Comments on: iTunes bug or "feature"?

Question: iTunes bug or "feature"?

zooropa — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 09:46:45 -0800

"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?

By: The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew

The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 09:53:11 -0800

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!

By: The Deej

The Deej — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 11:12:25 -0800

Doctor Honeydew has it. I would be surprised if that doesn't work.

By: mkultra

mkultra — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 11:39:13 -0800

I've had this happen because of seemingly innocuous stuff like mis-capitalization and trailing spaces.

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 12:17:28 -0800

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.

By: tyllwin

tyllwin — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 12:47:56 -0800

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.

By: GS1977

GS1977 — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 16:02:05 -0800

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.

By: aristan

aristan — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 17:20:27 -0800

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.

By: zooropa

zooropa — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 16:17:04 -0800

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*