Problem with using the arrows in Sequoia's Music app to edit track info

Once again, the Music team at Apple seem have plumbed the depths of ineptitude!
As a podcasting DJ, it’s one of 3 apps I use all the time yet Apple seem to insist on ‘fixing’ it when it ain’t broke. If you have an album open, select the first track and get info (say you need to add the correct track number), that’s fine. Now, say you want to go to the next track on the album to make a similar correction, there are left and right arrows at the bottom of the info box. In the past, the right arrow would take you to the next track on the album. Now it takes you … who knows where? It seems to be to another track on another album that maybe follows alphabetically, but certainly not to the next track on the album you started with. I cannot for the life of me imagine why someone in the interface team might think this was a useful alteration to the interface. Any other Music users noticed other new “features”?

That doesn’t happen for me. I get the next song in the album when I do what you describe.

That’s weird! I tried it several times on several albums before I posted. I’m on Sequoia 15.0.1 – are you on the same?

I’m not seeing that. First, for me it’s the left arrow in the Get Info view that takes me to the next song in the list. The right arrow if I am in, say, the second song on the album brings me to the first song. (I just checked my Songs view - it appears that my songs are reverse-sorted, so that may be why the Album view works that way.)

I really never need to make changes like this anymore - I rarely buy new music and rip it anymore - but when I did, I never did it in the Album view anyway. (This may be the first time I have used the Album view.) I always work in the Songs list, and sort the way I need to to get items collected together. That said - the Music app on my Macs is just a way to more quickly organize my library. I never play music from it - for me I am using my Sonos app to play music on my Sonos speakers, I am using my phone if I am away from the house, or occasionally I will use my iPad.

Sequoia 15.0.1.

I need it a lot because I’m often sent albums by promoters that have poor tags. The common one (which is when I noticed it) is they send files with the track number in the title rather than as an id3 tag. It used to be easy to select the first track, alter the title to remove the track number, add the track number in the correct box and then move to the next track. The way it is behaving at the moment, it will be easier to use an old machine with iTunes then move the album to my work laptop – bit of a pain!

I am, indeed.

Out of curiosity, what do you have selected in the left hand panel? I tend to leave mine with “Songs” selected, and like @silbey I get the correct behavior of next song. (Sequoia 15.1 fwiw)

Also, on my old Mac Pro still running iTunes, I have an AppleScript from Doug’s Scripts that removes cruft from the track names. I don’t know for certain, but there probably is an updated version for Music

Those forward/backward buttons should select the next/previous track according to the currently active view, which is not necessarily a single album.

For instance, when I’m in Songs view, and I sort the list by “Album by Artist/Year”, that’s the order those buttons use for navigation. But if I’m viewing a playlist, they will skip to the next/previous track in that playlist. etc.

Now, if you’re in Album view and have selected only a single album, and you are viewing the album’s tracks sorted by disc/track number, then I would expect the buttons to behave the way you expect. But if, for example, you’re viewing the album’s tracks sorted by name, then the buttons will follow that order. etc.

That seems to be what @cliffmcknight is describing, except it’s not doing it for him.

OK, after various experiments based on what others have said, I’ve tried a few things. I’m usually in ‘albums’ view and ‘recently added’ and I get the odd behaviour that I mentioned at the start. In fact, it seems to go alphabetically to another track rather than the next one on the currently open album. If I go to ‘artists’ view and choose an album, the arrows then move through as expected. However, I can’t get them to work if I’m in the ‘albums’ view. It’s very odd …

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As a supplementary, I tried booting in Safe Mode in case something was interfering with Music but the odd behaviour still persists. Hopefully (for me, at least) it will be “fixed in version 2” :sunglasses:

I highly recommend you check out Meta. There’s a free trial, but I do less music metadata editing than you and it has already more than paid back the €25 I spent on it in saved time. For instance, the common use you describe above (set the track number from the title, then remove it from the title) would take a couple of seconds for a whole album (or several albums!).

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Interesting. Unfortunately, the view settings for Album view don’t appear to be adjustable (at least they aren’t for me on Sonoma).

Just for kicks, try this:

  • Click Songs in the left-side window
  • Click the heading at the top of the Albums column to sort everything by album. (Click it a few times to change the kind of Album sorting - I prefer “Album by Artist/Year”)

Then go back to Album view and see if anything changes.

Either way, it definitely looks like you’ve found a bug. Send Feedback or use the Feedback Assistant to report the bug. There’s no guarantee that this will get the bug fixed, but bugs reported by many people will probably have a higher priority for being fixed than bugs that don’t have a lot of reports.

OK, I clicked ‘songs’ then clicked the ‘album’ header several times until it changed to ‘album by artist’ then went back to ‘album’ view and then back to ‘recently added’. If I now choose an album and get info on the first track, the arrows will cycle through the tracks in order – bingo! It’s an easy enough work-around but I will put a bug report in, as you suggest. Thanks to you and everyone else who has taken the time to investigate this :+1:

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I can’t put in a bug report, despite several attempts. Using the Product Feedback page ‘Music’ isn’t listed as a MacOS app … not sure why. I tried using the Feedback Assistant but it won’t let me select the forward arrow after entering my email. Looks like Apple doesn’t wan’t much feedback at the moment :rofl:

I’d just do it as a MacOS feedback in that case.

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Done! Hopefully someone reads it. I still wonder why Music isn’t listed as a MacOS desktop app since it comes built-in …

Thanks for the suggestion of Meta. Whenever my music group produces a new CD, I add it to Apple Music, type in all the titles, etc., and then upload the info to the Gracenote Database so that when a patron buys our CD and adds it to their own music library (hopefully), all the track titles should appear. I have just upgraded my OS to 15.0.1 yesterday, so I hope I will still be able to edit the track titles and upload to the Gracenote database as I always have done.

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@Cliff, are you still having this problem? I am having the identical problem. I was waiting for macOS 15.1 to come out hoping it would solve the problem, but after updating it today the problem remains.

The one thing I have found is that if I have a single-artist CD, then I can move around the album tracks as expected. But for any compilation album, the left/right arrows jump all over the place.