Why does iTunes create multiple folders for the same artist?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by seed_drill, Feb 25, 2017.

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  1. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    And is there anything that can be done to fix it? It actually has a separate "Billy Joel" folder showing for every song off of Cold Spring Harbor!

    I've tried bringing the songs into a Playlist and retyping the artist and album artist names so they'd all be the same, but to no avail.

    It seems to only do this with needledrops that have, thus, had manual entries, but usually it'll at least put the whole album in a "folder", with the exception of the Billy Joel example.
     
  2. gary191265

    gary191265 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Select all the songs, change the artist name to aaaaa or something equally random. Then change it back to what it should be.
     
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  3. curbach

    curbach Some guy on the internet

    Location:
    The ATX
    This has been an occasional glitch for awhile. Sometimes the only way to fix it is to delete the album from iTunes and reimport it (don't actually delete the files). However, since the last iTunes update I have not been experiencing this problem. Knock on wood, maybe it's been fixed. They seem to have finally fixed the bug that prevented you from copying artwork from one song to another, so there's hope!
     
  4. gary191265

    gary191265 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK

    You could always copy artwork but had to use the ctrl-v, ctrl-c option.
     
  5. curbach

    curbach Some guy on the internet

    Location:
    The ATX
    For a long while that didn't work either. I wasn't the only one having a problem. There was a thread where it was discussed. The workaround was to copy the artwork to your desktop, then copy it back to the track in iTunes. This is with iTunes on a PC. Maybe it wasn't an issue on a Mac.

    Which reminds me, suddenly I have been unable to cut-n-paste artwork from a Google image search into iTunes (no problem cutting-n-pasting from Album Art Exchange). My suspicion is this maybe some type of weak copyright protection from Google rather than iTunes issue. This can also be worked around by saving the image to my desktop first and then into iTunes. Weird.
     
  6. gary191265

    gary191265 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Never had a problem with artwork, don't have a problem copying from Google either? This is in a PC...perhaps I've just inadvertently skipped the right versions?
     
  7. Sevoflurane

    Sevoflurane Forum Resident

    If these are your own needle drops / rips, disable the option in Preferences>Advanced that allows iTunes to manage your media library AND to copy files to your iTunes folder. If you do that, folders you create with music in will stay where you choose to put them when you add them to your library. Note that the iTunes library file is simply a database file listing the file names and locations for all of your media files. There is no reason why those media files have to be stored in a particular location or moved by iTunes. I keep all of my CD rips in a folder called "Music ALAC" on a separate hard drive to the drive that has my iTunes folder containing my iTunes library file.

    Unfortunately, iTunes will move things around and split things into multiple files left to its own devices using its default settings.
     
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  8. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    That worked, thanks.
     
  9. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    Now a new, weird, glitch. It won't let me edit the sorting feature on an album. Every time I type in "Preston, Johnny" it kicks back to "Johnny Preston." I guess I'll have to try the aaaaa trick again.

    Edit - Big mistake, now it's stuck labeled as "aaaa".

    Edit part deux, I had to export the tracks to a playlist folder to make the changes stick.
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2017
  10. Sevoflurane

    Sevoflurane Forum Resident

    The other thing I do is to use dBPoweramp as a CD Ripper but also as a metadata / artwork editor, to get the metadata and artwork exactly how I want it before adding the files to iTunes. I am not a vinyl user, but do rip audio from DVD and Blu Ray, and both DVD Audio Rxtractor and Audiomuxer (the latter, in combination with MakeMKV is my current favourite for such tasks) allow for metadata to be edited.

    In summary, for total control get the metadata correct before adding to iTunes and stop iTunes from editing it.

    The other thing about iTunes I have never quite mastered, which is probably due to ineptitude on my part, is working out exactly what changes you make to a file from within iTunes are applied to the file itself, and which ones it just saves to the library. At least if you use third party software to edit the file metadata yourself, you know the changes have been applied to file itself. I'm not anti iTunes, which I use on a daily basis, but I do find it needs to be tamed somewhat if one is to keep control over a large music collection.
     
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  11. greelywinger

    greelywinger Osmondia

    Location:
    Dayton, Ohio USA
    I also get this when ripping CDs.
    Sometimes it depends if there is one space between an artists first and last name.
    T Rex (T.Rex? T-Rex? T. Rex) is a nightmare.
    I also leave album artist space blank.

    Darryl
     
  12. gary191265

    gary191265 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Use MP3Tag, it's brilliant (it works for other formats, not just MP3)
     
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  13. gary191265

    gary191265 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    That's why I did the rename to aaaaa, then rename the lot with one artist name.
     
  14. cmcintyre

    cmcintyre Forum Resident

    Possibly a slight variation of this is to add the "aaa" at the end of the artist name after you've selected all the songs - that way it's easy to locate the artist again, (or it won't have 'moved' from in front of you when you click "OK"). Eg "Abbaaa"

    Odd spaces after the artist name, slight variations of the spaces, commas, etc can cause this to happen. Gary191265's advice is a simple sure fix.

    Related to this - you might wish to check the sort tab - to check that the artist name here (or any other aspect) is as you expect to be. I've found that sometimes a modification that I do in some of the fields doesn't always carry over to the sort field.
     
  15. Bingo Bongo

    Bingo Bongo Music gives me Eargasms

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    Stop playing Billy Joel music, problem solved..... :hide::D:D:D:D:D:D:D
     
  16. cmcintyre

    cmcintyre Forum Resident

    Ahh. T. Rex, or is it T.Rex or .........

    T. Rex was probably the trigger that found a solution. Once you select all the songs by the artist and change to the one format ("T. Rex") and then ensure that no other T.Rex or T-Rex appears as an album name (or start of) or song, then the next time one rips a CD of T. Rex, just select all in the artist name prior to ripping, change to what you want ( which will be automatically prompted since there is now no other format) it becomes much easier. Darryl, no more nightmares. ( Unless you're listening to one of those dreadful posthumous remixed rejigged and mutilated recordings. ;))
     
  17. Callipleura

    Callipleura New Member

    Location:
    Canada
    I agree with Sevoflurane - tag metadata as much as you possibly can before importing into iTunes. All the problems discussed in this thread don't happen if you do I find.

    I used to cut the artist/album artist/album etc name, hit enter, then reselect the entire album and repaste the name to fix that problem. But gary191265's method of aaa's would work just as well. The "sort as" field has a mind of it's own when it comes tagging inside iTunes, you can actually watch it change something back or not accept it if you have that view open sometimes.
     
  18. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    Yes, iTunes is trying to protect you, if you listened very closely there would have been a high frequency modulation of Steve Jobs speaking through Peter Frampton's Vocoder, saying "This is an early work by the artist and not representative of more mature, later work, therefore we have separated it out"

    Or, something was in the Artist Album field or whatever that's called, or yes commas or odd spacing or foreign characters. Copy the name out of one album and paste into the other. And sometimes there are just odd glitches.
     
  19. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    Do you know how long it took me to speed correct that sucker?
     
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  20. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    Ok, another quandary. If an artist has more than one self titled album, can you get iTunes to separate them out based on release year or album art? I actually added a difference to the "sort as" field, to no avail.
     
  21. Sevoflurane

    Sevoflurane Forum Resident

    Again, this is where editing the metadata beforehand helps. I have, like a lot of SHF forum users, multiple different versions of some albums, and to stop iTunes and me from getting confused I will add the mastering in square brackets to the title e.g. "Animals [2011 remaster]" so I can tell them apart.
     
  22. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    I ran into a similar problem with Greatest Hits albums released by different artists (on my Walkman player it would display them as a single album when I wanted to play the album). My solution was to put the artist's name (in square brackets) after the album name so that it treats each Greatest Hits album as a separate album. Later, I extended it to all cases where there are two or more albums with the same name (as an example, the Carpenters and The Flirts both released an album called Made In America) to ensure that the albums are separated in my music management program and on my players.
     
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  23. cmcintyre

    cmcintyre Forum Resident

    Here's a simple neat solution:
    (the following are the first three Peter Gabriel self titled albums)

    Peter Gabriel
    Peter Gabriel
    Peter Gabriel

    Huh?. They sort differently because there are no spaces after the first album, one space after the 2nd, and two spaces after the third. The problem from the original post (iTunes creates multiple folders for the same artist) becomes the solution.

    The same solution with spaces can be used for Greatest Hits, but I use an alternative solution.

    For all compilation albums (multi or single artist) I include the albums (first) release date in the title. Eg "Greatest Hits (1999)" This way I can create smart playlists that include only single artist compilations and it's easy to separate out original albums from compilations via a smart playlist. Each track on a compilation is given either its release year, or if an outtake released some years later, its recording year.

    Sometimes the greatest hits album includes the artist in the title or a more detailed full title - guided by the original artwork that is what it becomes. So far I've no case of two albums titled "Greatest Hits" being issued in the same year.
     
  24. Bingo Bongo

    Bingo Bongo Music gives me Eargasms

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    I put the year in front of every album in the title, that way it comes up automatically. but for someone like Paul McCartney all his music is under his name, not under Wings or Firemen.
     
  25. dave9199

    dave9199 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Durham, NC
    Yes, changing the name to something else then back again works but sometimes there is a space after the band name and that will create a new folder.
     
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