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When I list Music by Artist ‘Title’ (or name), I get multiple Various Artists listed, rather than just the one I expect. It lists a “Various Artists” for every single artist in every single album under the Various Artists folder. Yes, the metadata is correct.
If you check some of the albums with mp3tag does the “album artist” contain just the artists name or contributing artists also? Or does the “artist” contain some tracks with multiple artists while the “album artist” entry is blank? That will usually end up being tagged as “various artists”
Thanks Otto, but I don’t see a solution to my particular problem in that thread. I did find some “Various Artists” albums, randomly under a “Vivaldi” artist, which is closer to what that thread is talking about. (Though they are there for seemingly no real reason.) I think what I will do for now is remove the albums I think are causing issues in my “Various Artists” folder, and if it is sorted, attempt to re-add them one at a time.
The whole point is that embedded meta tags and the folder structure are connected. The thread describes how to handle that and what to avoid.
Failure to do so will cause issues like those you are dealing with.
I am confident in my folder structure and metadata.
It appears that the system renamed certain artists (like Bruce Springsteen) to Various Artists, (rather than adding a new Various Artists “group”) after a compilation album containing Springsteen songs was added to the Various Albums folder. I am renaming these back to what they should be after having removed what I think are the offending albums in ‘Various Artists’.
Plex is very, very fussy about music organization. A small oversight can cause this problem.
But it doesn’t need to be fussy about organization.
When a user chooses the option of “Prefer Local Metadata”, PMS should honor that, regardless of if it’s ‘incorrect’. Some people like to organize differently.
In that situation, PMS could have a queue of pending matches for each track, waiting for user approval/rejection.
There’s some very good (and relevant) information in this how-to. It was originally created in 2019 but was updated by the OP (@beckfield) as recently as April, this year.
Pay particular attention to the sections regarding mandatory tags and how they must be set.
It’s still important, for a couple of reasons, that music folders be laid out hierarchically. But there are tools which can help with this by reading the files’ metadata and doing the heavy lifting. In particular, it’s a good idea to use the hierarchical folder structure if local files are being used for covers, lyrics, etc…
Also be aware that a simple library scan and metadata refresh may not be sufficient to effect the changes made after updating tags or reorganizing folders; a Plex Dance of the affected items will still be necessary at times.
I’m not disagreeing with how it should be but history shows us we gotta work with the Plex we have.
