This question has been sitting in the general forum for a few weeks now with no answers, so I'm reposting here. It doesn't seem like a ninja appropriate question to me, but maybe it's more complicated than I understand!
Hi, I've been converting over my library to Plex, and I've noticed what seems like an omission when using the search.
If I search for a specific artist, it will not show results where the album artist is set to "Various" or "Various Artists".
For example, I have a compilation album "The Best of the 90s". I have it all tagged appropriately, and it appears in the Plex Library correctly.
The album contains a track "Billy Joel - River of Dreams".
The track is tagged with:
Album: The Best of the 90s
Artists: Billy Joel
AlbumArtist: Various
Title: River of Dreams
If I search "River of Dreams", it will return the track as a result.
If I search "The Best of the 90s", it will return the album.
However, if I search "Billy Joel", I get nothing!
I'm using Plex Server (Version 0.9.11.7) on my ReadyNAS, and I've tested with both the web frontend and the android client. Both give the same results with the search.
Unfortunately searching for an artist within a compilation (Various Artists) album is not yet supported. It is however, something we are aware of and it'll be supported in an upcoming release.
For anyone wondering, this feature does not seem to be present in the latest "overhaul" of music either. My new premium music library is still building now, but all my initial tests seems to indicate no significant changes in this area. Please let me know if I've missed something though!
This inability to properly search my library is really frustrating, and means Plex is not nearly as useful to me as it should be!
Chris, or other Plex employees, could you provide any indication of the time frame of search improvements? Are we talking weeks, months or years? Should wait patiently for an update that will improve search, or should I just change to a different platform with a more complete search feature?
Chris, or other Plex employees, could you provide any indication of the time frame of search improvements? Are we talking weeks, months or years? Should wait patiently for an update that will improve search, or should I just change to a different platform with a more complete search feature?
Should you actually receive an answer to this query... you will have crossed into sacred ground.
"Plex does not give timelines" is the corporate mantra/chant.
I sometimes wonder if Plex knows the difference between a week, a month or a year. :rolleyes:
I work in software development, so I understand why they'd be reluctant to make any promises! Can't hurt to ask though.
I'd love to know how other people get around this restriction with the search... Do people have custom search tools or channels? Or am I the only one that wants to search like this?
Thanks for the replies. I'm not seeming to get much traction with the questions in this forum, is there a better place you know of that I could ask the same question?
Then I create a Playlist named 'Chef Aid' and add all of the tracks. This allows the track/album to show up when go to Devo or do a search. It sucks that I have to go to Playlist to listen to an entire compilation album, but I find that better than just going to one out of control 'Various Artists' folder. I have used Media Browser/Emby, Windows Media Center, iTunes and now Plex, but none of them have a functional way to group compilations together that allow the track/album to show up under each artist listing and in searches. While this is a two step process and a bit clumsy, it is the best way I have found so far. I was hoping to find a thread that addressed this in regards to the new Premium folder, but sadly have not so far.
Hopefully this thread will gain traction and other people will post how they deal with this issue.
Hopefully this thread will gain traction and other people will post how they deal with this issue.
Yes, this!
While your solution sounds practical when dealing with a smaller handful of various artists albums, I've got quite a large number of them, and they're all tagged (properly?) as per the original post. It'd be a pain to have to update all their tags, and unless there was a programmatic way to create playlists for each album, that would be time consuming too.
I've thought about writing some scripts to interrogate the Plex database directly, and seeing if I could write a simple web frontend for a more advanced search... But it seems like a lot of work for a feature that will "be supported in an upcoming release."
Just an update for anyone out there looking for an answer to this question, I can confirm that as of 0.9.8.4 Plex Media Server, this problem is still unresolved.
I was really hoping with 0.9.12.0, a "big release with a lot of music features", this would be improved but there was no change to the search functionality to address this issue.
Just an update for anyone out there looking for an answer to this question, I can confirm that as of 0.9.8.4 Plex Media Server, this problem is still unresolved.
I was really hoping with 0.9.12.0, a "big release with a lot of music features", this would be improved but there was no change to the search functionality to address this issue.
I've also raised the significant limitations of Plex's search functionality, and also the need for recognising separators at a track artist level to add meaningful value in various ways, including search. I know the top dog is aware, but I'm honestly not holding my breath just now as to when there will be any implementation.
@southwark said:
Update for anyone tracking this issue:
This is not resolved in 0.9.12.12.
Still waiting.
Bum, I should have searched more diligently; I made a similar post myself and DarkeSword also has issue. Sonos deals with this issue well. You should make this into a ‘Feature Request’.
Quickly, I may forget I had a track by ‘The Divine Comedy’ on the compilation album ‘Twentieth Century Blues: Songs Of Noel Coward’. And so, with plex as it stands the search would never find this track.
I think it would be better to adopt a universal search like sonos; an artist search would display/find tracks and albums for that specific artist rather relying as it does now on album artist. So many individual tracks by artist on complication (various artist) albums would not be found. DarkeSword, in his post, example another such method that could be employed.
As i said in my own post, I have had to remove music from plex for now.
@chrisallen said:
Unfortunately searching for an artist within a compilation (Various Artists) album is not yet supported. It is however, something we are aware of and it’ll be supported in an upcoming release.
Any updates, Chris. I made a similar post myself and DarkeSword also has issue. Sonos deals with this issue well.
I have been searching for about two months and have only JUST come across your post… the various artists is a huge issue, I have 100’s of mixed complications, Now Discs, DJ CD’s, Pre Released Music etc. I can only search by Track Name and not Artist, for example “James Bay - Hold Back The River”, I search under “James Bay” under Artist I get zero results, I search “Hold Back The River” under the track and get the result “Various Artist - Hold Back The River”, if I click to play this I get the correct information, if I edit the track info I get the below results.
It seams simple to me, add “Track Artist” to the search criteria under the Artists search and on the search results for Track add a column to show “Track Artist” so it reads, “Various Artists, James Bay, Hold back the river”.
Then other than music stopping on the new iOS app every 15 minutes I will be really happy with Plex and just wait for the ‘nice to haves’, I think this is a necessity not a nice to have!! Again iTunes works just fine… this searches everything you type, you don’t need to have to select album, track or artist, iTunes search would be great but understand that’s probably reinventing the wheel when something more simple might resolve the issue.
Artist: Various Artists
Album: Now 90 (Disc 1)
Title: Hold Back The River
Track Artist: James Bay
@rbates1234 said:
I have been searching for about two months and have only JUST come across your post… the various artists is a huge issue, I have 100’s of mixed complications, Now Discs, DJ CD’s, Pre Released Music etc. I can only search by Track Name and not Artist, for example “James Bay - Hold Back The River”, I search under “James Bay” under Artist I get zero results, I search “Hold Back The River” under the track and get the result “Various Artist - Hold Back The River”, if I click to play this I get the correct information, if I edit the track info I get the below results.
It seams simple to me, add “Track Artist” to the search criteria under the Artists search and on the search results for Track add a column to show “Track Artist” so it reads, “Various Artists, James Bay, Hold back the river”.
Then other than music stopping on the new iOS app every 15 minutes I will be really happy with Plex and just wait for the ‘nice to haves’, I think this is a necessity not a nice to have!! Again iTunes works just fine… this searches everything you type, you don’t need to have to select album, track or artist, iTunes search would be great but understand that’s probably reinventing the wheel when something more simple might resolve the issue.
Artist: Various Artists
Album: Now 90 (Disc 1)
Title: Hold Back The River
Track Artist: James Bay
Please, please, please, Plex Fix this!!!
A universal search (whereby you don’t have to select a starting parameter such as artist, album, track) would be wondrous. So, as with itunes search:
Filter by:
All (And this is the one we’d like added as a feature).
Song
Album
Artist
Composer
Huh, I thought it was just my method that was at fault -: I don’t use “various artist”, I have the album artist named to how I would organize by folder (album name, primary artist, etc, etc)
Hoping that with the new common platform PMP, plex will now have the manpower to work on niggles like this and search by composer. Noted that it did not feature in the update to the PMS yesterday.
What is somewhat irritating is that Windows Media Center allowed for searching and browsing by Album Artist, Track Artist, and Composer back in 2004. Here we are almost in 2016, and Plex still can’t do it…
