Artist pages being merged destructively based on album match selections

[thlayli_x]

This one was hard to identify, but I think I understand enough about the problem to explain it. Sorry for the length, it’s necessary.

Basically, when a compilation that’s in an album artist folder (e.g. /music/artist/compilation) rather than in the various artists folder (e.g. /music/various artists/compilation) is matched to metadata that lists it as being by various artists, something bad happens.

It seems to merge the artist db entry with the Various Artists artist using the album artist name as the new name. When it does this to many items, you end up with a stack of different artists merged into one entry which combines all their photos but ends up with one random artist name and metadata.

This is verifiable by seeing the “Split Apart” menu item in what should be “Various Artists” but is now something like “Barbara Streisand” (see example issue below). The big problem is that when you split it apart, all the album artist pages that were merged into Various Artists when you matched the compilation albums (or I suppose matched something accidentally to a VA album entry) get recreated empty. None of the uploaded images, bios, or tags are restored.

The reason this is such a big deal to me is that I tend to put the record label into the album artist field so I can see related compilations. I know this is bad, but it always worked ok. The compilations wouldn’t match and I wouldn’t match them manually. I’d set a record label image and a bio for the record label and list artists that appear on the compilations in the similar artists field. With the new matching system I matched a lot of albums in order to get them out of “Unmatched” (and maybe get a review) but didn’t realize it was doing this. Lost about 20 record label “artist” pages before I Noticed.

I’m aware this issue is exacerbated by my weird usage. I’m pretty sure that this glitch will also affect people who aren’t deliberately putting record labels into the artist field. Can something be done to prevent the destructive auto-merge of artist pages based on match selections? Even a warning would be nice.

Example/related issue: All my 'various artists" appear as "Barbara Streisand

Server Version#: 1.18.0.1846
Player Version#: 4.8.3

[thlayli_x]

I’m not sure it’s even that simple. Here are some screenshots showing what happens.

I start with one merged artist. I didn’t ask for the merge it happened somehow through album matching. My 3D Vision Recordings album appears under Disney, and even had the Artist field when I edit the album as Disney. When I split it I get two matches for a search on Disney, but one is really my 3D Vision artist with all its information replaced with DIsney. AFAIK there’s no way to get back the photo, bio, country, etc. from the 3D Vision artist page.

[thlayli_x]

Reading the guide to the new metadata system again, I know the official answer is going to be “stop tagging your various artists albums incorrectly.”

I probably will just go back to putting everything in Various Artists, but I’ll lose the ability to view sets of compilations from the same record label. It should really be done at the client level, displaying the record label instead of various artists if it exists.