Why favorite artist's Albums keep Shuffling in Music Library?

Question

Level 1

7 points

Why favorite artist's Albums keep Shuffling in Music Library?

Music subscription, both Mac and iOS.

Randomly, artists' songs/albums become unavailable and available again, but when they come back, they're arranged in a completely random way, even though the original album is still available.

My current example - Craig Finn has several studio albums and one album mostly of alternate takes/different versions of songs that are on his other albums.

Recently, about half his catalog disappeared (it said that it wasn't available in my country) for about a day. Then the music all reappeared the next day, and if I look on Apple Music, it's all exactly the same as before. Fine, maybe some licensing needed to be renewed, it's back, whatever.

However, in my library, some of the albums are split/mixed up. Craig Finn's alternate takes album has only 6 songs showing, and the rest have dispersed into the albums that the original version of the song is found, but they are simply the duplicate of the original song and not the alternate take of the song. So I have duplicates of about 8-10 songs dispersed through his other albums now.

I could just delete the duplicates and simply add the album again (as it is available) but some of these songs are tied into playlists, etc. and it would take a long time to get that correctly figured out.

And this happens fairly often. I get the licensing changes, etc, but these albums are coming back the exact same as before and yet the order of the songs, albums, etc is completely screwed up. Why is this happening, how can it be avoided, and is there a fix that Apple is working on for this? It's really getting annoying, I have to reorganize at least 4-5 artists a month because of this, I'd estimate.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 13.3

Posted on Sep 21, 2023 2:21 AM

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Answer 1

Stevi_S

Community Specialist

Sep 25, 2023 5:38 PM in response to jpreston4

Hi jpreston4,

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities. We understand you're running into an issue with your Apple Music Library, and we're happy to help. Start with the steps and information below to help resolve this.

Update your devices to ensure you have the latest feature and fixes available

- Update macOS on Mac - Apple Support

- Update your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

2. Check out tips to help organize your Apple Music here: Update your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

Thanks.

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

277,799 points

Oct 14, 2023 6:47 AM in response to jpreston4

If iTunes or Music show multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Song Info to add say a trailing X to each of the fields that the tracks should have in common:

For an album; Album, Album Artist, and Artist (if artist is the same for all tracks) *
For an artist; Album Artist (and Artist unless there are guest/featured artists listed which should not be changed)

Apply the change which merges things together, then remove the excess characters. Occasionally it may help to close and reopen the app between the two renaming operations. Part of a compilation should also be set consistently.

* If tracks are to be synced to a non-iOS device there should be a common Artist and/or the album should be set as a Compilation.

Use the songs view and display the fields Album, Sort Album, Album Artist, Sort Album Artist, Artist and Sort Artist side by side so you see whether or not it is appropriate to edit Artist and if sort values could be causing any further problems. See Grouping tracks into albums for more help if required.

One further tip for really stubborn duplicates. At one point I had three lots of Various Artists in the artists view of my iTunes Match library that wouldn't respond to the usual trailing X treatment. What I found worked was to add the trailing X to start with, but then with each group that iTunes wanted to keep separate start typing a value and let it autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.

tt2

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Why favorite artist's Albums keep Shuffling in Music Library?

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