iPod Combine "Unknown Album" songs by same artist

[GGJstudios]

or you can do what i did and just go through and delete any song that is not part of an album. ...

What a ridiculous suggestion! Delete music just because it doesn't conform to a particular software program's idiosyncrasies? I'm not going to delete over 6,000 songs, many of which are rare and impossible to find, just because they're not part of an album. Many artists are "one-hit wonders", or only released several singles, but no albums. Many others have famous songs that were only released as singles and were never included on albums. So your idea is to delete everything that's not part of an album? You can do what you want with your library, but I'm not destroying part of what took me years to accumulate, just because iTunes has a limitation!

I was having the same problem.
I believe that if you merely enter in the artist in the "Album Artist" field, it will then group them together.

For me, setting an "Album Artist" for all songs from the same artist has helped. Thus all songs without an album by the same artist are put in the same "Unknown Album".

The Album Artist field is populated in all my library. That doesn't correct the problem. iTunes still creates a separate "Unknown Album" for each song, not each artist.

 

[diniscorreia]

Workaround

I think I found a fix.

Try editing the album field and add a single space on those tracks. After that edit the track info again and remove the space on the album field - these tracks will be groupped under a single 'Unknown Album'.

I guess this updates something on your library and/or id3 tags with iTunes 8-specific behaviour.

 

[Topher15]

I just call them "Tracks" and put in a generic image for the artwork (such as the band logo or photo). Since I do not use album list view (I use artist list view) this isn't a problem. Under each artist on my iPod or in iTunes is an album called Tracks.

If you want to view by album why not use the album grid view? This still organises the album by artist so you do not get a single compilation album.

Also, the compilation idea doesn't work for a few reasons. For one, it would be one album with over 6,000 songs in it. Two, if I want to play all the singles by a given artist, I can't just play the "Singles Album" for that artist.... it would play over 6,000 songs by many artists. For sorting, playing, etc. it's preferable to not mix artists' singles in the same album. I'm just trying to find a way not to have over 6,000 "Unknown Albums" in my library.

If you view by artist then the album called Tracks (or whatever you call it) is split by artist.

If you insist on organising by album then just call it "[Artist] Tracks" (e.g. Oasis tracks, Coldplay tracks...) or something similar. I'm sure there would be a script to identify artists with unknown albums and then automatically call the album "artist name Singles/Tracks/Whatever."

 

[Topher15]

The Album Artist field is populated in all my library. That doesn't correct the problem. iTunes still creates a separate "Unknown Album" for each song, not each artist.

Then why no use Album Artist rather than just Album to organise the music.

So even though you have 6,000 tracks under "Unknown Album", they will instead by organised by album artist.

 

[jowie]

For me, setting an "Album Artist" for all songs from the same artist has helped. Thus all songs without an album by the same artist are put in the same "Unknown Album".

Wow... I didn't realise you could do that to group all "orphan" tracks together... Nice one! +1

 

[Rawkfist]

Grouping by album artist is what I do with my orphans. I hate the "unknown album" tag so I name them "Compilation". Which is what it really is. So I now have several artists with compilation albums. Works for me.

I also just realized this thread was two and a half years old.