iTunes: 1 Million Artists and Growing or How to Handle Various Artists Albums

Are you using iTunes for one reason or another? Perhaps you have an iPod or iPhone? Have you ever imported an album that has various artists? For example a movie or game soundtrack. Then notice how your artist list becomes polluted with names that you have never heard of and only contain a single song when you browse? Or if you use Coverflow on iPhone or iPod touch you have 15 of the same album, with the only difference being the artist? I found this extremely annoying and almost impossible to browse by album when I had the entire OCRemix library on my iPhone which basically resulted in 1500+ albums that were all the same. I thought it was iTunes playing dumb, so I left it. I asked around and no one knew how to fix this. 

Well, it so happens there is a solution and it's easy with almost no effort at all.

1. Switch to list view.
2. Go to "View" in the top menu then "Column Browser" and select "Albums".
3. Select the album in the main view you want to edit.
4. Go to "File" and select "Get Info". It might prompt you with a warning about editing multiple items, click "Yes".
5. Click the "Options" tab in the window that pops up.
6. Click the checkbox next to "Part of a compilation:" and select "Yes" in the selection list.
7. Click "OK".

You should see your artist list suddenly shrink. Repeat the steps above for all albums that are a compilation of various artists. Coverflow and browsing on your iPod and iPhone are now sane again.