Please help - iTunes 11 screwed up my music collection

[Pinmac]

I upgraded to iTunes 11 but have 2 problems. Previously my iTunes Media folder and hence iTunes showed each artist and all their albums nested under them. All compilations showed under Compilations. I now have artists listed correctly but the compilation albums have been scattered across the folder. So instead of every artist on a compilation album showing listed under that album under Compilations they are listed individually in the list of artists even if they have only one song. It looks a real mess and I haven't dared to try to sync it yet.

While trying to sort this out I noticed that a few of my albums are also in a mess, so that where I had an artist with 3 separate albums, one might be listed separately and the other 2 with all the songs jumbled under one album title and the other disappeared. Some albums have gone altogether and I'll have to re-rip them. I know this happened a while ago as all my backups are similarly corrupted. I have painstakingly gone through 2 artists rebuilding the albums but when I open iTunes it shows the same old mess of jumbled albums. I have tried rebooting, checking that the path in iTunes points to the C Drive folder which I have tidied up but it makes no difference. I have also tried File>Add folder to library to see if it would refresh.

I would be very grateful for any help with either or both of these problems as I am sick to the back teeth of staggering from one problem to the other in iTunes.

Incidentally, I am not sure whether this is posted in the correct place and wondered if we could have an iTunes sub-forum.

Thanks.

 

[Pinmac]

Just to complete my misery I have found that iTunes is also refusing to see an album. I have Rumours by Fleetwood Mac in the iTunes Media folder along with everything else but it's not showing in iTunes. I have tried using File>Add Folder but still no joy. Any ideas please?

 

[twerppoet]

I had similar problems, at least the multiple album one. It took me a while to clean up, a few a day until they were done; though it sounds like you have more.

Right click one of the fragmented albums (the album not the songs) and choose get Info. You're looking for the correct title under Album. When you find the album with the right title, select and copy the title.

Sometimes I had to go to the iTunes Store and search to find the right title, or confirm I had the right one. If you get it wrong the album art will break.

Now right click and choose Get Info on one of the other albums. Paste the title into the Album field (even if it's already correct). You'll notice a checkmark appears next to that field. the checkmark indicates that this info will get changed for all tracks selected. That's what you want to happen. Save. Those two albums should merge. Unchecked fields will not change anything. Be careful what you checkmark.

The other thing to look for and correct is the Disc 1 of 2 (or whatever) fields. Albums can be split or merged this way, and you want to do it right. It's just one CD, and the field are blank, leave them that way.

Selecting the albums this way selects all songs in that album. When you change information using Get Info it will change every single song. Hold that in mind. If you need to change the info on just one song, then select just that song.

In the case of the Disc 1 of 2 thing, if you'e accidentally made one album of two, or got songs in the wrong disk, you can select all the songs that should be on one disc, then use right click, get info, just like before so you can change them all at once.

I also ended up with a lot of apparent duplicate tracks. On closer observation the extra tracks were in the cloud (noted by a cloud icon). All the cloud tracks were 128bit, while the ones on the computer were the older tracks that I had purchased at slower bit rates many years ago. I deleted the old ones and downloaded all the cloud tracks. That took several days; setting up a few dozen at a time and then finding something else to do. My internet connection isn't very fast.

Good luck.