You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Music Albums Split with Catalina

I imported a few albums to the Music app in Catalina. Most worked fine, but two were split into two albums. The first contains one track and the second contains the rest. I tried deleting the album name on the one with only one track, saving it, then putting the name back. This temporarily combined the albums, but when I quit the Music app and then open it again, the albums are split up again.


I do sync my Music library to my iPod touch and on the iPod the albums are complete and not split. Thus I assume this is a problem unique to Catalina.

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Nov 28, 2020 3:04 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 29, 2020 5:05 AM

If iTunes or Music show multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Song Info to add say a trailing X to each of the fields that the tracks should have in common:

  • For an album; Album, Album Artist, and Artist (if artist is the same for all tracks) *
  • For an artist; Album Artist (and Artist unless there are guest/featured artists listed which should not be changed)

Apply the change which merges things together, then remove the excess characters. Occasionally it may help to close and reopen iTunes or Music between the two renaming operations. Part of a compilation should also be set consistently.


* If tracks are to be synced to a non-iOS device there should be a common Artist and/or the album should be set as a Compilation.



Use the songs view and display the fields Album, Sort Album, Album Artist, Sort Album Artist, Artist and Sort Artist side by side so you see whether or not it is appropriate to edit Artist and if sort values could be causing any further problems. See Grouping tracks into albums for more help if required.



One further tip for really stubborn duplicates. At one point I had three lots of Various Artists in the artists view of my iTunes Match library that wouldn't respond to the usual trailing X treatment. What I found worked was to add the trailing X to start with, but then with each group that the library wanted to keep separate start typing a value and select the autocomplete entry from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.



tt2

Similar questions

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 29, 2020 5:05 AM in response to Roger Roach

If iTunes or Music show multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Song Info to add say a trailing X to each of the fields that the tracks should have in common:

  • For an album; Album, Album Artist, and Artist (if artist is the same for all tracks) *
  • For an artist; Album Artist (and Artist unless there are guest/featured artists listed which should not be changed)

Apply the change which merges things together, then remove the excess characters. Occasionally it may help to close and reopen iTunes or Music between the two renaming operations. Part of a compilation should also be set consistently.


* If tracks are to be synced to a non-iOS device there should be a common Artist and/or the album should be set as a Compilation.



Use the songs view and display the fields Album, Sort Album, Album Artist, Sort Album Artist, Artist and Sort Artist side by side so you see whether or not it is appropriate to edit Artist and if sort values could be causing any further problems. See Grouping tracks into albums for more help if required.



One further tip for really stubborn duplicates. At one point I had three lots of Various Artists in the artists view of my iTunes Match library that wouldn't respond to the usual trailing X treatment. What I found worked was to add the trailing X to start with, but then with each group that the library wanted to keep separate start typing a value and select the autocomplete entry from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.



tt2

Music Albums Split with Catalina

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.