Album Artist and Sort Album Artist Become Linked

General Discussions
1

Hi,
I have some albums where I’ve overridden the Sort Album Artist.

As it turns out, what I’ve overridden from and what I’ve overridden to also exist as standalone artists.

When importing, the Plex Server inexplicably links all albums together to be the same, when they should not be.

Take the following four albums:

Album 1:
Album Artist: Medeski, Martin & Wood
Sort Album Artist: (empty)

Album 2:
Album Artist: John Zorn
Sort Album Artist: (empty)

Album 3:
Album Artist: Medeski, Martin & Wood
Sort Album Artist: John Zorn

Album 4:
Album Artist: Bar Kokhba
Sort Album Artist: John Zorn

In all 4 cases above, when sorted by Album Artist, they are being treated as John Zorn… even the ones that have absolutely no mention of John Zorn and are pure Medeski, Martin & Wood.

I’ve done the plex dance on these albums a few times to try to get them to show up right, but they just won’t.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
-Chuck

2

Why did you set the sort album artist to ‘John Zorn’ on an album that’s from ’ Medeski, Martin & Wood’?

If you edit the ‘Sort Album Artist’ of the ‘Album Artist’ ‘Medeski, Martin & Wood’, then you edit it for all albums which have ‘Medeski, Martin & Wood’ as their ‘Album Artist’.

What did you define in the embedded meta data of these albums for ‘Album Artist’ and for ‘Sort Album Artist’?

3

Sorry to be clear, in my first post, this was all embedded metadata. I don’t ever manage my metadata directly in Plex because it’s too much of a pain. I manage it in iTunes then sync my files from iTunes over to Plex.

John Zorn is a jazz artist who has done a few multi-album (e.g., one of them is 25 albums) compositions in which he then has other artists actually perform the material (a different artist for each album). From a sorting perspective, I want them grouped together under him so they are all organized together (because they represent portions of a broader work), but I want to preserve the performing artist as well.

If you edit the ‘Sort Album Artist’ of the ‘Album Artist’ ‘Medeski, Martin & Wood’, then you edit it for all albums which have ‘Medeski, Martin & Wood’ as their ‘Album Artist’.

This is exactly what I don’t understand. Why in the world would that be? Why can’t I just override it for a single album as I’ve done in the embedded metadata?

4

I think I get the idea of what you are after, but that is not possible in Plex.

If you want all albums of that cycle to appear under ‘John Zorn’, set the ‘Album Artist’ of all tracks in these albums to ‘John Zorn’.

Then set the ‘Track Artist’ of every track which has someone else playing, to the real performer’s name.
This will show you the names of the performers on every track, when you are looking at the album. But the performers won’t appear in the list of ‘Album Artists’ in Plex.

5

Ok got it. I adjusted the Album Artist to “John Zorn” on these and did the Plex dance yet again. Sure enough, they are now grouped/sorted the way I want.

Unfortunately, it means I can’t view the performing artist without drilling in a bit which isn’t ideal… but I can live with it.

I still don’t understand (or agree with) why these concepts of Album Artist and Sort Album Artist are linked globally and not respected on a per-file basis. It’s a very strange decision.

Maybe someday the Plex team will finally prioritize proper ID3 metadata support (yes I’ve voted)… but I’m not holding my breath.

Thanks for your help @OttoKerner!

6

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