"Compilations" complications

[Kimmi]

Hi, I turned the compilations to ON on my ipod, and am wondering how albums autmatically show up in this catergory? I like it

To set other artists in this compilations catergory, do I just select Part of a compilation in the INFO box? Instead of showing up under Artists?

Kimmi

[silvery]

Originally Posted by Lectric

Now maybe someone can fill me in on what the heck the "grouping" tag is about?

The grouping tag can be used for anything you want. Most people use it for their smart playlists.

For example, if you want to create a workout playlist of your favorite workout songs, you can tag each song you want in this playlist with "workout" in the gruoping field or something like that, then create a smart playlist based on grouping named workout. That way you never lose this playlist, you can always autogenerate it. I personally use many grouping tags and sometimes they overlap, I find that if I leave 2 spaces between each word, I can generate individual smart playlists. Example say a song falls into my workout and dance playlist, in the grouping tag I would have typed: dance workout (or workout dance), that way I can make a smart playlist for groupings with dance and for groupings with workout. It's great for double smart playlists too where for example you create one smart playlist based on a genre or on an artist, and then make a second playlist with the first playlist as a criteria, and narrow it down by using a grouping based smart playlist, hope that wasn't too confusing, the all things itunes guide explains double smart playlists better, hope all this helped.

[barrowfordred]

I'm using iTunes 7 and I've just noticed that even though my compilations are ticked as a compilation only a few asongs from a few compilation albums are actually in the compilation folder? Most are filed under artist even the album artist says various????
PS
All my compilations were filed in the compilations folder UNTIL I made the mistake of upgrading to version 7.

[ktjensen]

While I was trying to organize my music under ITUNES 7 I noticed that lots of artist directories were getting only one song. This seemed to be cluttering up my hard drive with way too many directories. I had read of a method to create an album directory for four songs or more from the same album/ CD artist; and then an A B C alphabetical directory for any single songs that I had just laying around on the hard drive. This made some sense, but implementing it on a large existing collection would be too hard.

Then I realized if I hit the compilation button (song item tag settings) on a selected group of songs, the whole collection of songs were moved to their own directory under COMPILATIONS. This reduced the number of directories I had, by several levels, plus everything was nice and neatly organized.

I then deleted the empty directories with a tool that searchs and finds empty directories. The tool is called RED short for Remove Empty Directories. It works great.

The result is a nicely organized MUSIC directory on my hard drive, that will be archived to DVD for emergency restoration.

[ktjensen]

Just to comment on what was said earlier in the thread. The IPOD will not change anything with a song TAG if you just change the labels in the TAG of the song. The only way to make a change seems to be to change the album title to TEST; then sync to IPOD; then change the album title back to its normal title; then resync again.

Yes a true bug, but maybe a safety feature too, depending on how you look at it.

[ktjensen]

Has this been fixed in 7.01 version of ITUNES? I am not sure yet. I am seeing all the compilations in the compilations folder on the IPOD (using the video 30GB version), so maybe.

I also need to see if I can display COMPILATIONS as a lsting in the ITUNES browser window. From what I read this is in the browser, under artists as a "compilations" artist maybe, but I need to check. This is a little confusing, but definately needed.

Originally Posted by barrowfordred

I'm using iTunes 7 and I've just noticed that even though my compilations are ticked as a compilation only a few asongs from a few compilation albums are actually in the compilation folder? Most are filed under artist even the album artist says various????
PS
All my compilations were filed in the compilations folder UNTIL I made the mistake of upgrading to version 7.

[sosodef_87]

Originally Posted by ktjensen

While I was trying to organize my music under ITUNES 7 I noticed that lots of artist directories were getting only one song. This seemed to be cluttering up my hard drive with way too many directories. I had read of a method to create an album directory for four songs or more from the same album/ CD artist; and then an A B C alphabetical directory for any single songs that I had just laying around on the hard drive. This made some sense, but implementing it on a large existing collection would be too hard.

Then I realized if I hit the compilation button (song item tag settings) on a selected group of songs, the whole collection of songs were moved to their own directory under COMPILATIONS. This reduced the number of directories I had, by several levels, plus everything was nice and neatly organized.

I then deleted the empty directories with a tool that searchs and finds empty directories. The tool is called RED short for Remove Empty Directories. It works great.

The result is a nicely organized MUSIC directory on my hard drive, that will be archived to DVD for emergency restoration.

Exactly the reason I use the complilations thing... for organization.

[~*McoreD*~]

Speaking about Compilations complications.. embarrassingly I only realized this today.

It seems like iTunes 7 organizes tracks according to AlbumArtist. So for example if you have AlbumArtist to be DJ SL and Compilations = False then iTunes will move the tracks to a folder DJ SL. But if you have Compilations = True then iTunes will move the tracks to Compilations folder.

[~*McoreD*~]

Originally Posted by sosodef_87

Exactly the reason I use the complilations thing... for organization.

or appropriately AlbumArtist tag as mentioned above.

Say for example, a compilations done by an Artist, e.g. DJ SL, Armin van Buuren etc. and you would like that album to be gone under DJ SL, Armin van Buuren. etc.

[Germansuplex]

I use the Album Artist tag. Works like a charm for me. All of my compilations show up under "Various Artists" in my iTunes music folder.

[Parafly9]

Originally Posted by Germansuplex

I use the Album Artist tag. Works like a charm for me. All of my compilations show up under "Various Artists" in my iTunes music folder.

I do have a **lot** of artists, but I am not sure how this works.

The biggest issue I have is I have quite a few mixed techno CD's that have many artists. The album artist is either "Various Artists" or a particular artist, but I end up with a folder for each song, basically.

I don't really want my one-off downloads to be grouped by compilation, only the albums tha treally are (you know, NYC Club Vocal Mix) or whatever.

Coverflow sucks too... should be by album.

I've spent hours in hte last weeks getting my ipod setup but now I have 4000 songs all at a minimum of 192kbps and perfectly tagged with embedded album art and all rated. So far, working good!

Next step is to try to clean up the genres so I can get some better smart lists going.

[sawatzky]

You can get a single artist album out of the Compilation folder by making the compilation dropdpwn says NO AND by changing the artist and album name to the same value.

Often well meaning people who submit to CDDB throw in all the precise Artists for each song individually (eg. by adding "Erykah Badu Featuring Lenny Kravitz" or "Sergio Mendes Feat. Maogani Quartet"), and iTunes sees those as separate artists.

That will create a separate folder for each psudo-artist. If you want to keep that information but have a single artist folder you have to move it to the Info or Composer panels in the ID3 tags.

[Amos M]

Hello all,

[Amos M]

Woops,

Sorry about that, seems I'm having as many problems posting this thread as I am with compilations at the moment. Wondering if any of you know how to get arounf this problem.

I have a number of compilation albums comprising tracks from different era's. I want these tracks to be tagged with the correct dates. ie. The Doors - 1969 etc etc. Therefore, the individual tracks will appear under the correct year when creating a playlist.

However, if I do this, the actual release date of the compliation becomes problematic. For example, I have a compliation of 60's songs released in 2008. What the hell do I do. This is a particular problem if for example you have a greatest hits album by a particular artist. I want to list the album itself chronologically alongside the other albums by that artist, but want to tag each track with correct year.

I am guessing the only way is to mark all albums with tracks from different years as compilations, but this means they all get lumped in compilations and not under each individual artist.

Someone please help clarify what can be done about this.

Thanks

Amos

[rockmyplimsoul]

Why not tag the Year for individual songs on the album? You don't have to have the same year for the entire album if you want the Year field to represent the year the song was released.

There's also the Sort Album field where you can precede the Album name with the year. If you sort by Albums, this will allow you to sort by year but have the album names appear normal. You can use the same year in the Sort Album field for the entire album, or use different years in this field for each song.