Understanding iTunes' sorting tags

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Understanding iTunes' sorting tags

#1 Macworld

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 04:46 AM

Post your comments for Understanding iTunes' sorting tags here

#2 groovydave

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 05:15 AM

I'd love to know how to sort an album by track. For the life of me I can't figure it out, but every time I buy an album it downloads out of order. I like to keep my library listed as date bought to keep my most recent songs at the top. But I'd love the tracks for an album to be in order.

#3 Be3G

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 05:34 AM

Another useful thing about sorting tags, which wasn't mentioned in the article, is that they're searchable. I therefore use them when dealing with composers from countries that don't use the Latin alphabet – e.g. Rachmaninov. Thus, I can set the artist to ‘Рахманинов’ so that that's what iTunes displays, but set the sort artist to ‘Rachmaninov’ so that I can get to his music by searching for his transliterated name. Doing that, of course, also means that he appears in the right place in an alphabetised list of artists.

#4 Be3G

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 05:35 AM

Oh dear, it would seem Macworld's commenting system isn't too keen on Cyrillic – the garbled text in my previous post was actually supposed to be Rachmaninov's name written in Russian (Cyrillic) letters.

#5 bastion

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 05:37 AM

"You’ll see that some of them are filled in, but in gray: this means that iTunes is sorting using what’s in the left-hand column."

Which is demonstrated as false by the graphic immediately following it. When it's grey, iTunes is using an inferred sort key. It may be identical to what's on the left side of the window, but they support common manipulations such as ignoring leading articles.

#6 bastion

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 05:42 AM

groovydave, on 27 October 2010 - 05:15 AM, said:

I can't think of a way you could get iTunes to do that, since you're essentially looking to do a hybrid of two unrelated monotonic sequences. Probably your best solution is just to define a smart playlist showing you all items added in the last {pick a time frame} and use that when you care about listening to new content.

#7 kirkmc

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 05:44 AM

bastion, on 27 October 2010 - 05:37 AM, said:

Yes, good point. "The" and "A" are ignored; however, if you want to use them as sort tags, put them in the Sorting tag sections: to have The Beatles sort at "T" instead of "B," enter "The Beatles" as sort artist.

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#8 kirkmc

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 05:45 AM

groovydave, on 27 October 2010 - 05:15 AM, said:

If this happens, there are a couple of possibilities. One is that the tracks are numbered incorrectly; that's unlikely. The other is that you're sorting by a different column than Album. What column is highlighted when you see this?

#9 mc4o1993

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 06:55 AM

groovydave, on 27 October 2010 - 05:15 AM, said:

track number? 1 of 12, etc... you can change it in the info tab when you get info. it's not a sort crieteria like the ones in this article, but you can show the column then sort by track number.

#10 JonathanBaldwin

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 07:47 AM

bastion, on 27 October 2010 - 05:42 AM, said:

groovydave, on 27 October 2010 - 05:15 AM, said:

Sot by track number. In View make sure track number is ticked, so it appears as a column. Then sort by that, ascending. Et voila!

#11 bastion

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 08:32 AM

JonathanBaldwin, on 27 October 2010 - 07:47 AM, said:

bastion, on 27 October 2010 - 05:42 AM, said:

groovydave, on 27 October 2010 - 05:15 AM, said:

Sot by track number. In View make sure track number is ticked, so it appears as a column. Then sort by that, ascending. Et voila!

I don't think that achieves the prior poster's goal. I think what he's looking for is to have a single view that shows him albums sorted by date acquired in descending order but within each album the tracks in ascending order by track number. I can't think of a way to do it without manipulating the metadata, but even then I'm not sure if iTunes sorting capabilities are up to it.

This gets even trickier when one considers the Complete My Album feature.

#12 Gary

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 09:14 AM

Waaaa...I wish I could update iTunes song info on my iPad, or on my iPhone, even

#13 MacEdge

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Posted 27 October 2010 - 10:22 AM

Does anyone have a solution to make Album Sort by Year work when an artist has released more than one album in a given year. If I search on The Beatles for example, and can I sort Album by year and force the correct release order when they released more than one album per Year? Of course, I want to do this without messing up other sorts and searches.