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Topic: Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod! (Read 12952 times) previous topic - next topic
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Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

I have an iPod and I have a helluva lot of Bob Dylan records (MP3!) on my computer hard drive. These MP3's are all tagged correctly, with Bob Dylan as the album artist (or band if you prefer). Each individual song can be tagged with different artist, not necessarily the album artist.

For example, the Queen of Folk Music (as Dylan himself has written), Joan Baez, is known to have accompanied Dylan on certain songs and therefor those songs are tagged differently.

But my iPod just doesn't get it. It sorts the music after the artist, not the album artist, and with 30 Dylan albums I have a lot of 'Bob Dylan featuring' artists on that list.

How do I fix this? Is there some setting that I've missed?

Or is there some other way to take care of this? I don't want to erase all the artist information that I've spent so many hours writing... And I don't know if I want two music folders, one for iTunes and one for normal programs.

This is just killing me. Help me, please!

(And sorry for my - eventually - bad English. I'm Swedish you know, but at least I tried!)

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #1 –
No, you aren't missing anything.  iPods sort by artist and not album artist.  Album artist is something that is used to further sort content within iTunes, not on the iPod.  The only way to have all of these songs group together on your iPod is to change the main artist to Bob Dylan.  You can also create a smart playlist containing all of these files.  iTunes can exam your library and group songs with the same album artist together.  It only takes a few seconds to actually set this up and iTunes will constantly monitor your library for live updating of the playlist (again, it is instant, iTunes won't have to scan your library every single time you open it).

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #2 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
No, you aren't missing anything.  iPods sort by artist and not album artist.  Album artist is something that is used to further sort content within iTunes, not on the iPod.  The only way to have all of these songs group together on your iPod is to change the main artist to Bob Dylan.  You can also create a smart playlist containing all of these files.  iTunes can exam your library and group songs with the same album artist together.  It only takes a few seconds to actually set this up and iTunes will constantly monitor your library for live updating of the playlist (again, it is instant, iTunes won't have to scan your library every single time you open it).

Well, if I want to change the main artist to Bob Dylan - how do I do it the easy way? I have a lot more music than Dylan records (about 20 GB of MP3's). Although I don't really want to lose the featuring information since I've taken time to tag it up. Is there some way I can keep that information (artist tag) for future use? Or trick the iPod in some way?

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #3 –
You can't trick the iPod.  Now, you can manually manage your iPod so that you edit the track tags for those problematic files, sync them to your iPod, and keep a copy with unchanged tags.  You can delete the changed tag tracks after you manually sync them to your iPod.  There is a way to edit all songs though.  Create a smart playlist which contains all songs that have the same album artist.  Then simply highlight all the files in that playlist, right-click on one of them, and change the artist to Bob Dylan.

You could always add notes to each file so that they contain the artists information, that way you won't lose it.  Just know that there isn't a way to trick your iPod or anything like that.  Want the songs grouped together under the same artist?  Change the artist entry so that they match.

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #4 –
...or browse by album, not by artist, like I do
TAPE LOADING ERROR

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #5 –
Not an itunes or ipod user, but wouldn't the 'compilation' flag also group them under album artists?

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #6 –
Quote from: hlloyge on
...or browse by album, not by artist, like I do

I use up all of space on my 16 GB iPod and therefore I have kind of a hard time remembering what all the albums are called or how they look. It would be a lot easier to first sort by album artist and then albums.

Quote from: Teknojnky on
Not an itunes or ipod user, but wouldn't the 'compilation' flag also group them under album artists?

It groups them under Compilations instead of Artists. Having Bob Dylan albums under each one seems a bit problematic.

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #7 –
Why don't you just do what I do for songs with more than one artist:
Ex.
Title: Take Me Home Tonight (with Ronnie Spector)
Artist: Eddie Money
Album: Super Hits

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #8 –
Quote from: A_Day_Without_Me on
Why don't you just to what I do for songs with more than one artist:
Ex.
Title: Take Me Home Tonight (with Ronnie Spector)
Artist: Eddie Money
Album: Super Hits

I got a lot of MP3's... Doing that on all would take some time. I guess I'm just going to erase the artist information. A lot of hard work wasted. 

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #9 –
why don't you use a program to copy the info to the comments or other unused field so that you don't loose the info.

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #10 –
Quote from: Teknojnky on
why don't you use a program to copy the info to the comments or other unused field so that you don't loose the info.

That would be perfect. Do anybody know of such a program and how to do it, and which is the most significant field for this purpose?

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #11 –
Ah, managed to do it with Mp3tag. Now I just want some suggestions in which field I should put the artist data. Maybe some field that iTunes or iPod never uses?

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #12 –
It's a shame you need to mess up your metadata simply to avoid Apple's lack of full Album Artist support on the device.  Pesonally, I'd just use cover flow and album view.

Or use a product that does support Album Artist correctly, like Rockbox, Zune, etc. 

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #13 –
Quote from: vieekk on
Ah, managed to do it with Mp3tag. Now I just want some suggestions in which field I should put the artist data. Maybe some field that iTunes or iPod never uses?


I believe in MP3tag you can create any new tag. So create a tag named XARTIST, for example, and copy your artist info into XARTIST.  Then you have that tag field, can see it in mp3tag (copy from it in the future if you want to move that info back to artist, etc.). But itunes won't do anything with that tag.
 

Problem with album artist (band) on my iPod!

Reply #14 –
Quote from: grommet on
It's a shame you need to mess up your metadata simply to avoid Apple's lack of full Album Artist support on the device.  Pesonally, I'd just use cover flow and album view.

Or use a product that does support Album Artist correctly, like Rockbox, Zune, etc. 

Yeah, it's a shame, but I like the iPod except for this flaw. I really don't have any need for the featuring data anyway, but I just want to save it for the future. Who knows, maybe Apple recognizes this terrible flaw and releases an update for the iPod? They've already fixed it in iTunes...

Quote from: garym on
I believe in MP3tag you can create any new tag. So create a tag named XARTIST, for example, and copy your artist info into XARTIST.  Then you have that tag field, can see it in mp3tag (copy from it in the future if you want to move that info back to artist, etc.). But itunes won't do anything with that tag.

Ah, nice, I guess I'll try that then. And then I have my correctly tagged MP3's for future use - perfect!