0

My 'Library' in Apple Music is too cluttered for the following reason: whenever I add a song, the corresponding album and artist are also added. Similarly, whenever I add an album, all the individual songs of the album are added as well.

As a result, my library is filled with Artists and Albums that I am not interested in and that are there just because I added on the fly (usually through Shazzam) one song that I happened to like. This problem is compounded by the fact that Apple Music links the song to an arbitrarily chosen album, when the song could as legitimately be linked to another album. Furthermore, the individual songs that I added because I like them individually are drowned among all the songs of all the albums that I added because I like the albums generally.

In order to sort the wheat from the chaff, I would like to see in the each of the three sections (songs, albums, artists) only the items that I did personally add to it, and hide those that were added there automatically because I added an item elsewhere.

For example, if I add 'Yellow submarine' to my songs, I do not want 'The Beatles' to appear among my Artists. I also do not want 'Revolver', '1' or 'The Red Album' to appear among my albums. Similarly, if I do add 'Exile on Main Street' to my albums, I want neither all of its songs added to my songs nor 'The Rolling Stones' added to my Artists.

In a word, I want to see just what I added myself - no more, no less.

Is there a setting or a filter on Apple Music that could help me achieve this? If not, is there a third party app that could link with my library and allow the kind of filtering that I want?

I thank you in advance for your help and suggestions. W.

PS: I navigate Apple Music through iOS and macOS devices.

Improve this question
4
  • Is this about iTunes adding full albums when you just select one track to add (something I can't reproduce), about how iTunes works (tracks usually have an album and an artist assigned so they will automatically show up in the Album and Artist views) or generally how to better organize an iTunes Library?
    – nohillside ♦
    Mar 6, 2021 at 8:56
  • Question 1: can I add a single track without adding a related album or artist ? Just tested on my iPhone: added the song 'You can call me Al' ; now 'Paul Simon' is among my artists and 'Graceland' among my albums. I do not want to see either - just the song.
    – user3781201
    Mar 6, 2021 at 9:21
  • Question 2: can I add an album without adding all of its songs? Just tested on my iPhone: added the album "The immaculate collection" ; now 'Madonna' is among my artists and the seventeen tracks of the album are listed among my songs. I'd prefer not to see either - just the album.
    – user3781201
    Mar 6, 2021 at 9:25
  • This site works better with just one question per post. It might be best to focus on one issue first and then ask addtional (new) questions) later.
    – nohillside ♦
    Mar 6, 2021 at 9:42

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

iTunes/Music manages your music library which you can access via various views. So if you add a track its artist will always show up in the Artist view, its album will always show up in Albums (and vice versa). The beauty of this is that you can choose to play all Madonna tracks by selecting her in the Artist view, or choose to play a specific album only by selecting it in the Album view.

Obviously this gets difficult to manage the more your library grows. I currently have over 40'000 tracks in iTunes/Music and found that it's much easier to manage if I use playlists to keep things in places where I find them again.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .