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Until recently, music locally tagged in iTunes as a compilation would be automatically recognised as such by Plex once uploaded to my NAS. Since a couple of weeks or so, this procedure does however no longer work. Unless I manually add “Various artists” to each, single track, Plex does no longer recognise them as belonging to a compilation.
Is there any way around this change? I hope you don’t expect me to manually change each of the hundreds of tracks. Frankly speaking, I have better things to do.
I don’t think I’m getting this exact error, but I have noticed that “Various Artists” no longer appears when displaying the list of artists. I’m sure it used to until recently. Also if you display albums and sort by album artist, it no longer shows there either. To view all VA albums, I need to find one, then click on Various Artists. Not sure if this is related to your issue though.
Both issues might be related. There seems to be a recent-ish change in how Plex recognises and handles compilations. I wish someone could point to a solution, though. Re-tagging every single track of every compilation individually is the stuff nightmares are made of.
The name which is put into the tags as “Album Artist” must be the same in all tracks of one album.
(caution: “Album Artist” is not the same as “Artist”)
There must be track number meta tags.
The disc number (for multi disc releases) does not belong into the Album Title metatag.
As for storing these albums: all albums which are stored inside the same Artist folder must use the same content in their Album Artist meta tags.
All of these changes can be performed semi-automatically on a large number of files at once if you use the right meta tagger software.
For Windows+Mac, I usually recommend mp3tag. It can set both meta tags and rename and re-organise the files as necessary.
Musicbrainz Picard can do the same, but requires a bit more effort if you want to customize the results. https://picard.musicbrainz.org/
[quote="OttoKerner]
The “Compilation” flag from iTunes is not supported in Plex. It never was.[/quote]
This doesn’t make sense. If it wasn’t supported, I would not have tagged my albums for years using that flag. My problem would not exist, if it were not because for years I could continue using iTunes’ compilation tag without any problem.
I will try mp3tag, hoping it can work (remotely) with libraries on a NAS. Thank you for the suggestion.
To make it complete: a large number of compilations is also misattributed to some random artist in my library. I thought matching them, one by one, using Plex would be the easiest fix for that. Alas, that just repeats the misattribution. For every entry I fix manually, entering ‘Various Artists’ in the ‘Album Artist’ tag, the album art and release date immediately disappears. What is happening here? This is maddening.
There comes the above mentioned hard rule into play:
Depending on whether you have disabled “Prefer local meta tags”, this behaviour can be particularly confusing if the Album Artist of that album on Musibrainz.org is different from what you are expecting.
Thank you for pointing that out. The compilations where this problem produces itself are all located in a folder “Various Artists”. Even when adding the same value to the “Album Artist” meta tag, the misattributions continue.
I fail to understand why this is happening now. I have been using Plex for years and typically update as soon as new releases appear. Never encountered anything similar. I am not alone with the issue either.
I have the preference for local meta tags enabled. Much of my collection is rather obscure; in many cases matching would not work. That’s why I tagged everything carefully in iTunes before sending it to the NAS.
You must absolutely ensure that all files of all albums which are stored inside the Music/Various Artists folder are tagged with Album Artist “Various Artists”.
If there is even just one single track with a deviant Album Artist, it can “poison” the whole folder.
Well, even if did that – manually adding for every compilation the meta tag – I lose all album art and have to look up and re-enter the release date for each and every compilation. I understand what you’re pointing at. But this is hardly a solution.
Sounds like you are using the wrong software.
None of the tools I’ve used requires me to re-enter all data if I just want to add or modify a single tag.
Plus, you can treat all files inside a folder at the same time.
The only restriction is the speed of the media storage, how fast it can read and write back the files.
Perhaps. Mp3tagger chokes on remote access to my NAs, quite understandably so. Would you have any suggestions for mp3tagging software that can run on a NAS directly?
As a test, how about creating a completely new folder on the NAS, then adding it to a new music library?
Then add a few albums which you already have verified to have complete and accurate meta tags.
See if the erratic behaviour occurs on there as well.
