Q: Help!!! There are a handful of songs on my iPod that I can only locate if I search for them by song title, not by artist. I’ve checked the tags, and they look fine. Does anyone know how I can fix this?
– Henry
A: The most common cause of this problem is tracks that are set as “Part of a Compilation” within the iTunes track properties.
As discussed in last week’s column, the “Compilation” flag can be used to filter out certain artists from being listed on the “Artist” menu on the iPod and in iTunes. By extension, if only some of the tracks by a particular artist are set to “Part of a Compilation,” then the artist name will still appear on the “Artist” menu, but tracks flagged as “Part of a Compilation” will not be listed under that particular artist. Instead they will be listed under their specific album name, accessible via the “Albums” or “Compilations” menu options.
The fastest way to check this is to turn OFF the Compilations setting on the iPod itself, which can be found under the Settings menu. This will cause the iPod to ignore the “Part of a Compilation” flag, removing the Compilation menu from the Music section, and causing all tracks to be listed properly under their artists. If turning this setting OFF on the iPod solves the problem, then you can go back into iTunes and ensure that the “Part of a Compilation” setting is UNchecked for those particular tracks.
