iPhone 4S - iTunes Artists Under Wrong Letter

[Hwangman]

iTunes on my wife's phone has recently started sorting artists randomly. Ex: when I scroll down the "Artists" list on her phone, it has Carrie Underwood under "B". It has also pushed remaining artists one letter down the list (all artists that start with "F" are now listed under "G".

iTunes version is 10.6 and her phone is on iOS 5.1.1. I've seen several web pages listing this problem but no concrete solution (restores and messing with iTunes options don't seem to work in all cases).

 

[barredfreak]

Hmm... That's interesting. Try resyncing the music to her phone.

Uncheck 'Sync Music' in iTunes and check it again. Also, try deleting every song from your iTunes library and importing it again.

 

[Hwangman]

I have the music sync set to manual because I don't have any music in my iTunes library. When I plug her phone in, I manually grab music files from my folders and drag them in. If I sync the phone, won't that replace her library with my blank iTunes library?

 

[PNutts]

Have you tried adding a song directly (wirelessly) from iTunes? Or deleting a song? You need to do something that kicks off a reindex. There are apps like iExplorer that let you view/add/delete files without a JB. Deleting the index will cause the iPhone to rebuild it.

I've never dragged a song onto an iPhone, but if you can do that then as a last resort you can delete all the songs and drag them back. However, I think you'll have less problems in the long run if you sync them in a more traditional method (iTunes / iTunes in the Cloud / iTunes Match / etc.).

Edit: I forgot to answer your question. You can try to Transfer Purchases to your empty library to see if that copies all the songs to it, and then sync them back on. But... That will associate her phone with your iTunes library and she won't be able to sync with her iTunes (if she is now) without jumping through the same hoops.