tech: iPod indexing problems

Subject: iPod indexing problems
From: Anglo
Date: 03 Apr 08 - 11:46 PM

I recently discovered that my iPod doesn't index a lot of compilation albums by artist, so I can't for example, find Paddy Tunney in the Artist list and access his songs that way. Even though his name is listed in track info as the song artist.

I find that artists in compilations are indeed listed when they have other individual albums,but not when they don't, though artists who have only one song (loaded independently) are listed.

This was a real PITA this last weekend as I was doing a thing on English traditional song, and couldn't access any of the artists on my Voice Of The People set by name - only by album, if I happened to remember which of the 20 they were on, which of course I didn't.

It's a new (Xmas) classic iPod, no pics, no videos, just music.

Is this a problem with my settings? Anybody else noticed this? Help. please.

Subject: RE: iPod indexing problems
From: Zhenya
Date: 04 Apr 08 - 01:37 AM

Well, conveniently, I have an iPod classic which has a Voice of the People album on it (Vol 4), checked off as a compilation. It has 2 tracks by Paddy Tunney, and I have another whole album of his on the iPod as well (The Man of Songs). I also have a few tracks of his on The Lark in the Morning compilation album. So I did an experiment for you, and here's a possible solution.

First, do you have Paddy Tunney listed in iTunes as the artist or the album artist? (2 different columns). It looks like only the first item is available for use on the iPod.

I'm asking because I just checked the way I had my Voice of the People album set up. Right now, on iTunes, I have the artist for all tracks listed simply as Voice of the People. Under the album artist column, I have the individual artists listed. (I think the iTunes folks intended this to work the other way around, but by the time I figured that out, I already had several albums set up this way, so I just left it in that format.)

When I search for Paddy Tunney in iTunes, I get a results list with all the tracks on The Man of Songs, and all of his tracks from the 2 compilation albums. But if I search on my iPod classic, I just get the tracks from The Man of Songs, and not from the compilation albums.

So I experimented, and edited one of the Voice of the People tracks in iTunes, by switching the artist and album artist columns. I synced this to the iPod, and searched under Paddy Tunney's name again. This time, 2 albums were listed, The Man of Songs and the Voice of the People album. But only the one VOTP track of his that I had edited showed up, not the other one from that album that I hadn't changed..

So if this is in fact your set up, you should be able to fix it by editing the track information on iTunes. If that's not the issue, then, back to the drawing board!

I guess if you can plan a presentation ahead of time, you could also set up a playlist in iTunes, where you have more searching options, and then transfer it to the iPod already set up with the tracks you want.

Subject: RE: iPod indexing problems
From: GUEST,woodsie
Date: 04 Apr 08 - 02:17 AM

Highlight tracks then right click and select "Get Info" you can now edit the artist name etc. Whatever you enter here will be how IPOD sorts the tracks. You can change multilple tracks for stuff like artist or album name, but for obvious reasons track names one at a time.

Subject: RE: iPod indexing problems
From: Rowan
Date: 04 Apr 08 - 02:19 AM

Zhenya, while I've yet to get into my daughters' use of iTunes and their iPods, I've now got the ability to do so; your explanation is brilliant! Thank you.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: iPod indexing problems
From: Anglo
Date: 04 Apr 08 - 03:00 AM

Thanks for the considered reply, Zhenya. When I do a GetInfo of Craigie Hill in iTunes, it lists Paddy Tunney as the Artist, the "Album Artist" whatever that means, is blank, and the album is listed as VOP 04, etc., just as it was entered into iTunes by GraceNotes. It is also checked off as part of a compilation.

Well, I just took that whole CD and copied the "Artist" names to the "Album Artist" column. All that did was to re-order the whole CD in iTunes alphabetically, but the artists still don't show up in my iTunes Artists menu. (Yes I did sync the iPod). Still no Paddy Tunney.

Subject: RE: iPod indexing problems
From: Anglo
Date: 04 Apr 08 - 03:20 AM

NOW, I just put my CD transcription of my Man Of Songs LP into iTunes, then synched the iPod again. and what do we find...

As well as listing song titles, PT is listed as "Artist" (Album Artist column is blank). And when I find PT, who now DOES appear in the artist listing, as well as "Man of Songs," all the VOP CDs he appears on are listed as well.

This reflects what I said in my original post, and now I know how to make a compilation artist appear in the artist menu - just add a solo album of that artist (perhaps even a solo track?) - but how do I get the names of artists who are ONLY on compilations to appear on my Artist menu?

Subject: RE: iPod indexing problems
From: Zhenya
Date: 04 Apr 08 - 02:41 PM

Thanks Rowan, I'm glad you found it helpful.

Anglo - Sorry my guess didn't solve your problem. I'm at work, so I can't try out any other ideas right now. I'll check this thread later when I'm home and if there's still no solution to your problem, I'll try a few more things. (Including testing one of those "orphan" artists who only show up on compilations.)

Meanwhile:

The "album artist" field is the one that isn't available on the iPod at all. There's just no provision for it on the iPod. When I mentioned switching the fields around above, I was doing it to take the individual artist name out of the "album artist" field, and put it into the "artist" field instead. I'm sorry if this was confusing.

By the way I've been doing a lot of editing and tagging as I put each CD into iTunes, because I make a lot of use of smart playlists. So Gracenote probably did tag the CD originally exactly as you have it, but I have it differently because I changed it.

If you haven't done this already, you may want to check on
iLounge.com. I have partial access at work, apparently - when I looked up information about compilations, the right third of each response was blocked out, so I can't read them fully or copy/paste for you. But try this yourself:

On the iLounge.com site, click on the Forums tab. In the Search box on the page that comes up, search on the word compilations. Some of the remarks there seem to be discussing the same problem you're having. Look in particular at one titled "Compilations mystery on 160G classic."

Here, hopefully, is the link:
Compilations Mystery

It may help simply to toggle off the compilations check box, but without trying that myself, I'm not sure how that will affect other ways I use this information on the iPod.

Good luck, and I'll check back here later to see how things turned out.

Subject: RE: iPod indexing problems
From: Anglo
Date: 04 Apr 08 - 05:14 PM

Zhenya, thank you. That thread discussed the problem and suggested that it would work if Compilations was turned off in the Settings menu. It apparently was off already on my machine. But what did work was to turn off the compilations check box. I did a number of them CD by CD, but eventually did a GetInfo off a Select All, and clicked OK with the Compilations set at No. It took a while to synchronize, but now it seems to work as I wanted it to, and all the artists seem to be in the menu (of course, it takes a lot longer to scroll down).

Thanks again.

Subject: RE: iPod indexing problems
From: Zhenya
Date: 05 Apr 08 - 12:05 AM

Glad to hear the problem is solved, and I hope you enjoy your new iPod set-up.

Subject: RE: iPod indexing problems
From: Zhenya
Date: 06 May 08 - 02:51 AM

I just found this on iLounge.com, in the Ask iLounge Q&A dated 5/2/08. (Ask iLounge is on the Articles tab of the top menu.) I read it quickly, but I think it relates to the problem discussed in this thread. The full answer has a lot more detail.

It's from the question that starts out :"I am a complete iPod novice and I am the wrong side of 50."


"The "Compilations" feature in iTunes and on the iPod is primarily intended to group these types of albums into a separate listing while also filtering out "one-hit-wonders"—artists that may only have done a single track on a movie soundtrack, for instance, and therefore don't deserve a place in your "Artists" listing."

Subject: RE: iPod indexing problems
From: Zhenya
Date: 06 May 08 - 02:53 AM

And here's a blue clicky to go with that:

Ask iLounge 5-2-08