tl;dr Is there an easier way / hack to get iTunes to display albums by album name? Currently it splits albums up by artist, then sorts the album names A-Z. Going through and manually changing the Album Artist will take way to long…
I recently upgraded to iTunes 11 and for the most part I like it. However one issue I have come across (and it would seem many others are in the same boat) is that iTunes is grouping albums by artists. For the most part this is fine, but when it comes to soundtracks and compilations things get hairy…
As you can see soundtracks for games or movies (eg the Shutter Island or Sin City soundtrack) is a compilation of different songs by various artists and iTunes is displaying albums in A-Z order but grouping them by Artist…
I've found that you need to set the 'album artist' to something like Soundtrack or Various Artists to get the grouping to work correctly. However this would take hours to do manually!!
Is there an easy fix for this behavious? Either by automating the Album Artist or by hacking iTunes to display albums grouped by album name?
iTunes 11.0.3
Best Answer
In general, you're already using the correct way to sort by album name. Click "Music" then, "Albums"
The problem you're seeing with compilations being shown multiple times for each artist has always been a problem even in older versions of iTunes. In order to fix this, you'll need to modify the Album Artist field in the track info.
To do this, press ⌘+i (Ctrl+i on Windows), then put “VA” into the Album Artist field (Note: using “Various Artists” or any matching string should also work). You can select multiple tracks with ⌘+Click (Ctrl+Click on Windows) to edit many tracks on the same compilation at a time.