Q: I want to reduce the amount of entries in the Artist section on my 5th Generation iPod. A large majority of the artists here are parts of dance compilation albums that I have. Obviously, I have one entry for every separate artist, whereas it’s not terribly important for me to be able to sort them this way. Is there any way to prevent artists from these albums from showing in the “Artists” list, instead making them only visible from the album menu?
– Anonymous
A: Absolutely! Apple has included the ability to mark a track as “Part of a Compilation,” and 5G and nano iPods have the ability to display these items separately when browsing music.
To mark tracks with this setting, select as many of them as you’d like in iTunes’ Library window, and choose “Get Info” from iTunes’ “File” menu. Then, on the “Info” panel, click the “Part of a compilation” checkbox. Be careful not to touch the other settings, or you may overwrite a lot of tag information!
Then, synchronize your iPod to pass these changes along. To instruct the iPod not to include these “Compilation” tracks into your main “Artists” list, browse to it’s “Settings” menu, and toggle “Compilations” to “On.”
You’ll now notice a new entry called “Compilations” in your iPod’s top-level “Music” menu, where all of your dance albums will be listed. You’ll later find that, while these albums still appear in your iPod’s “Albums” menu, the corresponding artists do not appear in the “Artists” menu.
Note that, even if you don’t use it exclusively for actual compilations, this is one possible trick you can use to clean up your iPod’s “Artists” menu in general.
Enjoy!
