Scenario: ‘Album Artist’ specified in the ID tag is “Various Artists”. ‘Artist’ specified n the ID tag for the track is “Brahms”…
When looking at the catalog ‘By Artist’, “Brahms” is not there. Only “Various Artists”.
Surely there is a means to show the artist on the ‘By Artist’ page, and the complete album collection on the ‘By Album’ page?
Moreover, what about when there are multiple artists specified for one track (i.e, “Brahms; Maestoso; Tomsic”)? Could we get them ALL listed separately when viewing ‘By Artist’, or perhaps be able to specify which ones to list?
That seems straightforward enough, right? Currently I cannot see my ‘Various Artists’ albums as a complete collection (By Album) – and – ALL of the artists involved (By Artist).
Getting this fixed would be a huge plus.
On a closely related topic, what is odd too, is that the ‘Track Artist’ shows up in the tab for the media server web page in my browser, but ‘Track Artist’ doesn’t show on my Chromecast.
A solution for the ‘not showing the track artist’ issue could be to show it only if the artists for the track doesn’t match the Album Artist. then display the track artist. I guess what this boils down to is to always display the track artist when a selection is playing.
I do have many compilations, like Bravo Hits, Fetenhits, Future Trance … you name them.
Since days I try to figure out what would be the best way to rename all Tags to get the
Artist Name
Track Name
shown also within compilations and be able to search for them properly.
Example:
Artist Name: Fury in the Slaughterhouse
Track Name: Time To Wonder
Album: Fetenhits - The Real Classics 1
Some have suggested in this forum to use the Album Artist to add the Compilation name: Fetenhits.
Now all music is sorted not as Various Artist anymore but as Fetenhits,
Well … now I can search for Fetenhits but still not for the Artist
On the Web-Access at least I can see Fury in the Slaughterhouse in the list, but when I search,
I only see the Artist Fetenhits with the Title: Time To Wonder.
On my Plex for Android, I even don’t see the Artist in List when I go to Fetenhits.
After searching the Net, I would suggest the following:
iTunes is using a Tag which is called: Compilation
ITunes actually only check if this field is set to 1 and automatically change an Album to a compilation when the Album Name is the same.
This field is actually not used anywhere else, so why not using this field to add the Compilation name.
I checked it with iTunes. as long as the field is not empty, it is sorted as a compilation.
Album Artist: empty -> which would be interpreted as Various Artist, but check Compilation!
Track Name: Time To Wonder
Album: Fetenhits - The Real Classics 1
Compilation: Fetenhits
Now it could be sorted in Artist View under Fury in the Slaughterhouse (where it belongs to!!)
It would also be visible Albums under Fetenhits Compilations > Fetenhits the Real Classics 1
And to make it really complete, an additional Tab which is called Compilations would be great.
If that would be implemented, it would be way more visible and a great improvement!
I am seriously looking forward to this!
Best regards, Kevvv
Er, cough, surely “Brahms” is referring to Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) the composer. It’s unlikely that you would have any music tracks where he is credited as a performing artist? He died before the advent of the player piano, so he couldn’t have recorded anything…
That’s not to say that I don’t agree with your basic point; Plex is pretty useless when it comes to dealing with musical metadata. As well as sorting out distinguishing between track artists, album artists, it would be really nice if Plex could also realise that there are such entities as composers as well…
I’d rename the drop down selection from “Artist” to “Album Artist” and create another item called “Contributing Artist”. Then parse the Contributing Artst tag which would pickup things like Tony Bennett Duets - The Good Life and place a link in both Tony Bennett and Billy Joel.
I do have many compilations, like Bravo Hits, Fetenhits, Future Trance … you name them.
Since days I try to figure out what would be the best way to rename all Tags to get the
Artist Name
Track Name
shown also within compilations and be able to search for them properly.
Example:
Artist Name: Fury in the Slaughterhouse
Track Name: Time To Wonder
Album: Fetenhits - The Real Classics 1
Some have suggested in this forum to use the Album Artist to add the Compilation name: Fetenhits.
Now all music is sorted not as Various Artist anymore but as Fetenhits,
Well … now I can search for Fetenhits but still not for the Artist
On the Web-Access at least I can see Fury in the Slaughterhouse in the list, but when I search,
I only see the Artist Fetenhits with the Title: Time To Wonder.
On my Plex for Android, I even don’t see the Artist in List when I go to Fetenhits.
After searching the Net, I would suggest the following:
iTunes is using a Tag which is called: Compilation
ITunes actually only check if this field is set to 1 and automatically change an Album to a compilation when the Album Name is the same.
This field is actually not used anywhere else, so why not using this field to add the Compilation name.
I checked it with iTunes. as long as the field is not empty, it is sorted as a compilation.
Album Artist: empty → which would be interpreted as Various Artist, but check Compilation!
Track Name: Time To Wonder
Album: Fetenhits - The Real Classics 1
Compilation: Fetenhits
Now it could be sorted in Artist View under Fury in the Slaughterhouse (where it belongs to!!)
It would also be visible Albums under Fetenhits Compilations > Fetenhits the Real Classics 1
And to make it really complete, an additional Tab which is called Compilations would be great.
If that would be implemented, it would be way more visible and a great improvement!
I am seriously looking forward to this!
Best regards, Kevvv
Need to bump this thread. Plex is an amazing service but the way it handles compilation albums is disaster. There has to be an update to improve this aspect of our collection. I love this solution.
There’s no need to use special, non-standard tags to solve this issue. As mentioned earlier, there is an existing request to more thoroughly support the existing standards for id3 tags, which, if implemented, would do the job.
The new Quick Search, incomplete as it is, shows signs of improvement. The dropdown will find the artist for a track within a “Various Artists” album. When the new Search is finally rolled out in its complete form, this should be greatly improved, though it still doesn’t appear to support the Composer tags.
I agree with beckfield’s post above. Plex should not be using special, non-standard tags to solve this issue. And if it does do this, then that’s one more reason for me to drop my use of Plex. I look for interoperability in the tools I use, not to paint myself into a corner.
Well, the Search does what it needed to in this regard. Now all we need is to see the Artist page list compilation albums containing tracks by the artist.
Echoing support for the above - better id3 tag functionality! I don’t like the way that ALBUM artists are listed as the Artist. When flipping through my music collection, by artist, I want to see the TRACK artist, not the album artist. For example, the Treasure Planet Soundtrack. When I look at my collection the only artist listed is James Newton Howard. BUT there are tracks in that album by other artists, such as BBMak and John Rzeznik. I’d like to know which artists I have in my collection and be able to search by them, please! If I have tracks by BBMak I’d like BBMak to show up as an artist.
Yep, I just came here to ask for the same thing as @Kevvv77. I was playing a soundtrack in the web player, clicked on the artist name hoping to play more music from that artist, and was instead taken to the “Various Artists” page… So, I tried it the other way, found the artist’s actual page and noticed that it didn’t include their songs from the soundtrack.
You’ve literally got the Artist info sitting right there, I can see it in the song info. Yet when I go look for an Artist, it can’t include music from a compilation album?
Seriously, why has this been an outstanding feature request for FIVE YEARS?
Yeah it’s annoying, this handling of track artists as a non-indexed field in the database was a mistake made ten years ago in the original design and it’s hard to set things right at this stage.
I can understand that the Plex devs aren’t too keen to fix this, since it’s a lot of coding: you need to change the scanner, the database structure, the API, the Web UI, and all the clients, it basically breaks backward compatibility completely.
But if you want to show compilation tracks, or other roles like composer/producer/remixer/conductor/etc you’ll have to bite the bullet at some point.
I hope Plex will restructure the database with a major version bump (PMS 2.0?), then you can make clear to the users that all their clients need to be updated too.
