Comments on: iTunes 8: ‘Genre’ browser fix

By: Phillip Allen

Phillip Allen — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:00:35 +0000

Yes, I can help you with that, and it’s quite straightforward; although I must say that I usually prefer to sort albums by year in the main iTunes pane in list view (simply by clicking on the Album column to sort by album, then clicking it twice more to sort by Album by Year).

The reason I prefer that approach is that to do a sort by album by year without subdividing it by Artist, you have to dispense with list view altogether (unless you get rid of the Artist column in list view, which would be silly). Here’s what you have to do:

1. Change View to Grid (the middle of the three View options, the first being List and the last being Cover Flow). In Grid View you’ll see four basic sorting options at the top – Albums, Artists, Genres (ho ho!), and Composers.
2. Click on the ‘Albums’ button. This will perform a simple sort of all your albums; I believe the default option is Albums by Title.
3. To get more options, ctrl-click (Mac) or, I guess, right-click (Windows) on the ‘Albums’ button. You’ll then see options including Sort Albums by Year. Job done.

For further clarity you can also turn on the ‘Group Albums’ option, which in the case of the sort by year choice will group all titles released in a particular year under the heading of that year.

That might not be everything you hoped for (since it involves using Grid View, which some aren’t too keen on), but it works well enough.

By: CoolTrips

CoolTrips — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:11:03 +0000

Impressive. Any tricks for sorting albums by year in the Album column of the Browser window (the browser not the body of iTunes)? Thanks.

By: Eman

Eman — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 07:25:46 +0000

I found this from another site, but was so relieved to have it work. I can’t not express how p*ssed off I was that Apple would be so foolish to disable this function. In fact I just ran the update tonight expecting them to address this issue, but not surprisingly they didn’t fix this. Let’s hope there management doesn’t start behaving like General Motors. None the less, the command worked!!! Cheers.

By: Phillip Allen

Phillip Allen — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:13:59 +0000

Hmm…not sure what you mean: afaik there isn’t an artwork ‘column’ (at least, I’ve never seen one), just the artwork viewer at the bottom of the left-hand Library/Playlists/etc. pane. That’s easy enough to get rid of, simply by clicking on the show/hide button underneath it (the one that has a downward-pointing triangle in a box).

I’m sure you’ve figured that out, but I don’t really know what else you’d be referring to.

By: Melanie

Melanie — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:08:04 +0000

This is great, but do you know how to get rid of the “Artwork” column? I hate it and can’t figure out how to get rid of it.

By: Liz

Liz — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:50:12 +0000

I could kiss you. Thanks so much. I always hesitate to upgrade new software versions immediately…but I was sick of Software Update constantly asking me, so I said yes. Imagine my dismay when I opened iTunes and it was so UGLY! You’ve helped me make it pretty again!!!

By: conebone69

conebone69 — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:13:12 +0000

Thanks a lot for posting this. You are right. The genre column is totally worthless. Hopefully apple will get the message.

By: electricvisions

electricvisions — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:43:20 +0000

Sweet! that worked, and you explained it so well.
that was the first time I ever used terminal mode on my mac.
goodbye genre column!!!!!

By: the-inbetween.com [ Genre Busting ]

the-inbetween.com [ Genre Busting ] — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:03:37 +0000

[...] what to do about this superfluous tag? You can remove it from iTunes entirely but maybe there’s another way. I don’t know how useful it’ll be or what it will [...]

By: Flasshe

Flasshe — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:34:39 +0000

Apparently it existed before, so I don’t understand the reasoning in taking it away, but I think you should tone down the flame a little–genres are perfectly sensible feature.

I personally don’t have any problem with the Genre column existing. What made me upset is that they took the option to remove it.