I purchased a 2 disc album from iTunes. I did nothing but click buy. I have not changed any default settings. When viewed under "view grouped with artwork", most tracks are separate instead of being grouped together under one album image. There are a few that are grouped together randomly. For example: track 1 of 16 on Disc 1 is with track 1 of 15 on disc 2, or tracks 3, 4, 5, & 10 of 15 Disc 2 are grouped together.

Another problem is with the order of the tracks. When I downloaded to my iPhone, the tracks are out of order. For example: #16 of disc 2 is now #1, #1 of disc 1 is now #17 of 31.

Finally, The artwork downloaded to my iPhone for most, but not all of the tracks.

What on earth am I doing wrong!?!?

Thanks for your help
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I downloaded the music from iTunes. I have double checked and all the info on all tracks is the same or the correct track and disc. They just will not group correctly under one album flow and they show up no matter what way I sort, out of order. Since this is a sound track with many different artists, I have checked compilation. Does this make a difference?
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Thanks "Cold Irons"!

Album Artist is not used (as far as I can tell) by the iPod. iTunes only uses it for grouping albums in the "Album View" or "Coverflow View". From my experimenting with these fields, there are three basic cases:

1) Normal, single artist albums - I just leave Album Artist blank. No reason to fill it in.

2) True "compilation" albums - no single "main artist" - things like "Rockin' Hits of the 50s", etc. Here, just set the Compilation Flag & leave Album Artist blank. iTunes will automatically show the artist as "Various Artists" when in the album/coverflow view.

3) An album of a "main" artists with guest stars or duets, like Ray Charles' "Genius Loves Company" - Ray duets with different guest on each song. Here you have 2 choices - neither really ideal:
a) Turn off compilation flag & set Album Artist to Ray Charles. Leave Artist = "Ray Charles & whoever" for each song. The album is grouped under Ray Charles in the album/coverflow view, but you have a bunch of "extra" artists in the artist listing, and on the iPod. Not ideal....but this is the choice I usually make.
b) Move the guest artists to the end of the song name, turn off compilation flag, don't need to set Album Artist (leave it blank). Then you don't clutter your artist listing, but you do have the guests in the song name - also not ideal.

When I have an album with a guest ONLY on a couple songs, I usually take the (b) option. If all the songs have guests, I usually take the (a) option. Like I say, neither seems ideal.

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Last edited by Cold Irons : 01-28-2008 at 08:55 AM.
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