Combine split albums in iTunes

Oct 07, '08 07:30:03AM

Contributed by: kirkmc

This morning, I downloaded the latest Bob Dylan album from the iTunes Store. I had pre-ordered it, and the album was 27 tracks, plus an additional "bonus" track. But when I checked in my iTunes library, the 27 tracks and the bonus track were listed as two separate albums. I first changed the album name of the bonus track's album (it was slightly different), but they were still two separate albums, even with the same album name.

I tried fixing other tags: if any tags are different, iTunes may list the albums as different, in spite of their having the same name. What finally resolved the problem was deleting the Sort Artist and Sort Album Artist tags. (Select all the tracks, press Command-I, then click the Sorting tab; remove the check mark in the boxes next to Sort Artist and Sort Album Artist.) This fixed the problem. The cause was most likely a different name in one of those boxes (since I had selected multiple items, it didn't show if there was a difference; I could have checked first, but didn't.)

In any case, if you've normalized all your visible tags and albums still don't stay together, try checking the Sorting tags. You won't see them in iTunes, but iTunes uses them to sort and organize albums.

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