Apple Music iOS: Albums do not sort by artist properly

Sorting by album artists on Apple Music iOS doesn't seem to work properly.


For whatever reason, when I go to the albums in my library, if I sort by artist, there's a ton of albums that end up at the bottom (under the # category), even though the artists for those albums do not have names that start with a number:


I cannot for the life of me figure out what is causing this. Here's some things to note:

  • This does not happen if I'm looking at the artists in my library, so clearly AM knows their names don't start with numbers or symbols
  • On iTunes, everything sorts properly, even when sorting by Artist, by Album Artist, and by Sort Album Artist.
  • I've tried to replicate the issue on iTunes to see if there's some hidden metadata causing this, and could not replicate it
  • These are all Apple Music albums, although I have edited some metadata (as I have with every song in my library)
  • Some albums are categorized under # consistently, but it seems every day that there's new albums under # that weren't there before, and others that were there but aren't anymore. It makes me wonder if this is some sort of syncing issue?
  • I cannot figure out what, if anything, the albums categorized under # have in common. There's no metadata value that they all share, some are full albums and some aren't, etc. But one thing I've noticed is that if an artist has an album that's incorrectly under the # category, all of their albums will be under the # category. So it seems this issue isn't so much related to the albums as it is the artist.


Any guidance on this would be much appreciated.

iPhone 14 Pro Max, iOS 26

Posted on Nov 25, 2025 10:10 AM

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Apple Music iOS: Albums do not sort by artist properly

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