I have discussed this elsewhere as part of a different thread, but I’m hoping for further clarification and/or confirmation regarding some outstanding issues.
In order for Plex to make use of the Album Artist tags, does EVERY track need to have it filled in? iTunes uses a kind of ‘priority’ system so that the Album Artist is used if it exists, otherwise the (track) Artist is used instead. In this way, duplicate data in the 2 tags does not need to be stored. As a former database designer I hate the idea of duplicate data, but will I have to modify all my existing music to ensure the Album Artist tag is always complete, prior to ‘importing’ it into PMS? I can write a script to do it, but I’d rather not have to do all that unless it’s absolutely necessary. Is it?
The other biggie is the ‘Sort’ tags. Like for Album Artist, iTunes uses a priority scheme. If a Sort version of a tag exists, that is used for sorting when in a list, otherwise the basic tag is used. So e.g. if the Artist tag is Eric CLAPTON and the Sort Artist tag is CLAPTON•Eric. this will sort under C. If the Artist is FLEETWOOD MAC and the Sort Artist tag empty, it will sort under F. In this case the Sort Artist tag does not need to wastefully store FLEETWOOD MAC as leaving it empty means that the Artist tag will be used for sorting.
The Album/Album Artist/Artist/Composer Sort tags are crucially important for correct sorting of music data. The more you have the more important this becomes. If you only have 25 tracks it doesn’t really matter, but with 25,000 tracks this becomes essential to ensure the data is presented in the way you want and can understand and make use of. I cannot overestimate the importance of sorting when it comes to data presentation, but sadly most developers haven’t got a clue. I need to find out how much of a clue the Plex developers have.
So, what Sort tags does Plex use and if it doesn’t include the ones I mention above and anyone from Plex reads this, then please ensure correct sorting is incorporated immediately, if not sooner.
But a little more seriously, what Sort tags does Plex honour and must they all be filled in (like Album Artist?) or is Plex intelligent enough to prioritise like iTunes so we don’t have to waste the time and storage of duplicating tag data in its Sort version?
