Sorting Featured Artists on iTunes

[badtzmaru]

Actually, this isn't a tutorial... I was hoping you guys could help me, instead. o_o;; (Sorry if this is in the wrong forum! >_<)

For all you iTunes users, I was wondering how you sorted Ringo's recent collaborations in your iPod. The latest version of iTunes features a new 'sort artist' option, and I've been trying all sorts of combinations to make the featured artists work to my liking but to no avail.

Here's what I'd like to do: Have the artist say 'Shiina Ringo x Saito Neko + Shiina Junpei' (in the 'Now Playing' screen) but still have the whole album under 'Shiina Ringo.' I don't mind anymore if the album goes in the 'collaboration' category because the other factors are more important to me.

Has anyone figured out a way to do that? T_T;; Thanks in advance!

[Glathannus]

In my music collection, I have a root folder for "Shiina Ringo & Tokyo Jihen". In that folder are dated subfolders for pretty much everything over here. I don't mention artists in the subfolder names though. I just have a Year.Month.Day, then single/album/dvd name. And if there are collaboration/contributed tracks in an album among nonRingo tracks, then the Shiina Ringo & Tokyo Jihen dated subfolder includes ONLY the tracks Ringo was involved in, while a copy of the entire album is in my collection elsewhere (in a dated subfolder under the other artist's name).

The idea is if I drop the Shiina Ringo & Tokyo Jihen subfolder into my playlist, I'll get everything Ringo has ever touched, ONLY the music she's touched, and all in proper debut order. And in the playlist you can tell what's what because I don't modify the metadata/tags for artists Ringo collaborates with, so the tracks load under those artists' names in the middle of all the full-fledged Ringo tracks.

I don't like 'libraries'. I think it's better to take your own initiative on how you organize your collection, instead of have your playback software try to develop its own 'understanding' of your entire collection. If you have properly organized subfolders, then if you move the files around to another computer (or to and from the same computer because of a wipe), you don't need to (re)configure anything in the software because loading the root folder will continue to display everything in the proper order.

[Linnéa]

badtzmaru: that's exactly what i've been trying to understand how to do, too. i just don't get how to. =/

[Jonny]

I'm with the physical directory structure solution. Been for all time and it's still working.

[Linnéa]

Well, I have everything sorted that way too. But I still use iTunes when I'm listening to something.

[Captain_Harlock]

iTunes for mac does very nice structuring, and you can edit the way it does it. As for when I want a "shiina and TJ" thing, I just create a playlist, quickly. And it stays there .

[frecklegirl]

Originally Posted by badtzmaru

Here's what I'd like to do: Have the artist say 'Shiina Ringo x Saito Neko + Shiina Junpei' (in the 'Now Playing' screen) but still have the whole album under 'Shiina Ringo.' I don't mind anymore if the album goes in the 'collaboration' category because the other factors are more important to me.

Has anyone figured out a way to do that? T_T;; Thanks in advance!

It's impossible. :/ There's no way to do it. It bugs me too. But I just make playlists and that way I can arrange everything the way I want and it stays... but it's still annoying when I put it in album-cover view and there will be divisions between the "separate albums" just because the artist is different. Equally frustrating on things like soundtracks featuring a different artist for each song. I wish they'd fix that someday. Oh well.

[golem09]

Originally Posted by Jonny

I'm with the physical directory structure solution. Been for all time and it's still working.

For me too. Until 3 months ago. Now I can not live without the search function. type it and you have it.
And I really like that I don't have to browse with the explorer anymore. Not that finding files is slower, it's much more complicated to use two different programs for browsing and playing.

[CatchFiveBats]

Ummmm...actually, I'm pretty sure you CAN do this on the Mac version of iTunes, and I'm going to assume it works the same way on Windows.

When you right-click on a song, there is an "Album Artist" entry among the many other options. You can enter Shiina Ringo here and I think that it will file the album as one entity, with Shiina Ringo as the artist. I just checked this myself, and it looks as though (even when I uncheck "Compilation") the album is organized on my hard drive under "Shiina Ringo", so I'm pretty sure it works. Hopefully that made sense...

[badtzmaru]

Yeah, I thought about just organizing the files myself but I'm really lazy and I like the way iTunes organizes it, so I was hoping there was a solution. But if I don't find one, I'm going to do that.

Originally Posted by CatchFiveBats

When you right-click on a song, there is an "Album Artist" entry among the many other options. You can enter Shiina Ringo here and I think that it will file the album as one entity, with Shiina Ringo as the artist. I just checked this myself, and it looks as though (even when I uncheck "Compilation") the album is organized on my hard drive under "Shiina Ringo", so I'm pretty sure it works. Hopefully that made sense...

Okay, here is what I did for the Konoyo no Kagiri single: For track #1, I put 'Shiina Ringo x Saito Neko + Shiina Junpei' under Artist, and 'Shiina Ringo' under Album Artist and Sort Artist. For tracks #2 and #3, I put 'Shiina Ringo' under Artist, and kept everything else the same. I also put the whole single under Collaboration. This is the best result I got on my iPod because the whole single came out correctly in the Compilation albums. But under the artist 'Shiina Ringo,' only tracks #2 and #3 showed up. @_@

So now, I left everything the same except I didn't put the single under collaboration. (I'd rather have the whole single come out correctly under 'Shiina Ringo' than in the Compilation albums. And I also just realized that Konoyo no Kagiri isn't really a compilation, right? o_o Isn't a compilation album where different artists are featured in an album under a theme, like OSTs? :confused But anyway, that just messed everything up. T_T Now under Artists in my iPod, it's listed like this:
...
東京事変
椎名林檎
椎名林檎×斎藤ネコ+椎名純平
椎名林檎
椎名林檎×斎藤ネコ
椎名林檎
矢野真紀

Did that make any sense? T_T