Any iTunes Experts Out There?

[Bloozguy]

I finally started loading CDs into iTunes (Version 10.3.1.55 on a Windows 7 PC) and onto my iPhone after having the phone for over two years

iTunes is doing something I consider strange when I add CDs to my library. Every time there is a slight difference in the artist listing on a CD, iTunes treats it as a completely separate CD.

For example, the Santana CD "Supernatural" is stored as 12 different discs listed like this:

Supernatural - Santana

Supernatural - Santana Feat. Dave Matthews

Supernatural - Santana Feat. Everlast

Supernatural - Santana

Supernatural - Santana Feat. Rob Thomas

Supernatural - Santana Feat. Lauryn Hill & Cee-Lo

Supernatural - Santana Feat. Product G&B

Supernatural - Santana

Supernatural - Santana Feat. Maná

Supernatural - Santana Feat. Eagle-Eye Cherry

Supernatural - Santana

Supernatural - Santana Feat. Eric Clapton

Neil Young Greatest Hits is broken up into 11 pieces...

Is this normal for iTunes? I sure hope not.

Also, their online database of album artwork doesn't seem to be able to find some fairly common CDs. Supernatural is one example. Seven of the entries have the artwork for the original "Santana" album and the remaining five have nothing at all.

Have I got something set incorrectly? Is there some way to get the missing album artwork?

Help!!!

[bubs_42]

Man I hate that, if someone has a remedey for it I'd like to here it. I have a BB King Album that every single song has a guest on it. I can't listen to the whole CD unless I make a Play List.

[veatch]

Select all of the songs, do a right click and select "Get Info". On the "Info" tab, set the Artist to Carlos Rosanne Rosanna Santana-dana, and you're off to the races.

You may have to imort the artwork yerself for that album after doing that, though.

For artwork on other albums, it *should* be as simple as selecting "Get Album Artwork" from the Advanced menu. If it does not find the artwork (i get that every once in a while on the more obscure stuff), do a Google search for the artist and album name, and select images. find a decent quality image of the album cover, and save it on yer desktop. Back in iTunes, select one of the songs in the album, right-click and select "Get Info" again, but this time, go to the "Artwork" tab. Slect "Add..." and upload the file. You can delete the file from your desktop after you've done this. This should apply the artwork to all of the songs in that album.

Hope that helps!

[JohnnyB]

There is a fix, but I haven't done it in awhile. I got mine to work, but looking over the controls, I think there's a simpler way:

• Highlight all the tracks of the album you want to unite.
  
• Right-click or <Ctrl>click to get the pop-up menu.
  
• Select Get Info. It should display the Info panel with four selections at the top--Info, Video, Sorting, and Options. You should be on the Info page.
  
• Open the Options page and check the box next to "Part of a Compilation" and make sure the menu box next to it is set to Yes.
  
• Close out the Get Info box and see what you get.
  

If that doesn't fix it, then get back to me because I have other ways to unite a compilation, but they're a little more labor-intensive.

[zenmindbeginner]

I'm pretty anal about my mp3 tags.

What I do is use mp3tag and edit my tags per album after they are imported.

You'll have to right click on one of the songs and select view in explorer (or finder in Mac).

Then when you are in the album folder in My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music, then drag and drop the folder into mp3tag and edit away.

Veatch's suggestion of using iTunes internal mp3 tag editing capabilities is a fine one if you're not into getting mp3tag and using an additional program to edit your tags.

You'll want to use the additional artists in the title of the track and keep the artist as "Carlos Santana".

So have the title of the song and then in parenthesis, include the additional artist like: Smooth (featuring Rob Thomas).

And better yet, do it before the CD is imported and you'll save yourself an extra step or two if you pause when iTunes asks you to import the CD and go to the CD tracks and edit them andthen rip the CD. iTunes is a great mp3 tag editor, but it has a character limit in the "description" tag and I like to get huge paragraphs of info from wikipedia about the song if it's available and insert it as a tag in the description of the track so I usually avoid iTune's internal tag editor but it's sufficient for casual use.

[Bloozguy]

Thanks to everyone...I've now got single CDs...with artwork!

JohnnyB - Your method worked perfectly for combining all of the tracks.

[Turdus]

Anybody have an idea why the artwork tag would be missing from some of my cuts in I tunes? This seems to happen only on a few, but not all, cuts I've copied in from my CDs.

[a.bandini]

Turdus,

My daughter (age 15) tells me that that happens when I copy my CDs, that I have to manually download the album artwork. When I buy the song from Steve Jobs, he'll do the work for me. You think he'd help me out...all of the time, instead of some of the time.

[JohnnyB]

Turdus,

My daughter (age 15) tells me that that happens when I copy my CDs, that I have to manually download the album artwork. When I buy the song from Steve Jobs, he'll do the work for me. You think he'd help me out...all of the time, instead of some of the time.

Right. Some rips result in the artwork automatically, some will show up when you tell it to get artwork, but for many that I've ripped, I go to Amazon or eBay to download the artwork and attach it to the album. Right now I have 148 album covers that I've downloaded and attached manually.

[Turdus]

what I meant is I have some songs, where the artwork tab is not listed as part of the mp3 tag. These are only from CD's I've copied in.

[Bennyboy-UK]

How massively, massively user friendly... I sell big ass IT solutions to businesses of all kinds but iTunes is still a mystery to me...

Mind you the sell bit versus 'design' probably gives you a fair appraisal of my pond life level of technical ability ;-)

[Turdus]

what I meant is I have some songs, where the artwork tab is not listed as part of the mp3 tag. These are only from CD's I've copied in.

update on this one... the cuts that would not allow me to add/modify artwork were somehow imported as wav files. I checked some settings, and found the setting to import CDs as mp3s.

[mathman]

With the exception of purchased songs, you can convert almost any format to almost any other by selecting the track and choosing the "Create X" option in the advanced menu. The "X" will vary based on your import settings.

[Turdus]

I looked at converting the wav files, but the only option was "convert to wav", lol.

I was too lazy to open in audacity and convert. Easier to re import as mp3.

[mathman]

I looked at converting the wav files, but the only option was "convert to wav", lol.

I was too lazy to open in audacity and convert. Easier to re import as mp3.

Did you change the import settings in the prefs? The convert menu always shows the current import setting for conversion.

[Turdus]

did change in prefs... you know, the funny thing is I never messed with that setting before.... some of my imports have been wav, and some mp3. Can't explain that part.