Artist name for a split album

[zzolo]

Hey all. Sorry if this is duplicated somewhere, but I wasn’t able to find anything that answers my question.

So, the situation is this. I have a split album with Artist A and Artist B where the artist name should be “Artist A and Artist B”. I also have albums just for Artist A and Artist B. What I get is an artist entry for “Artist A and Artist B” that contains both the split album but also all of Artist B albums.

Tags for the files are what I would want them to be, i.e. the AlbumArtist tag is correct. It looks like that the split album gets matched in a way that makes it so that the albums are associated with Artist A, but for some reason the longer artist name “Artist A and Artist B” is chosen as the artist name for all those albums.

Server Version#: PlexMediaServer-1.19.4.2935-79e214ead
Player Version#: Version 1.13.0.1275-bbd8d37b

[TeknoJunky]

can you provide exact path/filenames, and maybe a screenshot of what you are seeing?

I can tell you that plex tries to match to musicbrainz, and sometimes match to the wrong artist(s) if not organized/tagged exactly.

[solitaryreign]

Plex cannot handle multiple artists, as easy as that. It only picks the first one listed in MB. I think there’s a request for that somewhere or at least it was discussed in the ID3-Tags thread.

[zzolo]

Thanks for the quick reply. I use Beets to tag and organize my music so it’s all tagged with MusicBrainz tags. Here’s some screenshots.

(Ignore the duplicate split album, I have since fixed that)

[zzolo]

Thanks for the quick reply. Yeah, I get that Plex doesn’t handle multiple artists for album, but it’s choosing the wrong name for a bunch of albums based on one split album.

[solitaryreign]

Do those files have any AlbumArtist tag set?

[TeknoJunky]

you should try moving that split album out of the alkaline trio folder into a new folder

alkaline trio - hot water music\2002 - alkaline trio - hot water music\tracks

https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/0fcf11ce-fba4-3573-8b80-5248e19df222

also, set the album artist to Alkaline Trio / Hot Water Music

[zzolo]

Thanks for the help. Yeah, they have correct/relevant Album Artists set. See screenshots.

[zzolo]

Thanks for the help. That split album is already in its own “Alkaline Trio _ Hot Water Music” folder and Album Artist is set (see screenshots in previous post).

[TeknoJunky]

does this release also show up under the hot water music artist in plex ?

[zzolo]

No, it doesn’t show up in Hot Water Music.

If you look at how Plex is matching, it looks like its finding a match where Alkaline Trio is the artist. Which sort of explains why it is grouped together with the other ones, but I am confused on why it chooses the split name for the artist group. Screenshot:

Honestly, I would be ok if it just picked the better artist name for the artist group.

[TeknoJunky]

yeah.

I think it just boils down to plex lack of support for multiple artists (for both album artists, and track artists).

I don’t think there is anything we can do about it on our end.

I tend to put my split ep’s as ‘various artists’.

In my ideal world, the album would show up equally in both artists lists, as the same release, with track artists populated.

[zzolo]

Thanks again. Yeah, I think there is something else going on then just not supporting multiple artists.

• Album 1 has Artist A -> Should create an entry for Artist A with Album 1 in it.
• Album 2 has “Artist A and Artist B” (as Album Artist) -> Should create an entry for “Artist A and Artist B” with an Album 2 in it

But, what is happening is that Plex is creating only an entry for “Artist A and Artist B” and putting Album 1 and Album 2 in it.

To me this is a bug, and not a limitation of handling multiple artists. Or maybe not a bug, but something I am missing about tagging and how Plex handles things.