Comments on: Why doesn't my iPod library match my iTunes?

Question: Why doesn't my iPod library match my iTunes?

Ekim Neems — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 08:54:28 -0800

Please help with a strange iTunes 7.3 problem - Library and synced iPod aren't "matching up"!

I have only full albums on my iPod, but I like having recently added and favorite albums at the top of my artist list. I did this by prefixing certain artist names with "!" which would make them appear at the top of the list. After doing this for a good 2 years, all of a sudden the exclamation point would no longer sort on top, once I updated to iTunes 7.3.

Since it was silly to have artists prefixed with an "!" without doing anything, I changed all those artist back to normal. But now, even though my local iTunes library looks fine, the exclamation points remain on some artist on the iPod even after restoring and re-syncing the entire library to the iPod!

So for example, I have three Dizzee Rascal albums, one of which had the artist prefixed with "!". Now on my iPod I'm showing three artists:

Dizzee Rascal
! Dizzee Rascal
Dizzee Rascal

I also have a few artists where there are three copies of the same artist, even though I've re-tagged them in my library. Example:

Four Tet
Four Tet
Four Tet

My google-fu has failed, as I'm not really sure what I actually should be searching for here.

By: Phire

Phire — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:09:51 -0800

Not sure what to do about the exclamation mark problem, but for the actual artists.... try highlighting all of the same artist in the library and renaming them en masse. The iPod will distinguish between names that have different numbers of spaces after the name, too. So Four Tet space will be different from Four Tet.

Hope that helps?

By: monju_bosatsu

monju_bosatsu — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:36:47 -0800

I actually just noticed this problem last week on my iPod as well. I did a hard restore, but when I resync'd, had the same problem.

By: monju_bosatsu

monju_bosatsu — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:37:36 -0800

Phire, at least in my case, it's not a problem with spaces or slightly different characters. The duplicate artist names are true duplicates, with the same tracks listed under each.

By: Ekim Neems

Ekim Neems — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:50:30 -0800

Ditto for me as well. I've checked that there are no extraneous characters.

By: dustinAFN

dustinAFN — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 10:12:51 -0800

I would suggest reverting back to 7.2 if possible. It seems 7.3 made various changes to the way files are sorted. I upgraded earlier today and have been have been unable to sort podcasts in any manner. Which would be fine, but iTunes automatically moved some of them out of alphabetical order which drives me nuts. See this thread for more.

By: Ekim Neems

Ekim Neems — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 10:17:33 -0800

The problem is that I have an iPhone, so I will need 7.3 to be able to sync with my iPhone.

By: pdb

pdb — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 10:28:56 -0800

It seems 7.3 made various changes to the way files are sorted

Yup. 7.3 sorts letters first, then special characters. For three years, I had Big Star's #1 Record as the first record in my library, then once I installed 7.3 it vanished and I thought iTunes ate it. But it sorts "special characters" after the alphabet, for some screwy reason.

To replicate your old sorts, start all the records you want as favorites with 'aaa' or something, like "aaaBig Star", which should sort them back to the top for you.

By: gergtreble

gergtreble — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:22:09 -0800

You can actually set iTunes to sort by "date added" you know. That way all your newly added songs will be at the top of the list. Your favourite artists wont be though, but thats what rating and smart playlists are for.

By: monju_bosatsu

monju_bosatsu — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 07:30:33 -0800

So, it turns out that 7.3 actually added access to an additional field in the tag: "sort name." And for some reason, the sort names for the same artist, even within the same album, were not initially consistent in my library. If you have an artist with two sort names, their albums will show up twice on the iPod. After wading through and correcting them, everything sorts fine.