I am trying to clean up as much of the metadata as I can in my iTunes Library. One issue I came across is albums from a band, where the band releases multiple albums in a year. While this doesn't happen all that much, a good example is the Smashing Pumpkins, who released Machina in Feb. 2000, and then released Machina II later that year in Sept 2000. Live concerts are a great example as well, for example if you have recordings from different shows on a tour.
In iTunes, currently Machina II is before Machina (Probably because in ASCII 'I' may come before '/'. This wouldn't matter much, except all the other albums from this artist are in order. Every once in a while, I am in the mood to listen to a particular artists set of albums over the years, and you can see then this won't work out.
Is there a way to say either what Month the album was released, or another workaround (other than just saying the next year for example)?
Update: I looked through the AppleScript dictionary, and it doesn't look like you can access anything except the year through AppleScript either.
Best Answer
The tag format iTunes uses allows the storage of year-month-day for release dates. You'll note if you buy songs from the iTunes store they frequently have the release date including the month and day. I do not know if iTunes actually obeys this data when sorting a list, but you can add it anyway, so it's worth experimenting.
The Get Info window won't let you add a month or day - there is only a year tag - but external tag editors certainly do. I had a simple one that looked like the iTunes Get Info window but with more options, I can't remember what it's called... I think MusicBrainz Picard also lets you enter month and day.
If you've edited a track with an external editor, you can force iTunes to refresh the data using an Applescript (assuming you're on Mac OS). There are other tricks that are documented here on the MusicBrainz site. The Applescript in question is near the bottom, I use it all the time after editing tags with Picard.
EDIT: Let me know if it works, eh?