iPod songs out of order?

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The problem

Lately, a few albums on my iPod were playing out of order. This is frustrating, because albums sound better in sequence. When songs are listened to out of context, they are like stray dogs, wandering the streets – yet still somewhat beautiful.

No matter how many times I re–synced my iPod through my Mac, the same album kept displaying in the same random order.

Within iTunes, I made sure that the Track # column was displayed in ascending order:

iTunes track numbers in ascending order, from 1 to 14

Still, after re–syncing, the same results occured.

The answer

The answer lies within the Get Info option, under the File menu:

Dialog box within iTunes

If you notice the “Disc Number” boxes – this is where information is needed. These boxes should appear as they do in the image. It should say 1 of 1. If you have it set like this, then whatever order you set your playlist within iTunes – that order will also reflect onto your iPod.

More specifically

In order to be as detailed as possible, I will go back and show every step of the process.

Within iTunes, make sure the “Browser” is showing, which is where the artist and album columns are above the playlist section:

A screenshot of iTunes, with Browser mode activated, where the Artist and Album columns are above the Playlist section.

Select the artist and album that you want to put in the correct order, or a custom order.

Go to File, Get Info.

A message box will appear, asking you if you are sure you want to edit information for multiple items:

Dialog box within iTunes that asks if you are sure you want to edit information for multiple items.

Click Yes.

That will then bring you to the Multiple Song Information dialog box, as pictured earlier, where you can make sure the “Disc Number” boxes are filled in with the number 1.

The important thing to remember is when you select Get Info, you have to do it for the entire ALBUM, not just a single song.

96 thoughts on “iPod songs out of order?”

  2. Hmmm. It should work. I’ve tested it before. Perhaps I should update this article, as it is a bit out-dated. Maybe there’s some new bug in iTunes 7 that is preventing this.

  3. Mine is having the same problem, but not all my track numbers are in order. I don’t want to go and change each track number for 1500 songs, is there a quicker way I can do it by album?

  4. I had this same problem when I recently imported a best of compilation. I noticed that the artist was not the same on all the tracks and he would sometimes show up with another artist as in a duet. Well since my library is sorted by artist this immediately threw the songs out of order. I just edited the tracks by giving them all of the same artist and voila! The tracks are back in order. Hope this helps for some people. If not, I suggest making a playlist with the correct order.

  5. Was having the same problem myself – one or two albums out of 600 not in track order. Try looking at the album artist column, my albums where being thrown out of order by different values in that column.
    Easiest solution is to select every song, right click and get info. Then tick the clear album artist field (unless you actually use this info, which is unlikely).
    Hope this helps.

  6. this is retarded. I paid TOP dollar for my new ipod. downloaded there new software and now more than half my songs play out of order from there respective albums…and I downloaded them from limewire…not itunes.

  7. i have been having the same problem. i recently noticed that some of the songs that were out of order are have different notes in the comments box, so i just changed that. i don’t have my hookup with me right now, so i can’t say for sure if this will fix the order on the ipod, but it’s worth a try.

  8. On my iPod, I’ve had this problem but only with albums where some of the songs are downloaded off iTunes. For example, Stone Temple Pilots’ Core is one of my favorite CDs. I put the CD on my iPod, but some of the songs were scratched up so I bought those 3 songs off iTunes. I made sure all 12 tracks were in order, and did the “1 of 1″ thing that was suggested. However, this didn’t work and the 3 tracks I bought still remained out of order on my iPod, but NOT on iTunes. This problem as occurred every time where I have a bought song on the same album as a non-bought song. An interesting detail about this whole problem is that this never happened on my iPod until I did one of those iPod updates iTunes asks you about a couple times a year.

  10. Thank you soo much! I’ve been trying to get my songs in order for a while now but no matter what I tried it would never work. But this did and now I can enjoy my music. <3

  11. I’m having the same problem with only a few out of some 500 albums, yet no change of any kind in iTunes affects the entropy of my iPod. In fact when I search amongst my iPod through iTunes everything is in order – the problem arises when looking through the iPod itself. I’ve filled all but 10 MB or so of my 30 GB iPod – perhaps this has something to do with it being almost filled to capacity. Either that, or both the new iTunes and iPod updates I recently installed are faulty.

    In any event, I’m sure I’ll have to replace my iPod after its unofficial life-expectancy of 2 1/2 years is up. Things sure are made to break nowadays…

  12. Seanzie, yeah my iPod broke after a year and a half. I agree the “song order” thing is really annoying.

  13. After reading this I took a closer look at my songs info and realised that some songs had just “artist” filled in and others had “album artist” and “artist”. After I made them all the same that fixed it.

  14. Initially the following changes didn’t work:
    - Assigning all tracks from the affected album to “Disc 1 of 1″
    - Ensuring all tracks included the Album Artist (the problematic track didn’t)
    - Deleting the Album Artist information altogether from all tracks on the album (leaving only Artist)

    I worked out that you must first delete the album from your iPod and then transfer it back from iTunes after making the above changes. It worked beautifully. :)

    Thanks for the troubleshooting ideas, this has been bothering me for ages.

  16. select all the songs in the album > go to get info > tick the album artist box and hit ok… it works

  17. i have a fix!!! i went to get info, and erased the album name info (rubber soul), then i went and found the song (in my life)and input the album name again, hit ok and voila, one “rubber soul”, and there’s “in my life,” right where it should be! yay!! wow i hope this helps. i feel smart!

  18. I just wanted to say that I tried the advice given in the entry and it did not work but in one of the feedback comments someone advised that one should remove the album artist field in order to properly order the tracks so i tried that and it was successful. I believe that itunes downloads utilize the album artist field, uploads from CD, however, do not. This is the cause of the issues with mixed source albums. Thank you.

  20. To play in order I have sorted by Date added.
    This will allow let’s say the newest Harry Potter Audio Book on CD to be played in order. That is as long as you install it in order.

  21. Thanks for all the help on this issue. Couple of other things have been bothering me that maybe you guys have come across. Recently one of my artists on my Ipod appears 3 times with the same albums in it each time and I can’t figure out why? It is only that one artist and I re-tagged all the albums.

    The other is I tag my albums by year so it is like (2007) – album name. Is there a way to arrange those in a different order then the default (I think now it does oldest to newest) but I wanted to do newest to oldest?

    Thanks in advance!

  22. Basically, it seems like Album, Album Artist and Disc Number need to be in agreement for sorting to happen properly.

  23. Thanks!! I was having the same problem with some mp3s I downloaded as torrents. I couldn’t figure out why they kept getting out of order once I sorted on album/artist name. I edited the info for all to Disc 1 of 1, and it worked!

    A side note – the process isn’t as complicated as you describe. You can simply start typing in part of the artist/album name into the little filtering search box in iTunes. Then hit Apple + a (or ctrl + A) to select all, then Apple + I (ctrl + I) to edit the info.

  24. Thanks for the help. I had this exact problem with Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” both the live and the studio versions had songs out of order. Now as some of you know, these are 2-disc sets. Originally I had them set as disc 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 respectively with no problems. The recent updates messed all of that up. So I used the above fix and made it all one album (1 of 1) and re-adjusted the track numbers appropriately to keep the songs in order. So now, the songlist was showing up properly in itunes, but it was still messed up on the ipod.

    I searched through some of the responses on here and found one that mentioned setting both the artist AND the album artist to the same name. I gave that a try and POOF! my iPod is now showing the song names in the proper order, and with a gapless album such as this, it’s very important that the songs are where they are supposed to be.

    so, to reiterate

    1.) set disc to “1 of 1″

    if that fails

    2.) set BOTH Artist and Album Artist to the same name

    that’s how i got my fix, hope it works for others

  25. the artist to album artist thing is the only thing that worked…funny thing is the “Genius’” at Apple told me and I quote. “I’m afraid we are going to have to wipe the iPod and do a re-sync to get it to order correctly”

    True story! I told them 3 albums are playing out of order and ‘Roscoe’ told me it had to be wiped.

    Sounds like the old days when I used PCs and had to call Dell and I got the ‘ol ZZTop routine.

    Anyone that owned a Dell computer from 1998 through 2003 knows what I’m talking about. It’s a damn shame to see Apple going down the toilet as well.

  26. Thank you for your help. I actual did a global “select all” and then put a 1 in the spot for album x of x and it corrected my entire collection of 6000 songs. Thank you so much for the help!!! It really saved me a lot of work. Best, Ted

  27. Thanks for that. If the above doesn’t work, you can try selecting all the tunes in the playlist, opening the “get info” window, and choosing “remember order = yes” at the bottom, making sure the box is checked.

    This solution is good if you have a playlist that you want to have play in order on your iPod, but it includes a song from, say, disc 2 of a multi-disc album — you don’t want to screw up how it’s catalogued relative to the other songs in that multi-disc collection (changing the disc number in your playlist will change it everywhere).

  28. Sorting by date worked for me, that said I have 250 albums and still have to go through and check the lot. I had loaded 15 audio books and all of them were jumbled up can you imagine how mad that made me after loading 50 CDs, and so thanks for your help.

    Regards

  29. I wasted about 10 hours trying out all these iTunes alternatives that might put the songs in order. Thanks for the advice, works perfectly!

  30. guys it might sound stupid but go into settings on your ipod and go to shuffle and turn it off. when people previously suggested this i thought i just had to go to original start menu an make sure the shuffle icon in the top right hand corner wass’t there. however, actually turning the shuffle off in the settings has done the trick for me and i can now listen to my albums as god intended. hth

  31. Dude!

    Ha ha, this has annoyed me for quite a while now, but the “disc 1 of 1″ did the trick.

    Thanks!

    :D

  32. i had the problem today of the tracks from a playlist going onto the ipod (shuffle) in the wrong order no matter how many times i tried and retried from scratch – i solved it by right clicking on the ipod icon in the source menu on the left whence a menu appears which includes (i deciphered – eventually) a possibility that says something about the order of pieces (i can’t remember what it is – mine is in italian anyway) … it doesn’t refer directly to the order of pieces (at least not in real english) but if you start with that possibility in your head you can guess which one it is – this is the only thing which stopped dolly parton appearing in the middle of a handel mass :_))

  33. I tried many of the above suggestions, and nothing worked for me, until I went to each song individually to where the info box had options for entering “sort artist”. In that box I made all songs on the same cd of compilations have the same generic artist. This then allowed all songs to align by track # in itunes. This also allowed the actual artist to still be seen in the library as well. Haven’t synced ipod yet though so hopefully right order will transfer.

  36. Thank you for clear instructions, this worked for me- I can now have my “Running” playlist in a beats per minute order..(tracks getting faster as I warm up..)If you see a sweaty middle aged woman pounding the streets of Hertfordshire with a big smile on her face, it’s down to you, Matthom!

  39. Actually, another thing that might be wrong is the Album Artist info. If some of your songs from the album are downloaded where-as others are ripped (in my case to replace tracks damaged by disk wear-and-tear), than te Album Artist information may be different. iTunes doesn’t automatically fill out Album Artist info on ripped tracks, but when yhou download tracks, the information is already there. Try either adding the information to tracks lacking it or removing it from those that have it.

  40. I found out that it was the Composer field that was throwing this off, not the Album Artist. Just basically go through each one and clear the field you don’t need, or select all, get info, and check all the boxes that you want clear and leave them clear. That might work too.

  42. Thank you so much! Ive had this problem since like forever, and I was just putting up with it despite the frustration. Until I stumbled across this article! You are one great big help! Thank you.

  43. The “album artist” trick worked for me. this particular album’s songs were listed properly on itunes and were also listed properly (in correct order) on my ipod folder as viewed through the itunes interface. however, on the ipod, the songs were essentially listed randomly (3-7-1-11-etc.)

    the only thing that worked was to go into itunes and change the “album artist” to the same name as the “artist”. no idea why this worked because the album artist field was the same in all the songs before (blank). oh well, the joys of ipods.

    oh yeah, and to those suggesting “turn off the shuffle”–the songs are still LISTED in the proper order even if the shuffle is on.

  46. select the entire album in itunes right click get info and change the album artist to whatever it should be and itll work

  48. The same Artist and Artist Name worked for me, as well as turning the Shuffle (OFF) on the IPOD!! Everyone has been a great! help… Thanks…

  50. Disc 1 did not have the album artist, but disc 2 did, so it was always first. Making them consistent (in my case removing the field for the whole set) fixed the problem. Thanks!!!

    My other out of order tracks were fixed by changing the track number to something random and then changing it back.

  51. I just made did the disk x of x trick, and made sure i had every thing exactly the same for each song, and had the track numbers correct.

  53. Yea this used to happen to me too. Itunes would randomly place say a song (i.e. 5 of 11) out of order. So yea, make sure each track also has “1 of 1″ under info or they all have it blank. If that doesn’t work, then deleting both artist name and artist album throws the entire album at the end of your itunes and for some reason (can’t tell you why), it throws all the songs back in order. Highlight the entire album and re-add artist name and album title. Again, I don’t know why it worked but it did!

  55. No Need to enter any disc numbers. For keeping all the tracks in the desired order, you just need to click on “Shuffle” option under ‘Controls’ menu.

    Now when you import any palylist into your iPod, it’ll remain in the same order as it is present in the selected playlist.

  56. IF THIS FIX DIDN’T WORK FOR YOU, READ:

    Check the Album Artist tag for each song. If they aren’t all the same, they could get sorted by Album Artists alphabetically.

  57. Great stuff, Matt! I didn’t think it worked at first, as, apparently, Search continues to place songs out of order. That is, if you look up an artist in search, then click on an album, you’ll get a randomized order, but not if you go through by browsing within Artist.

    Bottom line is that Ipod/Itunes is a pretty crappy interface if you have a lot of music. It’d be nice if they hired a few real information architects to design this stuff.

  58. Thanks =] This has been bugging me for quite a while and I’ve frustratedly tried to figure out what was wrong with it with no luck. Thanks for the help =]

  60. I have to second the poster who mentioned to turn the Ipod’s Shuffle setting to Off. My albums and playlists have been out of order for months and I tried all the tips here w/ no luck – until I checked the obvious. :)

  61. Thank you very much. I clicked on my playlist with a right click. Put it one to one and bam. thanks!!!!

  62. This has been driving me insane. Make sure “Artist” and “Album Artist” are the same if none of the stuff already mentioned works. That fixed my problem. Thanks for the article.

  63. You don’t need to do any of the above. If you have your list sorted by the Album column in iTunes, you can simply drag items up and down in a playlist to reorder them.

    THEN right click on the playlist and select ‘copy to play order’ and the play order is reproduced on your ipod.

  64. This drove me mad! I had Black Sabbath’s Paranoid playing all out of order – when it’s an album you know like the back of your hand, it has to play right!

    I tried the disc number thing, deleting & re-importing, re-editing the properties of the original mp3s, everything. All to no avail.

    Then I noticed that I had the ‘Shuffle: songs’ setting; I changed that to ‘Shuffle: off’ and all was good!

    D’oh.

  65. Thanks Matt. This works if you go to Artist and then it will play from track1 onwards. If you are looking at a playlist, it will not play in that order! I am trying to find a way to sort my playlists – any advice anyone?

  66. you have to be very careful with the information that is in the “info” boxes. For an album to play in order, all of tracks in that album have to have the same EXACT album title, artist, appropriate disc numbers, track numbers, album artist info, etc. If it is a compliation that you want to play together, you have to have the compilation box checked for all the tunes, and the album artist info should say “various” on all the tracks. And on your iPod, you have to make sure the way your iPod tunes are sorted while viewing them through iTunes is the way you want them sorted when you unplug the iPod from your computer. Hope this helps.

  67. The different bit rate someone mentioned might be a clue, as one of my tracks was from Amazon and the others were not, and they had different bit rates and encodings. Making all the fields the same didn’t help till I tried the ‘disc 1′ trick.

  68. 19 of 67): Alex
    . (Thu 28 Jun 2007, 4:42 AM CST)

    The tracks will always play out of order if you have shuffle on

    Thanx Alex , THIS did the trick

  70. For iTouch users having difficulty with Audiobooks:
    I thought for sure I did not have a “shuffle” issue (too obvious) and spent hours doing all the other tips. iTunes/iTouch is supposed to turn shuffle off automatically when playing audiobooks. There is not even an option while playing the audiobook to turn shuffle on/off (duh-why would you shuffle an audiobook?). Well, did some further research and I guess there is a bug– iTouch doesn’t know to turn shuffle off automatically. I had to go to my regular music, pick a song to play and then click on on the album artwork and turn off the blue shuffle icon. Then went back to audiobooks and it played perfectly. I feel pretty stupid but I’m much happier.

  71. The problem can be solved by making sure that all the info for each individual song matches up, except for the titles of the tracks, of course.

  72. Re comment 71, there is the problem that people have noted, that apparently the bit rates have to match too (e.g. you can’t combine iTunes and Amazon tracks), and fixing that isn’t just a matter of altering tags by typing. Comments #14 and 23 above may help.

  73. The original article, plus comments 5 and 14 got mine working. Thank you! If you think it is annoying to have songs played out of order, imagine the sequence of a yoga CD being out of order (sit comfortably…now, as you’re standing on your head…huh?!).

  74. Holy COW has this been the single-most annoying problem with my ipod I have had for just under a year! I have searched everywhere for the problem on the ipod itself and in itunes. Imagine my surprise to see, what at first glance to me, is a wise-a$$ comment from Alex, #19 above “The tracks will always play out of order if you have shuffle on

    I looked and found TWO shuffle areas, one right on a top menu, the other, buried in “settings” … and that had shuffle “songs” turned on! Problem solved when I turned it OFF!

    Ever try listening to the Blue Collar Comedy Tour on “shuffle” … INFURIATING! ;)

    Thank you for the great tips … I am pleasantly surprised to see posts being made here 5 years later!

    Keep up the good work and public service!

  75. I was having the same problem and I had already adjusted the artist, album artist, album, track number, and disk number (get info>info) but then I decided to select all the tracks of the album and went to Sorting (get info>sorting), clicked the box next to Sort Artist, then entered the artist name and it synced in the correct order. This was a Japanese dl and none of my other albums have given me any problems so hopefully none of you will need to go through this much trouble.

  77. I have playlists with songs from different albums in iTunes. The song order of the playlist is very important and I do not use the shuffle feature. When I synced the playlists to my iPad, the playlist order displays correctly on the iPad but songs play in seemingly random order. I have not been able to get them to play in the sequence they are displayed. I have shuffle set to off and I have never used shuffle. This is annoying and one of the reasons I have buyers remorse.

  78. Thank you! this works as long as all the songs in the album were highlighted when you select disk 1 of 1. also make sure you have identical information in all the fields except song title, especially in the sorting box.

  79. Wow, thanks. I was having this problem with almost all my albums on my ipod. Selecting just one out of order album and selecting disc 1 of 1 seems to have cured ALL my other albums :-)

  80. thanks so much guys, i tried the album artist thing and it FINALLY worked.
    i’d used the disc 1 of 1 before and it hadn’t worked, so i gave the album artist a shot. THANK YOU!

    it’s just not the same listening to an album out of sequence.

  81. Your a Star…

    Set the Album artist, Artist and disk to the same values as described above. Then for each track set both the track number and the number of tracks.

    At last my hand built compilation plays in the same order on itunes and the ipod.

    Thanks

  82. why go to all that trouble??? just right-click on the playlist and select ‘copy to play order’

  83. This system seems to have changed — instead of each comment being numbered as before, each one has its own link such as http://matthom.com/archive/2004/12/21/ipod-songs-out-of-order#comment-5752. Very helpful!

    It may be useful to know that the use of ‘copy to play order’ is described at http://support.apple.com/kb/ta27500. But if you have a playlist, the order can be changed by hand on the iPod by going into edit and dragging anyway, can it not (which I believe could be done on iOS also) — though I suppose syncing might mess up the new order? The issue, I thought, was how the order can be changed without having to create a playlist and I’m not sure Crys’s suggestion helps there.

  84. Further to my comment yesterday, I see that ‘get into’ now has a tab ‘sorting’ which has 2 columns. The left one is is a duplicate of the list in ‘info’ while the right one has the same headings preceded by ‘sort’ (e.g. sort Name). These start off blank but I guess can be used to fix things if there are problems.

  88. I tried so many of these suggestions with no luck at all. Then, on the verge of giving up completely, I saw the suggestion of going into the settings on my actual ipod (not on itunes) and turning off shuffle………I have to admit, I feel stunningly stupid to have wasted a couple of hours trying to sort this issue when all it took was two seconds of common sense (and we all know the problem with common sense….its not that common!)

  90. I was having the same problem with a couple of 2 Many DJs albums. After following the steps above, I have sorted this out.
    Thanks Matt!

  92. Thanks chaps. I spent hours on this, and was in complete denial that there could be any possibility I had shuffle on. Yet, one of the comments above mentioned there was two shuffle settings on ipod, sure enough the one under settings was set to shuffle songs. Changed that to shuffle off, and problem was fixed.

  93. Here’s my solution; never fails:
    1. Highlight every song in album
    2. Right click and choose Get Info
    3. Check the box next to every single field except for “track number” (but still check the field after the word “of”).
    4. Fill in any info that you want to change across the whole album, if needed.
    5. click ok. it will process for a minute and then automatically re-arrange.

  94. Cant believe after an hour of searching the web, disc number was the answer!! thank you :-D i was losing my mind

  95. iTunes sucks, why do I have to waste time doing anything to put my songs in the correct order on the iPod? I tried several solutions here including deleting & reinstalling the CDs in iTunes and they are always in the correct order…in iTunes but not always in the iPod despite trying several of the “solutions” here. Well I guess they worked for someone else.

    What software besides iTunes can I use that doesn’t have this BS problem?

  96. Thanks, after reordering the numbers and trying to re-import everything and it still not putting them in the correct order i was getting annoyed. Set the disk number globally for the album to 1:1 and this worked fine, cheers!

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