You've probably noticed that when you're searching for songs, there's a category in the Browse menu called Composers. This category is primarily useful for classical music because these songs may be tagged with the name of the recording artist rather than that of the composer. For example, an album of the Fargo Philharmonic playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony might list the Fargo Philharmonic as the artist and Beethoven as the composer. By using the Composers category, you can easily find works by your favorite composer: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and so on.

But the Composers category doesn't have to be limited to classical music. For example, you could use the Composers category to quickly access all of your Nick Drake cover versions as well as Drake's own recordings of his songs. The only disadvantage to sorting this way is that the metadata information for many CDs in the CD Database (a.k.a. Gracenote) doesn't include an entry in the Composer field. If you want to use it, you may need to manually edit the songs' tags. Still, if you're a real fan of a particular artist, this effort can pay off--and note that many songs purchased from stores such as the iTunes Music Store contain the complete tags.

Note: By editing tags manually, you can create almost any sorting criteria you like.