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dalelyles
User level: Level 1 (9 points)

Music app on MacBook Pro splits single-artist albums

MacBook Pro, Tahoe 26.7.1

Music app has been splitting single-artist albums into multiple albums. I know the deal about making sure the Get Info info is all uniform — that is not the issue. No recent submissions to this community board seem to deal with my problem, or at least don't present solutions that match my laptop/etc.

It's been ongoing, but downloading an album today from Bandcamp really frustrated me. I am attaching screenshots of the problem.

1. Music's version of four Zoë Keating albums, split into eight.

2. The two "halves" of The Edge of All Things. Notice that the first track has been split off.

3. This what the downloaded album looks like in its original downloaded album folder. All nine tracks are present, in order, and accounted for.

I have been through the Get Info screen for each and every album and each and every track. There are no discrepancies that I can detect. Every track in each album displays exactly the same information.

So 1) why is Music doing this? and 2) How do I fix it, preferably with a hitherto unknown and undocumented process that is automatic and does not need repeating every month?

Posted on Nov 3, 2026 12:17 PM

4 replies

sooperfresh
User level: Level 2 (377 points)

Nov 4, 2026 8:21 PM in response to dalelyles

Glad the second one worked. It works because retyping the artist rewrites a field that looked identical but wasn't, usually a trailing space, different capitalisation or a leftover Sort Artist value, and Music treats those as two albums. If you want it to stop for good, Katalog runs alongside the Music app and groups albums by album artist with case and spacing folded, so those splits don't show up there (I made it).

stockrockernuts
User level: Level 1 (19 points)

Nov 3, 2026 2:03 PM in response to dalelyles

This happens to me alot, even with music downloaded from Apple Music. There is a hacks around this though. Choose the artist view; mark all songs in the split album; show info; in the infoscreen mark the songs as being a collection; click ok; then show info again; unmark the collection button; click ok. This usually helps. If not, try selecting all song in the split album; show info; change one letter in the artists name; click ok; show info; correct the artists name; click ok.

Phil0124
User level: Level 10 (242,520 points)

Nov 3, 2026 1:27 PM in response to dalelyles

Can you post screenshots of the Get Info screen of the split albums, maybe if some fresh eyes can spot a difference?


Otherwise, it's hard to say why they would be getting broken up into two albums.


dalelyles Author
User level: Level 1 (9 points)

Nov 4, 2026 7:52 AM in response to stockrockernuts

Thanks — the first gambit didn't work, but the second one did!


Apple, this is just bad file management. Fix this. Whatever happened to "it just works"?

Originally posted at discussions.apple.com/thread/256388285