Better support for albums and tracks with multiple artists

[x1ao4]

@BurgundianPLEX

that only works if the artist name is included in the track name

No. In the picture I posted, Flo Milli is merely listed as the artist of the track and doesn’t appear in the track’s title, yet it can still be searched for. The metadata of this track of mine has been successfully matched. I’m not sure whether the metadata of your track has been successfully matched, nor do I know if it has any connection.

So what you’re actually asking for now is to generate independent entries for artists who don’t have albums with themselves listed as the album artist. You hope to be able to see all the songs of an artist through the artist entry, even if the artist is just a collaborating artist on other songs and doesn’t have any albums of their own (in your library).

This is a feature that many people hope Plex will add.

@elan

An interesting/unexpected discovery: Searching for “Tracks” by the artist’s name only works for artists who don’t have their own albums. That is to say, if an artist doesn’t have an independent entry in the media library, then you can search for “Tracks” using his name to get all his tracks. However, if an artist has his own album and an independent entry, searching for “Tracks” using his name won’t return any results.

I feel that this design doesn’t seem quite reasonable. If I want to search for the songs in which an artist with an independent entry has collaborated with other artists, I can’t use his name to search for “Tracks”, which seems to pose great difficulties in this scenario. Since the names of artists without their own albums can be used to search for “Tracks”, why can’t the names of artists with their own albums be used for the same purpose?

[BurgundianPLEX]

I just show you the screen capture of a search I made. I looked for tracks featuring the word “Bach”.

And yet, no result, although I have hundreds of Bach tracks (all perfectly tagged).

But as you said in the second part of your answer, that could be because i do have Bach albums so to speak.

[BurgundianPLEX]

In MusicBee, when you search for an artist who appears both as an album artist on some releases and only as a track artist on others, the app handles it very elegantly.

It will display all albums that include one or more tracks by that artist. However, when you click on a specific album, it will only show the tracks actually performed by the artist you searched for, hiding the rest.

This is a great feature — clean, focused, and user-friendly. A best practice worth imitating.

[elan]

@x1ao4

I feel that this design doesn’t seem quite reasonable

You need to at least add part of a track name, otherwise we found that returning tracks was just cluttering up the UI.

[x1ao4]

@elan

You need to at least add part of a track name,

When searching for tracks using the name of an artist who doesn’t have an entry, you don’t need to do this.

The thing is that currently there isn’t any page in Plex that can display all the songs of an artist. Right now, you can view all the albums of an artist, but there is no list that contains all of the artist’s songs. Therefore, in some cases, we may want to use the artist’s name to search for all of their songs, yet we don’t know the specific names of the tracks. However, we can’t do this now, unless the artist doesn’t have their own entry.

Perhaps you should do two things:

1. Create independent entries for collaborating artists who don’t have their own albums.
2. Add a section for all songs in the artist’s entry, allowing direct browsing of all the artist’s tracks.

Currently, we need to create a smart playlist on our own. By filtering the album artists, we can add all the songs of an artist to one list. However, this seems rather troublesome, and doing so will result in the loss of those tracks where the artist appears as a collaborating artist on other artists’ albums.

Moreover, for collaborating artists who don’t have independent entries, we can’t create playlists in this way because there is no function to filter by track artists in the filtering feature.

I know that we can play all the songs of an artist on the artist’s page, but we hope to have a page that can display all the songs of the artist.

In addition, regarding albums with multiple artists, in Plexamp, there is currently the following display method.

That is, if an album in the metadata database has multiple artists, even if we only include one artist in the album artist field when editing and organizing the media library, in Plexamp, this album will also be displayed on the page of another artist. This album will appear in a separate “Appears On” section. You should do the same thing for tracks so that the tracks where an artist collaborates with others will also appear in the entry of this artist, even if he is not the album artist.

And you should also apply this feature to the desktop version of Plex. Although I’m not sure if the music function will be removed from the desktop in the future. I prefer using Plex on the desktop rather than Plexamp.

[what4up]

Please support it, It’s been almost 10 years since the proposal, it’s time for a change!
The navidrome support for multi-album artists is just fine, and if the changes to the existing database structure are too difficult to carry out, I’d suggest that a separate project called “Plex Music Server” would be good as well, and that would take plex a big step forward!

[kek_tigra]

I’ve been shocked when I realized original post is September 2015! And imo it’s a must have feature for service like this

[mightydh]

@what4up

I’d suggest that a separate project called “Plex Music Server” would be good as well,

I’d be 100% in favor of removing music from plex media server and into a Plex Music Server running in parallel if that can finally get plex,inc to understand that there can be more than one artist per track. I’d even pay a bounty for this to happen.

Plexamp is that good - if the database changes are too challenging, just nuke it and code what should have happened a decade ago the right way.

[what4up]

Based on the usual update schedule for plex, we can expect this feature improvement to be realized in 10 years’ time.

[dobrienp]

By far my most wanted feature. I was curious if Navidrome supporting it now would bring discussion back to this topic. Please support more than one album artist in the same way they do it too would make the app 90% perfect for me. Unrelated but better support for the composer tag would be the last 10% for me.

[lalao1n]

They’ve basically said they are not doing this I guess. What a shame. Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo annoying to try to manage my library.

[gio]

how have they still not added this wtf, it’s such a basic feature

[kek_tigra]

Well, duuh, what do you want from software as cheap as $250?!

[bluesixstring]

I’d 100% be on board for a separate music service. I’m much less picky and have fewer requests for tv/movie stuff but my music collection gets referenced every day and some of the modern features that Plex is seemingly unable to incorporate without blowing up the whole system would be very valuable to me.

[saltedlolly]

Another vote for support for multiple artists. This would also improve the situation for audio books where there are two authors. I probably use Plex for audiobooks (with Prologue app) more than any other use case, even ahead o Movies and TV. I would really appreciate if some time and effort is put into improving support for music and audiobooks. We really need multiple artists, narrator support (uses ‘composer’ field), rich text and images in the description. (for including maps, supplemental images along with the book). We’ve been waiting for these things for years.

[mightydh]

Following up that I would:

1. be happy to help pay a bounty for plex,inc’s music database to understand that there can be more than one track per artist.

2. Float the idea again to completely nuke music from the current database and start anew. Divorce music from the current TV/Movie DB and set it up right the first time now that the current new plex experience can’t even play music anyways.

[x1ao4]

@x1ao4

That is, if an album in the metadata database has multiple artists, even if we only include one artist in the album artist field when editing and organizing the media library, in Plexamp, this album will also be displayed on the page of another artist. This album will appear in a separate “Appears On” section. You should do the same thing for tracks so that the tracks where an artist collaborates with others will also appear in the entry of this artist, even if he is not the album artist.

I just realized that I had completely misunderstood the purpose of the “Appears On” feature. This feature is actually not related to albums or tracks with multiple artists.

The actual function is:

If album X by artist A includes a track where artist B is listed as the track artist, then album X will appear in artist B’s “Appears On” section.

However, if album X by artist A includes a track with artist A feat. B as the track artist, this track will allow navigation to both artist A’s and artist B’s pages, but album X will not appear on artist B’s page.

In other words, the “Appears On” section only includes albums where the artist has contributed as a standalone track artist in another artist’s album. Feat-style tracks are not supported.

A typical use case is compilation albums by “Various Artists,” where each track has a different solo artist. In such albums, each track has only one artist, but the album artist is “Various Artists.” In this case, Plexamp will show the album on each individual artist’s page because they each have a standalone track on that album.

However, Plexamp is capable of recognizing tracks with multiple artists, such as those with the following formats:

• A feat. B
• A ft. B
• A with B
• A and B
• A & B
• A, B
• A / B
• A + B
• A featuring B

Since Plexamp can already identify multiple artists in these formats, it would be more logical for it to also show such albums in the “Appears On” section. That way, any album containing a track with the artist — even in multi-artist form — would be visible on the artist’s page. And this could be implemented using the current logic, without requiring any additional metadata.

[desileR]

+1 for this.

[aszazin_gmail_com]

Handling multiple album artists is a disaster.
Which also means: Plex is colliding with classical albums, which in most cases have multiple artists. Mostly at least one composer and at least one performer.

One wants to have the album appear on any of the individual names. Not on the combined name, creating a separate pseudo-combined-artist for each combination.

[Anon40003]

+9000 for this and 14 years of waiting..

I want to have an Album or Song show under both Artist1 and Artist2. Don’t force me to put under one or the other! Nowadays there are lots of Songs and Albums that are made by two artists. It would be nice to see this song under both Artist pages.