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I have a lot of compilation albums where each track is by a different artist, but I have the Album Artist tag set to "Various Artists" (or in the case of some soundtracks, the main artist's name).

However, when viewing my music by artist in the iPhone's iPod app, it lists all the track artists, creating a miasma of artist listings with only one or two songs under them.

Is there an iPhone app out there that lists by Album Artist instead, which would be a lot more manageable and frankly, makes a lot more sense?

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  • I don't agree that it doesn't make sense. You don't want songs to show up in the Artist listing if they have a track on a compilation record? This track doesn't count?
    – ghoppe
    Feb 25, 2011 at 15:54
  • Also, If you click on "More" there is an option to view "Compilations". This is equivalent to viewing a "Various Artists" listing. Granted, you can't view by "Album Artist", but this seems minimally useful to me.
    – ghoppe
    Feb 25, 2011 at 15:56
  • Change to Album view instead of Artist view? Feb 25, 2011 at 23:40
  • @ghoppe Not to split hairs, but I said "makes more sense", not "doesn't make sense". In any case that last bit was just my frustration bleeding through. I want songs to show up, but under the Album Artist meta-data instead. Happy to agree to disagree.
    – Evan
    Feb 26, 2011 at 1:34
  • @ghoppe Didn't know about "Compilations", thanks. Note that a) not all compilations have an album artist of "Various Artists", and b) still a separate list you have to look-up. Drill down by Album Artist to Album the way you can with Track Artist would be very useful to me.
    – Evan
    Feb 26, 2011 at 1:38

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Since there are no answers to this question yet, and all the discussion took place in comments, let's write a summary. And please, up vote the relevant author in their comments on the question itself. Please please please.

Per @ghoppe;

When using the iPod app in list view (list view = the view with selections for your chosen category), the "More …" category on the very bottom right hand side has a few additional options, name there is "Compilations" view.

This view is identical to Album view, except it only shows albums that have two or more unique artists in it.

If this is a view you use often, you could put it on the category bar so it's quick/easy to get to. Perhaps a customization like: "Artist - Compilations - Songs - Videos - More …"

This of course does nothing to prevent seeing compilations when in an Artist entry.

(More is required and cannot be replaced nor moved.)

My suggestion was to default your browsing habits to using Album view instead. Instead of picking a song by an artist, you will always see a track-ordered list of songs after picking an album.

There's also the search box you can use to type in an artist/album, and pick the relevant view you want from it (scroll to the top of any view, or if you're already at the top swipe down once more to pull the top down, and the search box will be revealed).

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