NEW: Sort on First Article v1.0

An Inquisitive Correspondent emailed to, uhm, inquire about sorting by Title. It would be beneficial, he declared, if some Titles that begin with the article "The" could be sorted under "T" rather than according to whatever the next word happened to be.

I get that. "The" can add a lot of weight to a title and it doesn't seem right to see things like "The Look of Love" sorted under "look". Band names, like "The Beatles", are a different thing, of course (for the most part).

Now, the Music app has a Sort Title tag which most people would use to force Titles to sort such that the initial article ("a", "an", "the") is ignored. In fact, I believe it is the default setting for tracks with such data.

So, to ensure this track sorts on "The", just include the full title as the "sort as" tag. Then do that manually for the...checks notes...600 or so similar tracks in your library that are driving you crazy. And how do you find these "The" titles when they're scattered throughout any playlist because you can't sort them by "T"?

Wait! What's that!? Hold on a minute...that smell...

It's an Automation Opportunity! (trademark pending).

Before I get to the script I wrote, remember that a Smart Playlist can be constructed to gather the tracks whose Title or Artist begins with "The ". Of course, you'd still have to do the Sort Title tag editing one track at a time.

The script Sort on First Article will scan every track in a batch of selected tracks in the Music app for a Title (or Album, Artist or Album Artist) that begins with "The" and, for those that do, will copy the full title to the Sort Title tag—or, if Album, Album Artist or Artist is the chosen tag, its corresponding Sorting tag. Any other track is ignored so you can "fish" for these kinds of tracks in any arbitrary selection of tracks.

Additionally, because you can enter your own text instead of the script's default "The", you can search for tags beginning with "A" or "An" or whatever initial article your localization of Music may ignore.

Sort on First Article is free to use with a donation requested. More information and download is here.