iTunes Doesn’t Sort By Track Number [Fixed]
Have you ever had this problem before? You’re browsing your iTunes library, and for some strange reason, some tracks aren’t listed by track number? In other words, some albums are jumbled up in terms of track number. See the image below for an example…
For some reason, track 8 is sent to the bottom of the list. In some instances, this can happen with multiple tracks in a given album, and the only way to fix it was to click the “Track #” column to sort by track number. But, when switching to view multiple albums, you only see track #1 on all your albums. You get the point. It’s inconvenient.
Well, I’ve found a fix for this, and it’s pretty simple. But, let me set the stage first.
Let’s say, to start out with, you open up iTunes and you have the browser up. You’ve got “All” selected in the Genre, Artist and Album field. You also click the “Album” column so that your library is sorted by album, either ascending or descending. It doesn’t matter. Now you can see your entire library in the track view sorted by album.
From here, select “All” in the “Genre” field. Select the artist you’re having this problem with in the “Artist” field. Select the album that is giving you problems in the “Album” field.
If you’re having this problem, the tracks won’t be listed by track number.
In order to fix this, all you have to do is select all of the songs in the album (highlight one of the songs, then press CTRL + A). All of the songs should be highlighted in blue. Be absolutely sure you only have the songs from the album in question selected. You run the chance of ruining any artist or album titles in your library if not.
Now that you have your songs selected, right-click and select “Get Info.” A window will pop up displaying the information about the tracks you’ve selected. Your next step is to delete the contents of the “Album Artist” (not the “Artist” field) field and make sure there is a check mark in the box next to “Album Artist.” Hit “OK” and you’re all set. You’ll notice that immediately your songs will be sorted by track number!
I’m not sure exactly why iTunes does this in rare circumstances, but that’s it. Problem solved. Hope this helped.
Read a book. It’s good for you.
Before you do this, you might try this. Do the “Get Info” on one of the tracks that are sorted correctly and then select the “Info” tab. Then, check out the “Track Number” and “Disc Number” on the right and take note of what is listed. After that, do the same thing on the track(s) that are not sorting correctly and see if they match. If not, update those fields to match and then they should be sorted fine. This worked for me.
Jason,
Thanks for the input. If I come across this problem again, I’ll definite try your suggestion.
Jason,
I just wanted to let you know that I ran across this problem again today with my Suicidal Tendencies album, F.N.G. I checked out what you said, but to no avail. Everything was kosher.
As soon as I cleared out the “Album Artist” field for all tracks on the album, the tracks sorted properly.
I wouldn’t mark the problem as “fixed” ;-)
I currently have the problem with one album and I can’t figure out how to fix it.
I tried emptying the “Album Artist” fields one by one but some of them keep coming back!
And each time that I remove it by selecting all tracks and then check the checkbox in Get Info, the next time I click on a column to sort on, iTunes fills the Album Artist field back in… The only thing that helps is displaying the track number column and manually sorting on that… This is very annoying!!!
Matthias
This problem can be tricky, and you may have to go through track by track and see what is different about the track that won’t sort.
For example, I just made sure everything matched, and it still wouldn’t sort. Then I saw that the track that wouldn’t sort had “Disk 1 of 1″ set, and the other tracks didn’t. Once I removed that everything sorted correctly.
I had this problem as well and the above fix didn’t work so instead of just checking the Album Artist field I checked all the fields that I didn’t need / want such as genre, grouping, comments etc that fixed it for me – hope that helps someone!
All my tracks were the same in the album artist and disk fields, but the problem “fixed” itself when I ed through the entire album.
This worked! I had a compilation of songs and had painstakingly applied track numbers to each (which had been deleted). I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t sorting by track number. This was exactly it, thank you!
Sometimes one or more of the tracks gets a custom sort name (Sorting tab) and that throws out the sort order.
I need to put info in the Album Artist Field as it helps to group compilations together when viewing in cover flow. The track order is only correct using the Album By Artist field though as the Album Artist field lists compilation tracks alphabetically.
Well, When I sort my music by Album, everything is 100% fine. Like all songs ANYWAY. But when I sort it by Album Artist, (which is the best one I reckon). It goes all in the wrong order. I try loads of stuff, I even change my “sorting” for most of them. But its really annoying and there is no diffence between them GRRR!
This works, thanks. Weirdly there was nothing in the Album Artist field either, but by ticking the box next to it I fixed the problem. If it doesn’t work, check that the track numbers are correct and there are no differences in Artist either.