Can I Unmatch Artists and Keep Them Unmatched and Not Combined?

[SuperKevio]

Server Version#: 4.63.0
Player Version#:
Prefer Local Metadata is Checked for Library

I have a VERY large Beatles Collection, and I prefer it to be broken into two separate artists - The “Beatles (U.S.)” for the US albums and “The Beatles” for the standard UK and global release albums.

I have the files stored in folders as separate artists, “The Beatles,” and “The Beatles (U.S.)” and the artist and album artists tags are also marked appropriately. I have read other posts stating that if one item is wrong, they can be filed incorrectly, but there are no files in the wrong folders, they are kept completely separate and marked correctly.

In previous versions of the Plex Server, my albums displayed appropriately, but now they keep getting combined as one artist. I really want to keep them separate and everything that I’ve tried hasn’t worked permanently. I have unmatched the artists, but several days later they will be matched and combined again.

Also, while having the MusicBrainz information is nice for the majority of my library, it is painful to have my large Beatles library separated into categories. For example, while A Hard Day’s Night is technically a soundtrack album, I prefer to have it kept with the other albums, instead of in it’s own category. I understand that MusicBrainz is what does this, and that I have no local control over this, is this correct? So my solution is to unmatch the artist and then the categorizing goes away - which is absolutely fine. But once again, every few days it is matched automatically and everything gets categorized and my two separate Beatles libraries are combined.

Can someone help me with this? It is driving me absolutely crazy. Thank you in advance!

[power]

you need to change the “Album Artist” and “Artist” in the general info inside Plex, this is how I maintain “Various Artists” albums. I put “Various Artists” in Album Artist and then put the track artist under Artist. That way they appear in the Various Artists part of my library as one album.

Hope that makes sense? Looks like the below in practice.

[SuperKevio]

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I’m already doing this, and it works fine - temporarily. But Plex keeps changing them back every few days (I don’t know if it’s when I update the library or when there’s a server update, but they are fine for a bit and then Plex reassigns them). I have tried locking the artist, and that doesn’t help, because Plex reassigns the albums. It’s endlessly frustrating, and I suspect it’s some sort of conflict with MusicBrainz, thinking it’s smarter than me and knowing what I want. But if prefer local metadata is on, shouldn’t that overrule MusicBrainz?

[power]

if something else is editing the file after you’ve changed the tags inside plex will think it’s a different file. i know that when i drop my music into plex nothing else is touching it.