Why itunes separates album

Highlight each of the dots above and you should understand the difference. Check the 'Sorting' section too and make sure all of that data is identical, notably in the 'Grouping' fields. I've found that no matter how much some fields may look identical, resetting them to be identical together often solves the problem. For all the tracks, selecting "Part of a Compilation" - "Yes" solved this one for me though it was not part of a compilation, it was the only way I could get it to cooperate.

This works, due to the way iTunes organizes compilations. The likely problem is that some of the files incorrectly have a compilation tag in the metadata and iTunes is looking for the same tag in the rest of the files and - not finding it - is placing the files in separate albums. Use a metadata editor to open up the files and clear the tag from the offending files and re-add them to your iTunes library and it should be all grouped under one album.

I tested this by adding a compilation tag to two files out of an album and importing to iTunes and did indeed get the files split into two separate albums.

Removing the tag fixed the problem and iTunes imported correctly. I've had the same problem before, even with identical info, artwork, etc. I could sometimes change the metadata as suggested by other answers, but for some albums, couldn't find any metadata differences, and any changes I made had no effect.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Metadata problem? Ask Question. Asked 9 years, 8 months ago. Active 2 years, 11 months ago. Viewed 14k times. They should appear grouped, but for some reason, iTunes splits them up and shows them as separate albums with the same name and details: I check the metadata and everything seems to be in order.

Here are screen shots of the first two songs: Why is iTunes doing this? Today it separated each track of an entire cd, so I had 10 copies of the same disc, each with one song.

MacBook Pro, iOS 5. Posted on May 14, PM. Page content loaded. May 25, AM in response to jodiboi In response to jodiboi. May 25, AM. Generally all you need to do is fill in an appropriate Album Artist. For more details see my article on Grouping Tracks Into Albums , in particular the topic One album, too many covers.

Aug 22, AM in response to jodiboi In response to jodiboi. Mine had one song that had data there, and the others didn't. So I just copied what that one had and pasted it into the other song's same field. Then after a second they appeared together as one.

Aug 22, AM. Sometimes they have obviously wrong spelling or punctuation, but sometimes they look exactly the same!

Other times, you only notice when there was a song missing when playing an album, but when you look for that song it otherwise appears correctly in your library. There are a few different possible causes, and different approaches to fixing them. It's really no surprise that if your songs have more than one of these, they'll be listed separately in your library.

Like cause 1, but you can't see it. Songs have separate metadata for "artist" and "album artist". Even if the "artist" is exactly right, if your song's "album artist" is different for one track it will appear as a distinct album from the others.

It's not common to have something set for "album artist", so the Album Artist column isn't visible by default in iTunes song listings. As a result, this cause can be difficult to notice. In the metadata for each of your songs, there is a "compilation" checkbox used to indicate that the track's album is actually a compilation of various artists.