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.

How to resolve synching problem where albums each show up multiple times, once for each song on the album rather than just one album with all songs?

How to resolve iTunes library synching problem between Mac and iPhone, such that music albums each show up multiple times in the iPhone library, once for each song on the album rather than just one album with all the songs?

iPhone 8

Posted on Mar 25, 2022 10:46 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 25, 2022 10:57 AM

In general if the content is organized correctly in iTunes it should stay together when synced to your device.



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

Similar questions

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 25, 2022 10:57 AM in response to Nate55555

In general if the content is organized correctly in iTunes it should stay together when synced to your device.



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

Mar 28, 2022 9:23 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for trying to help but unfortunately I'm not following the advice with adding an 'X' to the songs etc. There's a couple of hundred albums in my iTunes library (3,400+ songs) and I don't see why I need to spend hours manually adjusting the files just to re-synch the library between my Apple Mac and IOS iPhone (8).


Update: Despite 3 failed tries to re-synch my iTunes library with my iPhone, the 4th time was the charm and it worked (without any of the manual intervention suggested by tt2). Whew, I feel much better now that my iPhone has my music library back. Good ol' technology, sometimes complicated and confusing but great when it then works! : )

How to resolve synching problem where albums each show up multiple times, once for each song on the album rather than just one album with all songs?

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