How to tell itunes that individual tracks are not whole albums?

January 8, 2009 1:56 PM

How can I group all of my individual (not on an album that I own) tracks together in itunes so that Cover Flow really is just whole albums that I own?

I'm switching over to itunes from winamp for long and complicated reasons. My previous folder system in explorer involved folders for each artist where I had 2 or more songs by that artist. These artist folders would then also contain whole albums where I had them. The few thousand other mp3s where I just owned one song by an artist were floating happily in the 'root' of My Music.

I had a similar system going on my old Creative Zen Touch (now deceased) where all individual (that is, not part of an album which I own) tracks had their album tagged as Unknown so that when I browsed albums on my mp3 player, only the whole albums that I actually own came up.

I'd very much like to have a system like this in itunes if possible. I like the Cover Flow feature but it bugs me that it's showing a load of albums that I don't technically have.

So, any suggestions on how to make albums in itunes only whole albums, whilst keeping the artist information accurate? At the moment itunes thinks I have a whole load of albums called Unknown, each by a different artist.

Thanks! (I'm running Windows XP btw)

posted by Lotto to computers & internet (3 comments total)

You can put your music into list view, and then sort by album, so all the tracks with "Unknown" as the album are together. Then shift-select all those tracks. Right-click and select "Get Info." Change the "Album Artist" Field to "Singles" or "Various" or whatever you want to call them all, then under the Options tab, change "Part of a Compilation" to "Yes." That will put them all together in Coverflow, if I'm not mistaken.
posted by Grundlebug at 2:08 PM on January 8 [3 favorites]

Grundlebug's suggestion above is a good one. I have all of my singles in one "album" called Singles. I am also really crazy about organizing files, so I have the mp3s in the same physical folder as well.
posted by hazyspring at 3:13 PM on January 8

You can also throw the loose songs into separate "albums" by genre, era, or alphabetical groupings using the different sorting options to group songs accordingly. And if you have a lot in a certain era, say, the 80s, you can break them down further into sets of years.

You can also look for or make your own themed "cover" artwork for each album, such as using period-appropriate fonts/icons for each one. 'S fun.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 11:51 PM on January 8