My music collection are allmost all compilation albums (Various Artists albums). In the artist list I only see the artists who have there own album in my library (a few in my case) and the "Various Artists" item where all the VA albums are linked to.
I want to have a list of all artists based on the artists by track on every various album and still be able to view the VA album containing with all the tracks.
What can I do to reach this situation with the default Plex Music Scanner? I played with the music tags but dudn't find a solution.
Nobody? At this moment it isn't possible to search for an artist on a "Various Artists" compilation album :angry: I think this search function should be a very basic option for media management software like Plex...
Bernie, sorry to see you have had no responses to this. I am a few months behind you (i.e., now) just setting up my digital music library, and am plowing through a similar issue. I actually converted my old Various Artists' file directory in my legacy iTunes library into the 'Compilations' file directory on my PLEX Linux server for all compilations I have (e.g., tribute albums, movie soundtracks, etc). But when PLEX Server did a scan on the 'Compilations', it seems it got some of it right and some of it went Barney. I'm trying to figure out a) how PLEX goes about categorizing compilations and b) what makes PLEX happier: organizing compilations under a 'Compilations' folder or under a 'Various Artists' folder. Did you have any luck on your end? Any insights since your original December post that you can share?
I would also like to see when you filter on a genre that it also shows matching artists that are in compilation albums. Right now it shows your matching artists that are the only artist on an album. This post does a good job of explaining how compilations are handled and how Plex seems to prefer the Album Artist
Thx for the link. I still hope that this feature will be implemented in Plex. It's a must for a media manager to view all your artists and albums even if they are on compilations.
I’ve used a windows program called Tag&Rename, which I’ve instructed to simply copy the Artist field to the Album Artist field for all files in the library.
It’s insane that we have to go through this.
Changing the code in Plex to simply disregard this Album Artist tag is like a 30 second job.
We’re always treated like this with proprietary software and we never get an explanation.
I, too, would like to be able to search tracks of compilation albums using the track artist.
Considering this thread started two years ago, I’d like to know if this will be implemented.
It currently is the only reason I haven’t purchased a lifetime Plex Pass yet
I’m sort of the opposite. I don’t want albums in the “various artists” category. I want the compilation to be listed as its own artist. Sometimes it works with editing the ID3 tags, sometimes not. But the reverse might work for you. The “artist name” of the compilation would be “Various Artists” and each song would lead with the name of the artist (or follow). Make sure the ID3 tag naming refers to the Artist Name as one of the choices, and then each artist should be listed separately in the catalog. I use a Mac and use a freeware program called Kid3 to work with the tags . . .
i also would like or it’s a must for me to find artists inside comilation and i also want them to be listed in artists. all other media servers like DS audio does here a much better job. i tried it with a basic music libary and the premium and both are not very usefull.
My compilation folders are the only ones that don’t seem to be able to sort correctly. Plex appears to take the first artist, and in some cases the track number as the artist name for the entire album, which is weird because all the ID3 tags are correct with artist and album artist, so not sure how to get Plex to see those fields correctly. I rarely listen to my VA collections anymore as I’ve picked the artists I like out of them and bought their albums, but I’d rather not delete those folders from the plex library just because they are problem-some.
I’m kind of at the converse of this issue, probably similar to Motoman. I tend to browse the music collection by artist but want to avoid the artist listing explosion that occurs when contributing artists are indexed in the Artists view.
I don’t want to strip out the Contributing Artists info with a ID3 tag editor, just want to constrain the Artists view to the primary artist. E.g. a band like Delerium has a contributing artist for literally EVERY track. Dozens of albums and EPs, potentially 100+ contributing artists with a track or two each cluttering up my preferred view. I might want to see what else I have in my library by a particular contributing artist via a tag in the album view (the way the movie listings work), but I don’t want them all to show up in the root Artists view.
I’ve run into the V.A. issue also, even after importing just a small subset of the music library, and I can see how useful (from one perspective) and irritating (from an OCD/bitbucket/bottomless-unorganizable-catch-all perspective) it can be.
So, has anyone found a plugin for Plex that offers more granular control in one direction or another? I understand that one agent can’t please all masters, and that the default one can’t handle EVERYONE’S preferred way to display information. But I’d be grateful for some pointers.
