Importing MP3s into Music app

Question

Level 1

45 points

Importing MP3s into Music app

I have a bunch of MP3s on a disk image, all by different artists. I want to import them into Music as an album. So I open Music, select File>Import and select the mounted image. Instead of importing them as an album (and placing them in my Media folder as a folder with all of the song files in the folder), it imports the songs individually. So in Recently Added in the Music app, I have 14 individual songs instead of an album with all of the songs listed on the album. So I Get Info on one of the songs, I enter the name of the album, the name of the song, the track order (1 of 14, etc.) and the name of the artist for the song, and I check the box to indicate the album is a compilation of various artists. But they still don’t show up as an album. Instead, it shows each song as if it were an album containing just the one song. How do I make it show the album with all of the songs listed in the order I specified? This is making me crazy. Even if I go to the Media folder and name the Album folder correctly, with all of the MP3s in that folder, they still don’t show up in Music as a complete album, but as 14 individual albums each with one song. Please help me!

Mac mini (2018)

Posted on Jan 20, 2025 1:11 PM

Reply

Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

275,502 points

Jan 20, 2025 2:17 PM in response to John Haley1

If iTunes or Music show multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Song Info to add say a trailing X to each of the fields that the tracks should have in common:

For an album; Album, Album Artist, and Artist (if artist is the same for all tracks) *
For an artist; Album Artist (and Artist unless there are guest/featured artists listed which should not be changed)

Apply the change which merges things together, then remove the excess characters. Occasionally it may help to close and reopen the app between the two renaming operations. Part of a compilation should also be set consistently.

* If tracks are to be synced to a non-iOS device there should be a common Artist and/or the album should be set as a Compilation.

Use the songs view and display the fields Album, Sort Album, Album Artist, Sort Album Artist, Artist and Sort Artist side by side so you see whether or not it is appropriate to edit Artist and if sort values could be causing any further problems. See Grouping tracks into albums for more help if required.

One further tip for really stubborn duplicates. At one point I had three lots of Various Artists in the artists view of my iTunes Match library that wouldn't respond to the usual trailing X treatment. What I found worked was to add the trailing X to start with, but then with each group that iTunes wanted to keep separate start typing a value and let it autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.

tt2

Reply