iTunes bug or "feature"?

June 30, 2007 9:46 AM

"Simple" iTunes question -- why do some covers get grouped together and others do not?

I'm sure there is a simple answer here, but I'll be darned if I can't figure this out.

I'm using iTunes 7.0.2 in Windows XP. I love the new "view by covers" feature (thank you CoverFlow!), but there's some curious behavior taking place. When I scroll through the covers, I notice that some tracks are "grouped" together while others are not. Here's an example:

I bought the Sting album "Ten Summoner's Tales" from the iTunes Store. When I scroll though the tracks, the cover gets shown only once.

I also recently bought three tracks from the Police album "Ghost in the Machine." When I scroll through the tracks, the cover is displayed three separate times.

I'd like to have the cover only display once when I'm scrolling. I have 3500+ tracks in iTunes, and anything I can do to cut down on the amount of scrolling would be a plus.

Any ideas?

posted by zooropa to computers & internet (8 comments total)

The cover is showing three times because for whatever reason, iTunes is not recognizing it as one album, but rather three singles. To remedy, highlight all three in list view, then to file -> get info. I'll ask you if you really want to batch edit those files, say yes. Then, make sure that the album name, artist, and album artist are all the same by typing them into the correct feilds. Save, and voilia!
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 9:53 AM on June 30, 2007

Doctor Honeydew has it. I would be surprised if that doesn't work.
posted by The Deej at 11:12 AM on June 30, 2007

I've had this happen because of seemingly innocuous stuff like mis-capitalization and trailing spaces.
posted by mkultra at 11:39 AM on June 30, 2007

This isn't the case with your Police tracks I'm sure, but this often also happens with compilations featuring different artists, and the trick is to simply batch edit them to ensure the compilation checkbox is checked.
posted by Robot Johnny at 12:17 PM on June 30, 2007

I've also see it happen when you have more than one piece of cover art: where one track has a 300x300 image and another has a 500x500 for example. In that case, it shows two covers even if the two tracks are tagged as the same album. That's usually on manually added tracks, so it's not likely to be the case here, but with 3500+ tracks, you may find that elsewhere in your library.
posted by tyllwin at 12:47 PM on June 30, 2007

As others have said, it is almost certainly to inconsistencies in the ID3 tags of these tracks. Happens to me all the time. Highlight all the tracks in the album, right-click, and choose Get Info. Edit the artist name and album name so that they all match exactly.
posted by GS1977 at 4:02 PM on June 30, 2007

Little things like an extra space at the end of an album title or artist name will cause iTunes to swear it is dealing with two albums. Follow the good doctor's advice.
posted by aristan at 5:20 PM on June 30, 2007

Thanks, everyone! This is exactly what I needed to know, and it's working like a charm.

Now if I can only figure out what the Compilation tag really does... *grin*
posted by zooropa at 4:17 PM on July 1, 2007