Greatest Hits and compilations on iPod

Hello -

I noticed recently when I went to shuffle all of my R.E.M. songs while driving, that a whole album of their early hits (And I Feel Fine - The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987) was not listed under "R.E.M." in the artists section.
The album and all the songs are on the iPod under "albums" but I can't shuffle it with other REM songs since they're not all listed under REM.
Any thoughts?

So then I tried some other artists, and it happens again with Queen.
I have two hits albums - Greatest Hits I and Greatest Hits II.
Both are on the iPod, but not listed under "Queen."
Any ideas?

Thanks!

On iTunes select all the tracks of an album you're having issues with and right-click - choose Get Info.

Look at the Artist Name and the Album artist name. Ensure they are set correctly to R.E.M. or Queen etc.

Also check that 'skip when shuffling' isn't ticked for these albums

A fix of sorts

Well, after playing around with settings, etc for well over an hour last night,
I figured out that (by right clicking on a song on the non-listed album and then clicking Get Info) the "part of a compilation" box was checked for all the missing albums.

Technically, a greatest hits disc is a compilation (of hits by one artist) but it's not a various artists compilation like a soundtrack or a charity record like "Songs for Japan."

So iTunes doesn't list compilations under the artist name on your iPod.

The solution - go in an un-check the box.
The problem - you can't select an entire album of songs and uncheck the box all at once. You have to go in and CMD-I or right click on EACH song and then un check the box. Big hassle.
And I'm not even sure you can control if the box is checked or not when you import a CD or download an album from iTunes - I think they decide and then you have to fix it. And it seems very arbitrary. I checked on other artists and for example - Billy Joel Greatest Hits Vol 1 the box was checked, but Vol II was unchecked.

A quick way to see what albums you may have on your iPod that are like this is by going to the Albums list on your iPod - you may want to start in the Gs with titles like "Greatest Hits" but you can check the entire list too.
Look for any album with the album title in BOLD letters but no artist listed underneath in faint, grey letters. These albums aren't under the artists name in the artists list, and if you have only one album by a particular artist - say "Greatest" by Duran Duran, then they won't be listed in your artists list at all.

Anyway - thanks for the advice, and I hope this post can help someone else.

Peace,
JasoninJapan