But iTunes ‘Compilation’ flag does not differentiate between a ‘Various Artists’ album and a compilation of one particular artists’ music.
It also puts all compilations into the Artists list under the name ‘Compilations’ which quite frankly is even less of a real artist than ‘Various Artists’ and just as easily confused if an actual artist/band took the name ‘Compilations’.
Does MusicBrainz not use ‘Various Artist’ to denote such a compilation?
Neither approach is perfect and there are flaws easy to see in both approaches.
I previously suggested that Plex should allow the user to configure any strings they want to be used to identify a Various Artists/Compilation album. That would allow the user to ensure that the identifying string was readable and understandable to them (in whatever language they prefer) and also could be chosen to ensure NO possible confusion with any actual artist name of any music they have.
Any suggestion that such compilations, grouped under whatever actual heading should not appear in the Artists list because it’s not a real artist, is just nitpicking. It HAS to be listed somewhere so users can access that music and within the Artists list is the most logical place to list it since it IS the AlbumArtist and hence should appear in the list of AlbumArtists.
Another of my suggestions is for Plex to provide 2 options for viewing by artist. So there’d be an option to view by ‘Album Artist’ and another to view by ‘Track Artist’. The former would include entries for any strings configured by the user to represent ‘Various Artists’, whereas the latter would not, as every track artist would be listed.
With those 2 changes, it seems Plex would be able to accommodate all requirements for this facet of music management as I’ve seen requested on the forum.
