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So when I listen to music in Itunes I usually sort it alphabetically by artist. This is fine but where two tracks have the same artist name Itunes then goes on to order them by album name but I would much rather it sorted them by year as I think an artists music is more cohesive when listened to in the order in which it was made than this somewhat arbitrary alphabetical system. This sorting by album name also messes up many multidisc conceptual albums by putting the discs and therefore tracks in the wrong order. I could do this by appending the year to the start of all my album titles but with the size of my library this would take many years. So to clarify Artist is currently the primary sorting factor with Album title as the secondary sorting factor. I still want Artist to be the primary sorting factor but for year to be the secondary sorting factor is this possible to do I would be very greatly indebted if you can help as I'm sort of obsessive about my Itunes organisation?

View > Sort Albums > By Artist > Within Artists > By Year

Good idea, incidentally. I might keep using this.

You can't technically change the settings to sort by year when playing the same artist, but, as you said, you can append the year to the album. Now, you did point out that that would look messy with the year at the start of each album, right? Well, look at the picture below.



This is the sort menu. Now, if you add the year to the album here, the year won't be visible when you look at the album. But even though it's not visible, iTunes will still sort using the sort name, meaning that if you add the year to it it will sort by that.

Hope that helps.

View > Sort Albums > By Artist > Within Artists > By Year

Good idea, incidentally. I might keep using this.

By that do you mean go to view and then click on Sort Albums because there's no such option or submenu in my Itunes. What version of Itunes are you using and could you give me a screenshot?

This is the sort menu. Now, if you add the year to the album here, the year won't be visible when you look at the album. But even though it's not visible, iTunes will still sort using the sort name, meaning that if you add the year to it it will sort by that.

Hope that helps.

This is quite a useful feature thanks but I have a lot of music in Itunes (50+GB) meaning to type in the year for every album would take a really long time. Also you don't even seem to be able to do this for multiple tracks simultaneously (like selection the whole album and doing it just once per album like when I usually do the Years) meaning I might even have to go through every track, there must be an easier way. Unless there is some way to automatically insert the year into this album sort like a script or something

chume14 wrote:

View > Sort Albums > By Artist > Within Artists > By Year

Good idea, incidentally. I might keep using this.

By that do you mean go to view and then click on Sort Albums because there's no such option or submenu in my Itunes. What version of Itunes are you using and could you give me a screenshot?

I guess those instructions are for older versions of iTunes (or maybe the Mac version). The way to do this depends on what song view you're using.
In List View: Click on the heading of the Album column until it changes to Album by Year.
In Grid View: Click View > Sort Albums > Within Artist > By Year. You can also access this menu by right-clicking on the top bar where the tabs and zoom bar are.
In Cover Flow View: Right-click on the Cover Flow viewer, go to Change Sort, and then select Album by Year.
If you still need some screenshots, either put that in a reply here or PM me and I'll help you out.
The fact that changing the sorting like this requires three different methods depending on what view you're in is beyond me and just gives me another reason to hate iTunes. Hell, I only keep it around to manage my iPod touch.

chume14 wrote:This is quite a useful feature thanks but I have a lot of music in Itunes (50+GB) meaning to type in the year for every album would take a really long time. Also you don't even seem to be able to do this for multiple tracks simultaneously (like selection the whole album and doing it just once per album like when I usually do the Years) meaning I might even have to go through every track, there must be an easier way. Unless there is some way to automatically insert the year into this album sort like a script or something

As far as adding a Sort Album for multiple tracks at once, you just highlight all the tracks, right-click and select Get Info, then click on the Sorting tab and do your thing. It's just as easy as adding the year like you said. However, it does take quite a bit of time to do this by hand, especially if you have a large library. There are various programs available for automatically tagging songs, but I don't really have any experience with any of them. Googling something like "itunes auto-tag" or "auto-tagger" or something like that will probably give you some results. However, I'm pretty sure the good ones cost some money, so if it means enough to you, you'll have to pay up. (I'm not advocating software piracy.)

Oh, I was speaking about the Mac version. I always forget there are weirdos on Windows who aren't using foobar. Anyway, Zilla's post is obviously much more helpful, so you can just ignore mine.

In List View: Click on the heading of the Album column until it changes to Album by Year.

Thanks Zilla I'm in List view and that double clicking album thing works.

As far as adding a Sort Album for multiple tracks at once, you just highlight all the tracks, right-click and select Get Info, then click on the Sorting tab and do your thing.

When I have a single track selected and click Get Info I get this menu and can reach the Sorting tab. However when I have multiple items selected and click Get Info it asks "do you want to edit information for multiple items" and when I click yes it brings me to this menu from whence I cannot reach the Sorting tab. That is what I meant by I can't edit sort for multiple items now.

However it's not that much of an issue any more since this album by year thing works well.

chume14 wrote:When I have a single track selected and click Get Info I get this menu and can reach the Sorting tab. However when I have multiple items selected and click Get Info it asks "do you want to edit information for multiple items" and when I click yes it brings me to this menu from whence I cannot reach the Sorting tab. That is what I meant by I can't edit sort for multiple items now.

However it's not that much of an issue any more since this album by year thing works well.

Hmm, that's odd. If I'm not mistaken, I think you might be using an older version of iTunes. You may want to check for updates. But if you don't need it and what you've got works for you, more power to you.