iTunes & iPhone Disparity

Marc

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Something weird is happening when I try to put music onto my iPhone from iTunes. 2 examples:

Gold (ABBA) shows Artist ABBA in iTunes but shows as Various Artists on iPhone

Queen (Greatest Hits Vol I,II & III) - When iPhone is connected to iTunes, 'On this device' shows all 3 volumes but iPhone only shows volume I

I'm stumped!
 



I found my peace with iTune when I decided to
take the time to fill some of the blanks of every

album so to leave it no decision making.


iTune.jpg


 
Something weird is happening when I try to put music onto my iPhone from iTunes. 2 examples:

Gold (ABBA) shows Artist ABBA in iTunes but shows as Various Artists on iPhone

Queen (Greatest Hits Vol I,II & III) - When iPhone is connected to iTunes, 'On this device' shows all 3 volumes but iPhone only shows volume I

I'm stumped!

I just checked on my iPhone and both Gold and the Queen albums are as they should be, BUT as Kodiak did, I invested a lot of time going through my iTunes library on my MacBook ensuring everything was properly labelled. A time-consuming PITA but ultimately worth it.
 
I just checked on my iPhone and both Gold and the Queen albums are as they should be, BUT as Kodiak did, I invested a lot of time going through my iTunes library on my MacBook ensuring everything was properly labelled. A time-consuming PITA but ultimately worth it.

Everything is labelled in my iTunes but that wouldn't explain the above circumstances.
 


Make sure, Marc, that your prefs look like this…


iTune%20pref.jpg
 
Everything is labelled in my iTunes but that wouldn't explain the above circumstances.

I wondered if the ABBA case might be a discrepancy between the “Artist” and “Album Artist” columns in iTunes.
With regards to Queen, do the tracks from Volumes 2 & 3 actually appear as part of the original Greatest Hits álbum on the iPhone?
 
I wondered if the ABBA case might be a discrepancy between the “Artist” and “Album Artist” columns in iTunes.
With regards to Queen, do the tracks from Volumes 2 & 3 actually appear as part of the original Greatest Hits álbum on the iPhone?

No, they don't.

I've found a workaround by putting the tracks into a playlist but I'd love to know why it's happening
 
What advantage would that give me?


  1. YOU manage your songs
  2. You will not have doubles generated
  3. You will ALWAYS be incharge and iTunes
    does what YOU say it should do and how!
Good reason enough? :cool:
 
  1. YOU manage your songs
  2. You will not have doubles generated
  3. You will ALWAYS be incharge and iTune
    does what YOU say it should do and how!
Good reason enough? :cool:

But I can do all that with the current settings.

1. I manage my songs
2. I don't have any doubles
3. Apart from the weird anomalies above, iTunes does what I want it to do
 
I wondered if the ABBA case might be a discrepancy between the “Artist” and “Album Artist” columns in iTunes.
With regards to Queen, do the tracks from Volumes 2 & 3 actually appear as part of the original Greatest Hits álbum on the iPhone?
Artist vs Album Artist was my first thought - is iTunes set to show both columns and do they disagree? Is the Disc No tag set for all the tracks in the Queen compilation?

I've had other problems with mp3s that have ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags that disagree, usually fixed by deleting the ID3v1 tags - I think you need a specialised tagger to do this.
 
But I can do all that with the current settings.



iTunes settings on your Mac but what about the settings on your phone?
 
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Artist vs Album Artist was my first thought - is iTunes set to show both columns and do they disagree? Is the Disc No tag set for all the tracks in the Queen compilation?

How do you set iTunes to show both columns? I can only see 'Artist'.
 
How do you set iTunes to show both columns? I can only see 'Artist'.

I’m away from home, so don’t have my MacBook with me, but from memory it’s in “view” in the iTunes nav bar. There’s a way of showing which iTunes columns you want visible.
 
I’m away from home, so don’t have my MacBook with me, but from memory it’s in “view” in the iTunes nav bar. There’s a way of showing which iTunes columns you want visible.

Found it. Album Artist is blank for most albums, could this be an issue. I've copied over different albums, with an without Album Artist and it doesn't seem to make any difference.
 
Found it. Album Artist is blank for most albums, could this be an issue. I've copied over different albums, with an without Album Artist and it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Caused me issues.
 
Caused me issues.

Right. I just added the Album Artist to the ABBA & Queen albums. Gold now shows as ABBA on my phone and all 3 Queen volumes are there now so thanks for the help but I'm still baffled as there are plenty of other albums with blank Album Artist that I didn't have the same issues with.
 
Right. I just added the Album Artist to the ABBA & Queen albums. Gold now shows as ABBA on my phone and all 3 Queen volumes are there now so thanks for the help but I'm still baffled as there are plenty of other albums with blank Album Artist that I didn't have the same issues with.
I don't think (scanning this thread) anyone mentioned it ... but make sure "Album is a compilation of songs by various artists" isn't ticked. A lot of single artist compilations do get this tagged (its a Gracenote / CDDB mistake not an Apple mistake) and they then end up under Compilations.

With the Queen albums you may need to enter the Album Artist though as some tracks may be tagged as (for eg) Queen and David Bowie.

You shouldn't need to tag with Album Artist unless there is more than one different artist / variation of the artists name on a album.
 
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Paul I'd vehemently disagree with your preferences settings.

Unless you have a particular reason not to allow iTunes to name and store music in one location, then I would urge people to allow iTunes to manage everything (but then not try editing things outside of iTunes) by clicking the first two option shown ("Keep iTunes [...] organised" and "Copy files [...]"). Also there is no reason NOT to share the iTunes Library XML and if you use any third party application (or for example have a Sonos system) then allowing access to the iTunes Library XML allows them to get additional details / metadata which might otherwise be hidden.
 
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