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iTunes Artist View... Multiple "Artists" for the Exact Same Artist. Is There a Fix?

iTunes has had this feature for, what, a decade at least? Why does this still happen when the "Artist" and "Album Artist" are the exact same for multiple songs on the album? And, more importantly, is there some way to fix this?


This happens to me both when there is one single artist for the whole album (in this case, U2. I have about a dozen albums by them, and each one of the "U2" entries on the left have one or two partial albums listed):


...And when there multiple artists on the album, but the same album artist (in this case, there are some tracks by "White Zombie", and the rest by "Rob Zombie", with the latter being the "Album Artist" for all of them):


All of these tracks were legally ripped from the original CDs using iTunes. I'm using Mojave 10.14.5 with iTunes 12.9.5.5. Please advise.

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on May 23, 2019 2:45 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 23, 2019 2:58 PM

If iTunes shows multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Get 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 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 iTunes wanted to keep separate start typing a value and let iTunes autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.



tt2

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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 23, 2019 2:58 PM in response to DreamOnMan92

If iTunes shows multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Get 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 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 iTunes wanted to keep separate start typing a value and let iTunes autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.



tt2

iTunes Artist View... Multiple "Artists" for the Exact Same Artist. Is There a Fix?

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