[the_local_host]

I cannot stand the way that albums on an iphone/mac get fragmented into separate albums when there are tracks with guest artists.

E.g. for Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, I see tracks 1,2,3,6,8,9,10,12,13,15,17,19. Track 16 is on another album by "Outkast featuring Kelis."

I just want the tracks that are on the CD to show up together as the same album.

[ajb92]

This is a symptom of their larger problem with maintaining and overreaching when it comes to metadata. I've had scenarios where an album of music I manually added to my library (as MP3s) has had its metadata mutilated to the point where the songs were spread across several incomplete albums (differing releases of the same album) each incomplete, including some songs becoming standalone tracks from compilation albums I had never heard of. They won't just _leave it alone_.

[sumtechguy]

Getting metadata right is honestly an issue that has been there for a long time. ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4 are basically what you have to work with. Many programs also use custom TXXX or DIV tags to embed whatever into. So even if you get it right in on prog it is a disaster in another.

ID3v2.4 fixes many of the issues. But very few progs use it or default to 2.3. Plus the way an album can be sliced and diced for metadata is truly breathtaking.

Then add into that some of these programs try to use some form of acoustic id to try to find where it belongs. Which does what you are talking about. So you resort to setting the file read only so the program will not mess with the tags.

Then on top of that many of the online sources can be in bad shape for bands or releases. AC/DC is most certainly not alternative. But it is tagged that way in some databases. So data quality goes all the way from 'someone spent a lot of time getting this right' to 'someone uploaded whatever was in their mp3 library and called it a day'. Also even the data printed on the pages that came with it may have spelling errors and differences in spelling for individual tracks and artists. Some artists have 3-4 different aliases which one do you put it under without messing everything up or leave it stand alone and you forget you even had it.

Also differing releases is a pain too. Some albums have 40+ releases. Which one do you actually have. Does it really matter?

[ajb92]

All good points, though I'll say, when I added the music, there was no mistaking what I expected to see as far as Artist name, Genre, etc. I expected that my music would remain as I had provided it.

Once that expectation was betrayed, my collection's relationship with iTunes (now Apple Music) wholly changed. No longer could it be a slouching-toward-immaculate pet project of mine to maintain and grow and detail the music I love, because I could wake up the next day to Apple having literally replaced songs I myself had ripped and added to my library years ago, with these alternate, sometimes censored or even live versions. I can't easily hear the version of Bob's "No Woman No Cry" I grew up listening to and loving, because Apple replaced that with some studio version it guessed I had when tasked with playing the song at my request, 2+ computers and several years deep into trusting Apple with my collection.

[rchaud]

It is because of this exact tagging issue that I never let iTunes 'manage' my library. They'd take files in perfectly labeled folders and move everything into something resembling the structure of their database.

[crooked-v]

That's what the "Album Artist" field is for.

[roryokane]

You can turn this off, at least iTunes 12. Just select the tracks that you don’t want broken apart, hit ⌘I “Song Info”, and check the checkbox “Album is a compilation of songs by various artists”.

Alternatively, as crooked-v mentioned, you can give all the tracks the same Album Artist. In your example, it sounds like “Outkast” should be the Album Artist for the whole album.