iOS Music and iTunes Store Apps Stumble over Deleted Tracks

[Shamino (David C.)]

@jimthing

Is there a comprehensive (or even just a basic) list of differences between iTunes and Music apps?
(obviously just talking about music functions; not video, audiobooks, etc.)

I don’t know of someone who has prepared a list, but from what I can remember, most of the differences involve the UI, not real functionality:

• Sync services have moved to the Finder. You can still view the Music contents of an iPod/iPhone and (I think) you can drag/drop songs to it when manually managing music, but the screens used to backup, restore and sync content is now in the Finder.
• Music really likes to present album art all over the UI. And in some cases (e.g. when displaying a playlist), you can’t hide it. Which I consider a waste of screen real estate.
• Certain automatically maintained playlists no longer exist and get deleted as a part of the migration. Most notably (to me) was the “Purchased” playlist, where iTunes Store purchases would automatically go. It’s gone now. I replaced it by creating a smart playlist that selects all protected and purchased songs:
  
  
• The default sorting for compilations (tracks where the “Album is a compilation of songs by various artists” box has been checked) has changed. For example, in Song view, when sorting by album-by-artist, it used to sort them all as if the artist was “Various”. Now it puts them at the end of the list (grouped by album, but the albums don’t appear to be in any particular order).
• The procedure for burning CDs has changed. The “burn disc” button no longer exists. Instead, when you’re showing a playlist, its context menu (the “…” button on the upper-right corner of the screen) has a “Burn Playlist To Disc…” item.

@fogcitynative

I do know that I had to drag all tracks in the folder COMPILATIONS to Apple Music as if I was importing tracks I ripped.

This is because Apple Music does not recognize such a collection of tracks exist in iTunes Music library and therefore doesn’t bring them over in the conversion.

You’ve mentioned this before. I’m not sure exactly what you’re seeing, because I have not experienced this. Maybe there was a system glitch when your library was migrated. My compilations arrived perfectly intact, but they are not presented in the same way they were before.

The Artists view of the library has a virtual-artist named “Compilations” at the top of the list, where they all appear:

When viewing the Songs view by album, the compilation albums sort at the bottom of the list (they used to sort as if the artist was “Various”).

One critical thing is to make sure your compilation albums have the correct metadata. Often, they do not. In particular, it works like this:

• If a song does not have the “Album is a compilation of songs…” box checked and the “Album Artist” field has no value, the song will be grouped with other songs that share the same Album and Artist fields. If the album is a compilation of songs from different artists, this will cause them to be scattered throughout the UI
• If the song has the “Album is a compilation of songs…” box checked, then the Artist field will be ignored. It will be grouped with other songs that share the same Album and where the “Album is a compilation…” box is also checked. If some songs don’t have that box checked, they will sort elsewhere. In Artists view, these songs will go into the “Compilations” group. In Songs view (by album/artist), they will sort at the end of the list.
• If the song has a value in the Album Artist field and the “Album is a compilation” box is not checked, it will be grouped with other songs that share the same Album and Album Artist fields. If some songs don’t have a value in Album Artist (maybe because the Artist field matches), it will be grouped separately. They will sort/group as if the Artist field was the Album Artist value, and will not appear in the compilations group.
• I don’t recommend both setting an Album Artist and the “Album is a compilation” checkbox. Things seem to go into strange places when this happens. Use one or the other, depending on how you want the album sorted/grouped.

So for a compilation that is a true assortment of different artists (e.g. “Billboard Top Hits 1980”), I recommend making sure “Album Arist” is blank, and check the “Album is a compilation” box for every song in the album.

But for a compilation that is a collection of related artists (e.g. a Genesis tribute album, where various artists are covering Genesis songs), then I recommend you do not check the Compilation box, but instead put something in the Album Artist field (in this example, “Genesis”), so the album will sort it into that position.