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Downloading a CD to Music

I have an original CD, not a copy, of Andre Bocelli's Passione. When I loaded the CD, it prompted and asked if I wished to download, which I did, and it downloaded all tracks. However, it didn't save all of the tracks under the one Album but instead split out tracks 5, 8 and 9 into another Album with the same name. The artist, album name and composer on each of the tracks is the same on these 3 tracks as it is on the all of the tracks stored under the 1st album named Passione. Genre and Year are the same. I tried to delete the songs from Music and deleted the media files in the music folder including the album and artist name. I reloaded and the same issue. I'm at a loss as to what's happening here.

iMac 27″, macOS 11.4

Posted on Jun 27, 2021 2:17 PM

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Posted on Jul 1, 2021 9:29 AM

The link you supplied, http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp (Grouping tracks into albums), held the clue and resolution for my issues. After much trial and error and experimentation, I found that if, while in Library-Albums view, if I clicked on the album cover that contained the orphaned tracks or the least amount of tracks, then clicked on the ... to modify the "Get Info" at the album level for all items, I then checked the box indicating the entire album was a Compilation of Songs By Various Artists, then saved the changes. This consolidated the album covers under one cover. Checking the Get Info for each track under the Album still reflects and confirms that all fields (artist, album, album artist, composer, grouping, genre, year, etc) are all identical as they were before. I suspect there is something still hidden within the track headers that isn't displaying which is making these orphan tracks different from other tracks on the CD. At least, that's where I would look next if I was an Apple programmer. This has been an irritating bug/design flaw in iTunes and Music since the beginning, I believe.


Thanks "turingtest2" for all your help and guidance putting me onto this workaround. It's really appreciated.

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7 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 1, 2021 9:29 AM in response to turingtest2

The link you supplied, http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp (Grouping tracks into albums), held the clue and resolution for my issues. After much trial and error and experimentation, I found that if, while in Library-Albums view, if I clicked on the album cover that contained the orphaned tracks or the least amount of tracks, then clicked on the ... to modify the "Get Info" at the album level for all items, I then checked the box indicating the entire album was a Compilation of Songs By Various Artists, then saved the changes. This consolidated the album covers under one cover. Checking the Get Info for each track under the Album still reflects and confirms that all fields (artist, album, album artist, composer, grouping, genre, year, etc) are all identical as they were before. I suspect there is something still hidden within the track headers that isn't displaying which is making these orphan tracks different from other tracks on the CD. At least, that's where I would look next if I was an Apple programmer. This has been an irritating bug/design flaw in iTunes and Music since the beginning, I believe.


Thanks "turingtest2" for all your help and guidance putting me onto this workaround. It's really appreciated.

Jun 28, 2021 1:52 AM in response to jcosta97

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 the application 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 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 application wanted to keep separate start typing a value and use the autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.



tt2

Jun 30, 2021 10:11 AM in response to turingtest2

Well, unfortunately, sometimes the CD's split themselves up after looking like they imported just fine. The one example I gave in the original post is still holding together, so far. But, I have 3 other CD's that were downloaded both before and after that particular day that looked like they imported fine (yes, I look at each one and test playing them before proceeding to load another; I know, I'm paranoid...LOL) but have since broken apart into 2 or more albums each. Any thoughts on this? Maybe there's a bug in the Music software that's causing this phenomenon to occur?

Jun 30, 2021 11:12 AM in response to jcosta97

There are albums that will look OK in one view, and split in another, or might only reveal a problem when you add more content by the same band or add another album with the same title. If you fix them following the advice in Grouping tracks into albums, where every field that should be same for an album is used consistently, they normally stay fixed. It has been an issue since I first started using iTunes around 15 years ago. I can't recall the last time I noticed an issue with something that had already been added to the library and subject to my initial fixes. Probably when the artists view was added to the sidebar in iTunes.


tt2

Downloading a CD to Music

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