Sorting the My Music folder

August 30, 2005 10:17 AM

Is there a way to have the "My Music" folder in XP ignore the "the" in band names like iTunes does?

For example, I'd like to have The Beatles alphabetized under B rather than T but still keep the name of the folder as "The Beatles".

I don't want to use iTunes to sort my music as I like having the artwork for all of my albums displayed at once while I'm browsing for something to listen to.

posted by gfrobe to computers & internet (5 comments total)

AFAIK, there isn't any way to do this. The "My Music" folder's contents are displayed using Explorer just the same as any other folder is.

The closest you could come to the functionality you want, I think, would be to change all such folder names to something like "Beatles, The," which is how people traditionally get around such things.
posted by cerebus19 at 10:50 AM on August 30, 2005

There's no provision in the user/system settings for determining how the Explorer sorts items, other than A to Z or Z to A.
posted by pmbuko at 12:26 PM on August 30, 2005

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but Uberview is a great little program for doing just this. It'll ignore the leading "The" if you want it to, and you can browse your entire collection via album cover. The caveat here is that you need a reasonably well organized collection (album oriented) to get the best use from Uberview.
posted by flod at 1:54 PM on August 30, 2005

Ooh, forgot to mention: Uberview can also automatically download album covers for you from Amazon if you don't already have art for a particular album. It's a lifesaver for huge collections...
posted by flod at 1:58 PM on August 30, 2005

Thanks all. I'll try Uberview.
posted by gfrobe at 2:01 PM on August 30, 2005