iTunes not importing CD's properly with multi-CD albums

[StephenCampbell]

I've been importing many CDs into iTunes from big CD collections where there are different volumes, sometimes 20 CDs in a single volume that I import under the same album title. Example "Collection Volume 1" will have 20 CDs which I import all with the exact same album title, and put "Disc 1 of 20" for the first one, "Disc 2 of 20" for the second one, etc, and typically they would all appear under the same album title in iTunes, and in order of discs. But now it keeps screwing up. The first seven discs of such a volume might be successfully imported, and then I import Disc 8, and it shows up separately, as a separate album with the exact same title, even though the title is the same and I've input "Disc 8 of 20" in the info before importing. Or it will show up under the same album listing but Before Disc 1, at the very top of the list. I can't for the life of me think why such a simple concept would be failing to be executed as it typically has been in iTunes over the years. Why is it having an issue following the instructions of having the same album title and the disc numbers? It's infuriating.

Thank you.

 

[Consultant]

Ran into similar problem in the past. If you want to get it correctly, you will have to enter all the info manually or adjust.

Why: iTunes uses third party metadata for CDs, which are usually input manually by other CD collectors. Sometimes there are multiple ones for the same CD, and iTunes doesn't know which one to choose.

Basically, you need to make sure multiple data fields are correct in the cases you are experiencing. The good this is that you can keep changing metadata after importing until they sort correctly.

Might need to adjust fields such as:
Album Name (make identical)
Year
Compilation (might need to be checked in some cases)

 

[StephenCampbell]

I have been making those fields identical though. And sometimes on a second try the CD will randomly import into the right place. I'll try unifying things like Year across all of them too to see if that works...

edit: Yeah nope. Tried year, tried checking Compilation. I was already making album names identical and doing everything manually.

 

[StephenCampbell]

For anyone wondering, inputing something for "Album Artist" and making it identical across all the CDs seems to fix the problem.