iTunes: Artist display based on oldest added track

Posted by Pierre Igot in: iTunes
November 12th, 2009 • 11:45 am

Ever since Apple introduced the “Album Artist” and “Sort Artist”/“Sort Album Artist” tags/fields in the track information in iTunes, I have been experiencing problems with the way artists are displayed in the “Artists” column when browsing my iTunes library in column view.

The “Album Artist” and the “Sort Artist”/“Sort Album Artist” tags serve two different purposes. The “Album Artist” tag is particularly useful when you have an artist with an album on which some tracks feature guest appearances by other artists.

The old method in the pre-“Album Artist” days was to add something like a “(feat. Guest Artist)” mention in the track name tag/field. For example, you would have a track like “Be Here” in Raphael Saadiq’s Instant Vintage album that would have “Raphael Saadiq” in the “Artist” field and “Be Here (feat. D’Angelo)” in the “Name” field.

With the introduction of the “Album Artist” field, you can now have “Raphael Saadiq” in the “Album Artist” field, “Raphael Saadiq (feat. D’Angelo)” in the “Artist” field and “Be Here” in the “Name” field.

But if you do that and you have other tracks for which the artist is “Raphael Saadiq” by himself, you get two separate entries in the “Artists” column in colum view, one with “Raphael Saadiq” and another one with “Raphael Saadiq (feat. D’Angelo).” That is obviously not ideal.

iTunes, however, also support so-called sort fields, including “Sort Artist” and “Sort Album Artist.” These fields are designed to help organize artists alphabetically by last name without having to use something like “Saadiq, Raphael” in the “Artist” field itself. You can keep using “Raphael Saadiq” in the “Artist” field and put “Saadiq, Raphael” in the “Sort Artist” field.

Then the artist that is displayed in the “Artists” column is “Raphael Saadiq,” but it is actually listed alphabetically in the section of artists starting with “S,” not “R.”

The big question, however, is what happens when you combine the use of the “Album Artist” field and the “Sort Artist”/“Sort Album Artist” fields. Things can get rather complicated and difficult to sort out.

For example, for the track mentioned above, you would put “Raphael Saadiq (feat. D’Angelo)” in the “Artist” field, “Raphael Saadiq” in the “Album Artist” field and “Saadiq, Raphael” in the “Sort Album Artist” field. But what would you put in the “Sort Artist” field? Just “Saadiq, Raphael” or “Saadiq, Raphael (feat. D’Angelo)”?

Even more important, once you start using both the “Album Artist” field and the “Sort Artist”/”Sort Album Artist” fields, on which field is the display of the artist’s name in the “Artists” column based?

I haven’t reviewed all possible scenarios. But what I do know is that, more often than not, in a situation such as the one described above, where I have multiple tracks with “Raphael Saadiq” in both the “Artist” and the “Album Artist” fields, and “Saadiq, Raphael” in both the “Sort Artist” and “Sort Album Artist” fields, if I just have one other track with “Raphael Saadiq (feat. D’Angelo)” in the “Artist” field and “Raphael Saadiq” in the “Album Artist” field and “Saadiq, Raphael” in both the “Sort Artist” and “Sort Album Artist” fields, I end up with a single entry for Raphael Saadiq in my “Artists” column that is listed alphabetically in the section of artists starting with “S” but… the artist is displayed as “Raphael Saadiq (feat. D’Angelo),” even for tracks with “Raphael Saadiq” in both the “Artist” and the “Album Artist” fields, and “Saadiq, Raphael” in both the “Sort Artist” and “Sort Album Artist” fields!

This does not happen all the time, but it happens often enough. And until today, I couldn’t figure out why. Then today I encountered that same situation again, precisely with this particular artist, and I decided to try and figure out what was going on.

Because of the way I have imported this artist’s tracks over the years and because of the columns I choose to display in iTunes, I could not help but notice that, while I had multiple tracks with “Raphael Saadiq” in both the “Artist” and the “Album Artist” fields, and “Saadiq, Raphael” in both the “Sort Artist” and “Sort Album Artist” fields, the one track named “Be Here” with “Raphael Saadiq (feat. D’Angelo)” in the “Artist” field also happened to be the one track for which… the “Date Added” column contained the oldest date.

I keep the “Date Added” column visible at all times in iTunes. This particular field is not editable, but records the date and time when the track in question was added to the iTunes library.

This intrigued me, so I decided to try a little experiment and modify the “Date Added” date for this particular track. Since it’s not editable, the only way to do it was to remove the track from the library altogether and then re-import it.

As expected, when I removed the track named “Be Here” with “Raphael Saadiq (feat. D’Angelo)” in the “Artist” field from my library altogether, the display of the artist’s name in the “Artists” column changed back from “Raphael Saadiq (feat. D’Angelo)” to just “Raphael Saadiq,” because I no longer had any track with “Raphael Saadiq (feat. D’Angelo)” in the “Artist” field in my library. I still had other tracks with “Raphael Saadiq (feat. XXX)” in the “Artist” field in my library, where “XXX” was the name of other artists, but, unlike the track I had just removed, these other tracks did not cause iTunes to change the artist displayed in the “Artists” column from just “Raphael Saadiq” to “Raphael Saadiq (feat. XXX).”

I suspected that this was because none of these other tracks were the oldest Raphael Saadiq in my library. Based on the “Date Added” column, the oldest Raphael Saadiq track in my library was now a track with just “Raphael Saadiq” in both the “Artist” and “Album Artist” field, and “Saadiq, Raphael” in both the “Sort Artist” and “Sort Artist” fields.

And then I re-imported the offending track named “Be Here” with “Raphael Saadiq (feat. D’Angelo)” in the “Artist” field into my iTunes library. And guess what? Even though it was the same track, with the same tags, this time it did not cause the display of the artist name in the “Artists” column to change from “Raphael Saadiq” to “Raphael Saadiq (feat. D’Angelo).”

This seems to confirm my theory, which is that, because iTunes has no “smart” way to determine which of the artists’ names to use in the “Artists” column (it is not smart enough, for example, to ignore the “(feat. XXX)” portion of an artist’s name), it relies on another way to choose the name that will be displayed in the “Artists” column, and that is to use the artist name for the track that has the oldest “Date Added” value.

The good news is that this gives me a way to eliminate the problem whenever I encounter it with other artists in my library. If I have another artist whose name as displayed in the “Artists” column is “Artist (feat. Other Artist),” I can remove and re-import the offending tracks from my library until the track with the oldest “Date Added” value is one that does not have “(feat. Other Artist)” in the “Artist” field.

The bad news is that, each time I remove a track from library, it is also removed from all the playlists where it might appear. So before I delete a track, I have to use the “Show in Playlist” command in the contextual menu (obtained by right-clicking on the track) to check if it is included in any of my playlists. And if it is and I don’t want to lose the reference to this track in the playlist, I have manually add it back to the playlist after I have re-imported it.

So it’s a bit of a pain if the offending track happens to be part of a playlist that I don’t want to alter. But at least I finally have a way to correct the manner in which the artist’s name is displayed in the “Artists” column whenever iTunes does not choose the right artist name to display in that column.

If you have the same problem in iTunes, then all this will probably be clearer to you than it will be to people who don’t have the problem and have no idea what I am talking about. I could spend even more time trying various scenarios and describing all the possible situations in full detail, so that things can be made clearer even for people who don’t experience the problem, but frankly, I have other things to do.

I just hope the above can be useful to those with the problem. And if you have evidence that the name choice made by iTunes is not based on the “Dated Added” value but on something else, don’t hesitate to write me to share your own experience.


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