i am trying to acheive not possible?

[kornchild2002]

Just to make things clear, what exactly is your iPod doing? Is it not displaying the artists at all? Is it splitting them up so that each artist appears separately? Or is it grouping all of the artists together under "Various Artists"?

[aher052]

no it does not group them under various artists

it does not show the artists name at all

[rockmyplimsoul]

Maybe specify which iOS version you're using.

If you have iOS 5, try going into Settings/Music and change the "Group by Album Artist" setting, does that help you? Probably not, but if you haven't tried it give it a shot.

I say "probably not" since there seems to be something goofy with iOS 5 (on my iPhone at least, my Touch is a 2G stuck at iOS 4 and does not behave the same). On my iPhone I see the following behavior:

1- There is an Artist entry for "Various Artists", which is all my compilations, despite there being a separate Compilations menu selection. This is fine, just redundant.

2- Artists who only exist on a Compilation album do not appear in my Artist menu. This is good, and was a shortcoming in all previous iOS versions. Now my Artist menu is not cluttered up with one-hit wonders from Compilations. The odd thing though is that despite the "Group by Album Artist" setting, that does not impact this one way or another, I would think it should. Oh well, I like it how it is now.

3- HOWEVER, for Artists who exist on a Compilation album and a "regular" album, their Compilation songs do not show up under their respective Artist entry, only songs from the regular albums do. That is a problem since there is no way to play all songs by an artist if some of their songs are on a Compilation. My iPod Classic would bring Compilation songs into the Artist menu if the artist had at least one other album on my iPod, which is the preferred approach. My 2G Touch does it this way too, but only because it can't separate Compilations at all, other than the dedicated menu for them.

So, it could be that what the OP is seeing is this 3rd issue -- once you mark a song as "Part of a Compilation" they are always removed from the Artist menu, regardless if there are other songs by the artist that are not on a Compilation.