For example, you may have an album by one main artist—such as Santana—who joins forces with a guest artist for some songs (in Santana’s case, that would be pretty much anyone else in the music industry). In that instance, iTunes 7 may display each Santana-and-guest song as a separate album. The fix is to select all the tracks on the album, choose File: Get Info, and make sure that the Album field is the same for all of them. If that field is blank, the selected tracks have different album names, and you’ll have to type the album name you want. Then, also in the Get Info pane, enter the name of the main artist in the Album Artist field; leave the Artist field blank.
Macworld: Feature: iTunes remixed, Page 1
Maybe everyone knew this but me, but I have a lot of soundtrack albums that are just scattered across iTunes Cover Flow. Turns out if you set the "album artist" then they join back up all magically like. The nice thing about this is that it doesn't muck up the artist displays. For example: I have several Norah Jones albums. I also have the OutKast Speakerboxxx/The Love Below double album, which features Norah Jones on one track (and it actually has several tracks with guest artists listed). So the OutKast album used to have 11 entries for the different artists. Well now I've set the "Album Artist" as OutKast and it's only one entry. But if I search for Norah Jones I get her albums, plus the one track from the OutKast album (since the regular artist is still "OutKast & Norah Jones".
Very handy!
technorati tags:iTunes, CoverFlow
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