Weird iOS Music app Compilation bug

[nicholasg]

1) I have a number of compilation albums. I think the they are tagged correctly i.e. Artist = name of performer of track; Album Artist is blank and Compilation check-box is clicked

2) Sync a compilation album to iPhone.

3) Looking at the Library -> Compilations on iPhone, some of the single albums in MacOS Music app are broken into multiple albums in iOS Music app

 

What seems to happen is if there are other albums in your library where the Album Artist = the Artist of one or more tracks on the Compilation album then these tracks are put on their own album. You can see this with the "Help" album below. It is one album in the Mac Music but 9 on my iPhone seemingly because I have albums from "Manic Street Preachers", "Massive Attack", "The Stone Roses", "Suede", "O'Connor, Sinead", "Radiohead", "The Charlatans" and "Blur" but not from the other artists on the album.

 

Is this some sort of "feature"?

 

[Wavertonwood]

What you are describing seems to be a ITunes bug for a long time.  
 

There seems to be a manual fix where you click the box to make the album as a compilation, then unclick the compilation  selection, and in this case click again (it’s a great album you’ve chosen!). This should get all the songs in one album. Also for compilations I put the Album Artist as Various and the Artist field as the correct band/artists.

 

I have given up trying to fix every album in my library where all the meta data is the same but Itunes splits at least one track into a separate album.

 

My other bugbear is ITunes mobile app overwriting the album art with artwork from a podcast I subscribe to. 

[krass]

I always complete the Album Artist field - for compilations I use “Various Artists”

 

Even with huge libraries it’s a trivially easy thing to fix, using a cheap tagging software app (I use Metadatics, but there are others.. Yate ? etc)

[nicholasg]

What's annoying is in the Music app on my Mac everything is fine. I can go to Artists, click on Compilations and each album is a single album.

 

The problem is on iOS where there seems to be no way to play an compilation album if some of the Artists are also Album Artists on others albums.

 

 

[PressedTrousers]

I have the same thing and it drives me mad. It should be a simple business to just carry over the metadata to my phone when transferring files, but it would appear not.

Also very annoyed when the Music app assigns random artwork to a compilation album based on the presence of an artist: eg an 80s comp that has a single track by, say, Bananarama, will have all the tracks assigned  the 'Greatest Hits Of Bananarama' artwork.

We're nearly 25 years down the line on iTunes, and we still get bugs like this?

[krass]

suspect they’re not “bugs” but “features” of the Apple music world…. 10+ years ago I went through the same sort if pain/ dismay/ confusion trying to understand why Apple Music (iTunes then) didn’t behave logically….

 

you have to realise that not all ‘metadata’ is the same… there is a bunch of metadata that comes with your music files (FLAC, AIFF, ALAC, whatever) and that metadata is (mostly) common/ consistent. When you save a FLAC with a piece of metadata called ‘Album’ it gets used as ‘Album’ almost universally, in all player software. If you choose (deliberately or by just not realising) to leave some metadata empty then you may get different behaviour with different software, so my recommendation is to use a good tagging programme and make sure all your metadata is completed, else in the Apple Music world there’s other metadata lurking around and Apple will happily fill in some of it by itself during playback.

 

I’ve had cases where I play an album and 9 of 10 tracks show one pice of cover art, the other track doesn’t. I eventually worked out to force a cover art jpg into every single saved track file, and not rely on the folder.jpg cover art in the album folder, then it works fine. 

 

How “compilations” are played is also a weird one… I’d recommend really looking at the metadata to see if there are inconsistencies in your music files. As I said, all my problems with Apple Music have gone since I fixed, consistently, all my trackfile metadata…. I don’t give Apple or any other programme/ software the chance to make things up for me….

 

apologies that this is a bit rambling… couldn’t work out how to be concise…