iTunes

[ramseytheii]

How does iTunes decide how to sort music in the iTunes music folder?  Sometimes it sorts by the performer, sometimes by the album title.  How can I get it to be consistent?

I burn a lot of CDs, but don't leave them in iTunes unless I put them on my iPod.  So I "delete" them, but keep the files, then often go searching through the folder to find which ones to add back on.  But they are all a mess, organized in an irrational way it seems.

How can I fix this?

Walter Ramsey

[Etude]

nvm

[dnephi]

Personally, I let iTunes keep track of everything and then choose specific things to put on my iPods (one large for my whole library, one nano for running.)

[pianochick93]

How does iTunes decide how to sort music in the iTunes music folder?  Sometimes it sorts by the performer, sometimes by the album title.  How can I get it to be consistent?

I burn a lot of CDs, but don't leave them in iTunes unless I put them on my iPod.  So I "delete" them, but keep the files, then often go searching through the folder to find which ones to add back on.  But they are all a mess, organized in an irrational way it seems.

How can I fix this?

Walter Ramsey

At the top of the playlist you can click on the titles 'name' 'artist' 'album' 'genre' 'play count' etc. (I can't remember all of them) and it will sort it. artist, album, and name get sorted by alphabetical order of whatever album etc. play count is sorted by the number of times the song has been played, and I'm not sure how genre is sorted because I don't sort that way.
If you click the title again, the list will reverse itself.

[ramseytheii]

Thanx!  I'm actually trying to sort the files, as they appear when I remove them from iTunes.  There's a folder, it's Documents\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music, and it has everything I've downloaded into iTunes from CDs.  When I take things out of iTunes, but leave them in my hard drive, they get sorted in that folder, but they get all mixed up.  Some are sorted by Artist, some by Album, some byComposer.  I can't figure out the rationale; why should some files be sorted by the Album title, but others by who is playing?  It makes it hard to go through my files, which are not in iTunes, but still on the computer, to bring stuff back into iTunes.

Walter Ramsey

[ramseytheii]

Hi - I figured this out.

CDs you burn are automatically sorted in the iTunes folder (Documents\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music) by artist.  If you go into the iTunes program and mark a CD's files as "Compilation," they will be sorted by the name of the Album in Documents\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Compilations.

If you include an "Album Artist" in the tracks' info, they will be sorted by that field instead of just 'Artist.'  This is useful for Classical music, in that you can put 'Album Artist' as the composer of the pieces, then iTunes will sort the files in the iTunes folder according to the composer (as you entered it into 'Album ARtist.') 

So now I can sort my files all according to composers, and each of those folders have sub-folders which tell me the names of the Album, which in this case is the names of the pieces being played.

Hope somebody else finds that useful!

Walter Ramsey

[rc]

I also like to type in the titles instead of the automatic ones given on the internet...  To make it cleaner, and also for box sets if I type it in myself iTunes will organize all the disks under one folder which is nice.