Q: I sometimes see that the same artist name will appear twice (or more than twice) once added to my iPod, and I’m not certain why. I want to see how I can combine them when I can. They do seem to appear spelled exactly the same when I see them listed in iTunes.
Also, sometimes the albums listed underneath an artist will also display numerous times – sometimes an album with twelve tracks will display two views within the iPod; the first will list the album as having ten tracks, and the second listing will show the exact same album title and display two tracks. Again, I’m uncertain why the iPod would split apart the tracks (it all lists together in iTunes). Any suggestions how I can consoldate a bit more? Thanks so much!
– Peter
A: This is a fairly common problem caused by “whitespace” that may be present at the end of an artist name.
Frequently something as seemingly-innocuous as a blank space following an artist name can cause iTunes (and the iPod) to see these as two different entries, and therefore list them separately.
Although you can hunt for these discrepancies on a track-by-track basis, the simplest way to fix this is to simply select all of the tracks that are supposed to be from the same artist (you can either use the browser in iTunes to select multiple artists, or sort the main library listing by the Artist column), and then use the File->Get Info option to modify the artist name for all tracks at once. Either paste in or type in the correct artist name and click OK, and iTunes will update this information into all of the selected tracks.
