Music: Use Artist tag rather Album Artist when sorting by Artist

Feature Suggestions
1

From various posts it seems Plex uses the Album Artist tag rather than the Artist tag when sorting music. This results in songs from compilation albums all being categorised under Various Artists rather than correctly under the Artist.

 

The above relates to viewing music by artist. I believe the same problem occurs when doing a search.

2

My first post, so sorry if this is in the wrong place or there’s a newer thread on the subject.

But PLEASE add an option so music matching is performed against the (Track) Artist instead of the Album Artist. I have a large, well-tagged music library and the lack of this feature is a real pain in Plex.

Silly Example:
*) Search on “Radiohead” will bring back all Radiohead albums.
*) But will not list the 2 tracks on “Now That’s What I Call Depressing Music #87”

If I click on “Radiohead” in music I want to see all albums they appear on
…and if I select a compilation album I was to see the Radiohead tracks on that album

Until then I’ll have to stick with MusicBee et al

3

Or even offer us both options: search/sort by track artist and search/sort by album artist?

4

I’d love both - album artist and artist. I’m in the process of fixing up metadata in my recently scanned library and the handling of compilations has confused me to no end.

5

I have to say I’d like to see this handled better also. The way that makes the most sense for me is to leave the “various artists” section as-is, but have an entry for any “v/a” album on each artist’s page contributing to that album. If you shuffle an artists’ songs, only their song from that “v/a” album should be included in the mix. But if you click the “v/a” album from an individual artist’s page, you should be shown all tracks from said album.

6

Agreed, would love the option for both!

7

would be a major step forward. A premium library worthy

8

FYI: not to start a discussion over here about what is the best software, but currently I am experimenting with EMBY (https://emby.media/). The same concept as PLEX, but with a very fast and efficient search AND searching in Artist, Albumartists, Persons, etc…

9

God this would be amazing…

10

This seems to be a huge hindrance when looking at the track view. While I really like having Album Artist be the default in the other views, and I often use Various Artists in “Album Artists” when it makes sense. This is confusing behavior when you go tracks and they appear as “Album Artist - Track TItle”

11

Hi,

please change the handling for the artists! It’s a great idea to implemant both options: search/sort by track artist and search/sort by album artist.

In my Opinion it is the important modification!

Have a nice day!

12

I’ve recently been regenerating my music library, so I can use Plex efficiently. The handling of VA (etc.) albums is strange. I agree that Plex should be using the track artist metadata over the album artist metadata. As a result, searching for an artist should show all songs/albums that the artist is featured in regardless of album artist. On a semi related note, Plex should decide how to handle tracks with multiple artists. Personally, I use a semi-colon to separate multiple artists on the same track. This should also bubble up into the previous statement about artist searches showing all tracks where the artist is listed.

13

Hi,

It would be great if this option was implemented. Both options would be the best but just sorting by artist already is a huge step forward!

14

If I look at this request in the main forum, I can not believe that this has not been implemented yet. Please, this would be awsome.

15

Agreed, would love the option for both

16

I definitely NEED to sort by Album Artist. That’s how I’ve organized by iTunes library and also want / need to sort my Plex music library. PLEASE!

17

This is truly a pain in the backside. I recently purchased a yearly pass just to have better control over my music than is offered by Kodi.

I really do NOT need to pull up a track list of my music only find that I have two thousand ‘artists’ all named Various Artist. There is no excuse for my television to display the artist’s name as ‘Various Artist’ when everyone KNOWS it is Bob Dylan.

I’ve spent the last week manually modifying individual files to reflect the correct artist name and now I discover if I ever rescan the file Plex will return it to Various Artist because there is no lock on that setting.

This problem seems to have existed for a long time. PLEASE spend a few minutes on the code so that compilation albums can reflect the correct Various Artist tags but individual tracks and artist lists reflect the correct artist.

18

Put another way, please have PLEX read/use the tag for “Artist” at the track level for purposes of:

  • Displaying the name of the Artist when playing tracks;
  • Searching for Tracks and/or Albums that a particular Artist appears on; and
  • Displaying Albums on which a particular Artist appears.
19

Hi Guys,
Seems this still isn’t working the plex library interprets “Album Artist” as the artist. This certainly doesn’t work on compilation albums or VA albums. Is this being looked at? would expect this would be a simple fix.

The forums seem to be full of people requesting this bug is fixed. Is anyone looking at this?

20

Bueller… bueller…