New music Metadata agent doesn't like compilation albums or albums by multiple artists

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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121

You seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing with regard to the purpose of compilations. Disagreeing with me then stating they’re for the exact same reasons as I did. :confused:

My point about an album is that it’s simply a container of tracks, whether that be 1 or a hundred (or more). Logically it’s all the same thing.

One thing about which I am ADAMANT is I will NOT have all artists from Various Artist type albums listed in the main Artists list. It’s bad enough scrolling through 500 artists, but that becomes thousands otherwise and unusable. There is simply no need to list every artist for whom I might have 1 or maybe 2 tracks from obscure Various Artist type albums. I don’t think I am alone in this desire. In fact I thought you had already opined that you also did want to see all these in the Artists list.

You were also already asking that Plex respect the Compilation tag and did not use the string ‘Various Artist’ in that way as it did not allow for other languages. All of which would require code changes within Plex. So no different from my request. Just that what I have suggested is first of all relatively simple for them to do and it would deal with everyone’s different requirements for this aspect of music Library organisation. So small pain for HUGE gain.

Or I can just put all my singles under one made up album that would get grouped and listed under Various Artists. Not ideal as I then lose any reference to the album/EP/single that track may have come from. But just a minor irritation and then it all works ok with Plex’s current code and that’s certainly easier than expecting them to change it.

But now I have to go and swap CPUs in my (currently disabled) Mac Pro…

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album artist = a logical grouping of tracks in a related album, used to distinguish albums of the same name. (think ‘greatest hits’)

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whether the album artist is specifically ‘various artists’ (or some variation thereof) should have no bearing whatsover, and the same for the compilation tag.

123

I have to correct my earlier comment that iTunes is a good tagger. I have recently discovered some serious flaws that have created and are creating a huge amount of work.

I have always used iTunes to organise my music. It imports well, it adds the basic tags and allows me to set up the metadata to exactly suit my requirements (even when those change to suit Plex) and it plays the music too. I then link Plex into the iTunes curated music on the server and Plex works too. But…

I recently noticed some oddities that I traced to missing metadata and looking into it further I could see that thousands of tracks with full and complete metadata in iTunes were missing several tags’ data in the files. Further testing reveals that iTunes is failing to update the files. So changes made in iTunes all look correct, but the files are not updated and with a lot of changes having been made to suit Plex I can see that many thousands of tracks, despite looking as required in iTunes have not had the files updated.

I have not been able to determine why some do get updated and some do not. It appears iTunes has more of a problem with MP3 than AAC and ID3v2.3 is better than ID3v2.4, but it’s not 100% and the biggest problem is that it fails silently. So I have no idea what has been updated and what has not.

The upshot of this is I can no longer rely on iTunes to reliably tag my files. For so many years it has worked perfectly and I’ve no idea when it started screwing up. maybe Music in Catalina is better, but I’m unlikely to trust Apple’s programming skills again when such failures cause such an immense amount of work.

So, whatever we decide with regard to Various Artists and/or compilations, don’t use iTunes to do it.

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Yes I believe sometimes the iTunes application doesn’t get write permissions from the macOS app sandbox and would fail silently. Annoying, although I haven’t seen it happen recently anymore so it might already be fixed?

But I can confirm after some more testing that tagging AA with “Various Artists” (or anything similar in other languages) makes compilation tracks not get listed under the Artist anymore, which they do when AA is empty.

However, there has been a remarkable development: I just created a new music library in Plex, and most of the quirks I’ve been so annoyed with over the past few months have been (silently) fixed.

  • Album artist empty? Works, plex fills in V/A by itself in the database, with pretty much every compilation i have
  • No track numbers? Doesn’t get fragmented into 1-track albums anymore
  • Adding new compilation after the initial scan? No longer get matched with a random artist.
  • track artists are now included in search, both in Web and PlexAmp

Thank you plex devs!

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125

this is actually one of my annoyances…

tracks from compilations SHOULD be listed under the artist in a designated ‘compilations’ section that lists and links all tracks (by that particular artist) to the applicable compilation album.

under artist:

  • popular tracks
  • albums
  • singles (tracks with no album)
  • compilations (only tracks by this artist, sorted and linked by compilation album)

plex artists should look very similar (if not exactly the same) as the artist page at musicbrainz (they are using MBz data after all).

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or even better example abba

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126

The problem I am seeing with iTunes not writing tags to files is nothing to do with file permissions. They are all set appropriately, i.e. basically the same and some files get updated and some do not. I have even seen the file modification date get changed even though the tag data is not written to the file. Not only that, but the entire file system and permissions of all the files has not changed from when iTunes worked correctly to now when it often does not. The only change is iTunes, ergo, the problem is with iTunes.

I am now using Yate to tag files and not only is it very powerful in what it can do, but when you save the files, 100% of the tags are saved, every time. I am not associated with the software in any way, just saying that in my opinion it’s great and it solves my problem.

As regards Plex, I agree, there have been some quiet updates and big improvements, so while it may still not do 100% of what I want, it looks like it now does everything that I need. So once I’ve sorted iTunes’ **** up and synchronised iTunes library data to the actual files (using Yate of course), I will set up a full Music Library in Plex and hopefully all will be good.

127

While good improvements, I don’t approve of silent changes without changelogs. :upside_down_face:

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128

What is clear is that many users have very specific needs and wants and it would be hard for any one piece of software to satisfy all. But not impossible.

Primarily, Plex needs to ensure it has correctly designed its database structure and by having a true Album record with tracks attached is the right way to do it. After that, it’s just down to the following:-

  1. Import all the required data
  2. Display that data, as required

They need to carefully consider 1. but once all the necessary data is being stored, then everything else is down to 2.

If data is missing, there’s nothing to be done about that, so Plex needs to make sure it’s getting everything necessary. Currently, AFAICS it seems to have most, but it really should import the Compilation setting, even if not used immediately. It should be in the Album record.

So, once the data is available, it is relatively easy to provide configuration options to suit individual users. Form what is obvious on this forum, many users have pretty unique requirements, but with good UI design, almost everything should be achievable, once they have the data to work with.

TeknoJunky wants an Artist’s music to include their tracks on Various Artists compilations, as indeed iTunes displays, although without the clear distinction from regular albums (not shown by iTunes). But currently, Plex does not seem to group them at all. So viewing ‘Eric Clapton’ shows me his Albums (that I have), but none of the tracks of his that I have on other compilations. With the data Plex currently stores, this would be trivial to retrieve from the database, although a fair bit more work to display. Even more when that really should be an option, so a user can choose whether they want to see that or not. While I (and TeknoJunky at least) would like to see that, I am sure there are others who would hate such a display. This is where configurable options are required, to allow the users to better configure Plex to their requirements. However, it does all hinge on Plex importing all the required data.

They’re not there yet, but it looks to me like they are getting there.

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I don’t really see how it would be very complicated to display. Just having one section for the albums and another one below labeled “featured on” and list those albums there would go a long way, and Plex already have the necessary data to do this.

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130

Programming a new way to display the data would not be trivial, but agreed, they already have the data is group and sort it in that way.

But I repeat, it should be an OPTION that users can choose or not.

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Yes, options are good, although I wonder how many people there are who specifically want to see an artist’s albums listed, but their compilation tracks kept invisible? I guess we leave that up to the devs to find out. An option “don’t display Artists with only compilation tracks in the Artist list” would probably get my vote.

If Plex would make these Artist views capable of showing more than just their whole albums, the door would be open to show other roles, like the tracks where they are composer, producer or lyricist (all of which are in the MusicBrainz db). But that’s more for the other (also very heated :slight_smile: ) “please support more metadata fields” topic.

As far as my remaining wishlist re: compilations go, storing year and genre per track instead of per album is the biggest. At the moment, an album with various tracks ranging from say 1975-1995 all get stored in the database as 1995. For an album with say 10 tracks with 10 genres, only the first two genres get stored for the album, and applied to all tracks. With PlexAmp now doing things like “genre radio” and “decade radio”, you run into some issues there.

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Plex should store both Year and Genre for BOTH Track and Album since neither will necessarily be the same.

I use a Sort Album tag of ‘YYYY.MM·AlbumTitle’ to store the album release year and month. This means that any listing of an Artist’s albums when sorted alphabetically will be in chronological order (providing the app correctly uses the Sort Album tag, which Plex does and as of course does iTunes). This allows me to maintain an Album Release Date that does not then rely on any track’s release date which is logically correct as they are not necessarily the same.

This is a better sort than e.g. Plex or iTunes’ own sort by Artist by Date as they have to guess at the actual year to use and then have no way to correctly distinguish between 2 Albums released in the same year. My system allows for that. Admittedly it would fail for 2 Albums released in the same month, but I have never come across that and in any case, my scheme could be simply extended to include the day (and the time if you’re that concerned).

I do not do this for Various Artists Albums however as sorted by their Release Date makes no sense for me and plain Alpha sorting is best. But again, it could be done by anyone who wants it.

It does however mean I cannot view any list of (non VA) Albums sorted truly alphabetically, but that’s no problem for me as I NEVER, EVER want to see that. Makes no sense at all and might as well be random for all I care.

Best of all, this gives ME control of how Albums are sorted.

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You’re completely right, album release year and track years are not necessarily the same. There’s definitely a personal preference - a compilation of old tracks from 1980-1985 but released in 2015, would you want to see that in your album list for the artist as a 2015 release, or somewhere in the middle between the older albums from the 80s?

I agree, sorting Various Artists compilations by release date doesn’t make much sense if the tracks on it are not all from that same year. Sorted alphabetically by title is better as you say, this at least groups compilation series well together. Another useful sorting is by the original (track) dates, you’ll get get a rough grouping by era, ie 1920s Jazz compilations first, then 1940s big band compilations, into 1950s rock 'n roll towards 70’s disco, 90s’s house etc.

The id3v2.4 standard in principle provides for all of these options: it can store, for each individual track, release date, original release date and recording date (all as year only, or yyyy-mm-dd dates). MP4 does not have a tag for it, unfortunately.

The MusicBrainz database (which is probably what Plex devs are more looking to for their metadata) also has track-level info, take for example “Bohemian Rhapsody” . As Plex has already matched the ID anyway, it’s fairly trivial to query the MB database and store the lowest date for the track as the original release year (used for sorting, smart playlists etc). Similarly, MusicBrainz stores genre info by track too, the metadata is all there for the taking.

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Wondering the same!

I’ve thought about working around this by just grouping some of these to the major artist that makes sense for me (changing albumartist from Bob Dylan and the Band to just Bob Dylan and keeping the indivdual artist tag to Bob Dylan and the Band), but if I ever stopped using Plex for my music library, then I’d want to essentially undo this as most other music players can handle it.

I understand why this is a tough issue to handle, but it’s annoying nonetheless.

135

I would say that what you suggest for the Bob Dylan albums is exactly the correct way to do it. It is important to ignore what you may think ‘Artist’ and ‘AlbumArtist’ mean. In reality, the AlbumArtist is just the name under which you want that music grouped in Plex (and iTunes) and the Artist is only required if it differs from the AlbumArtist. I have found this works perfectly in iTunes and in Plex.

Multiple entries in the AlbumArtist tag is an issue and as has been pointed out, Plex will simply use the first one, unless it can find a match for all of them together (as it seems to be able to do with e.g. Eric Clapton and BB King). iTunes simply uses whatever you entered as it doesn’t try to ‘match’ with any on-line database.

This is not really Plex’s fault as the tags were never designed in the first place to carry multiple entries. However there is now a standardised way to include multiple entries in e.g. Artist and/or AlbumArtist tags, by using NULL as a separator. But neither Plex nor iTunes support this yet.

I would LOVE for Plex to be able to make use of this standardised method of incorporating multiple artists. It needs to parse those tags on import and link that album to each of the specified artists. So e.g. that same album would be visible and accessible under Eric Clapton AND under BB King. That to me is the only way it makes sense with multiple artists. Any such media should be accessible under each of the artists specified in that way in the tag.

I do believe that Plex is now very good with importing and playing music and if you abide by the rules (there HAS to be rules) it seems to work perfectly. But, it would be icing on the cake if they would update it to work with what is now a standardised way of including multiple entries within some tags, like Artist, AlbumArtist and Genre.

Does Plex make use of ‘Musician Credits’, or ‘Involved People’? Would be good if it respected those too, with their multiple entry capability.

IMO this is top priority to get PMS working better, rather than spending (wasting IMO) time developing new phone players with fancy graphics and gizmos. Those can come later once the server is 100% what everyone needs.

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Right! It only somewhat matters for me because of how I use these tags to help organize music outside of Plex. Directories use albumartist and track names contain the artist tag. Again, it doesn’t matter, it just makes it easier.

And where does it stop?! :stuck_out_tongue:

I can safely have albums by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in Plex and matched as such. So, if I add a Tom Petty solo album, do I keep it separate or change the former to sort with the latter?

These are the things that keep me up at night. :laughing:

Agreed!

Plexamp is pretty great, so no complaints from me about it’s development!

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Well I’m not sure it keeps me up at night, but since working on music industry databases years ago, I have put a lot of thought into how best to make iTunes work for me and now, how to integrate that with Plex.

In the case you mention, I use ‘Tom PETTY’ for Album Artist. ‘PETTY•Tom’ for SortAlbumArtist and whatever is appropriate for the Artist. So in some cases that will be ‘Tom PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS’ as Artist and ‘PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS•Tom’ as SortArtist, but in others they will be blank, meaning it’s the same as the AlbumArtist. No need to store it twice as that always makes original entry and any later updating more work. Golden rule of database design - don’t duplicate data. In any case, I rely on what is specified on the album cover as to the artist for each track. Some artists it has varied over time the name they use on an Album. Not sure about Tom Petty, but an album could be just by Tom Petty, but others might be …& The Heartbreakers. I prefer to keep them together, so in such cases I use the name of the actual artist alone as the AlbumArtist because that’s shorter and easier to spot in the list.

I use upper case to denote where to sort and have a script that creates the correct Sort version according to the case used in the main tag. If the Sort version would be the same (or differs just by 'The ’ or 'A ’ or 'An ’ at the beginning) I leave it blank as iTunes and Plex will just use the basic tag for sorting (after stripping off 'The ’ etc).

Out of the nearly 600 artists in the latest import I tried, I have not found a single anomaly. Plex has done a great job.

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138

Just my 2¢ as a user:

I wish “Artist” in a track on a compilation album (“Various Artists”) rolled up to existing Artist entity, or if one didn’t already exist, created a new Artist entity.

And for multiple artists listed in “Artist” for one track there was a way for that to be associated with each corresponding Artist entity somehow.

But for sure the first one is the most important to me.

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So you want an entry in the main artists list for every track artist in a Various Artist compilation?

NO! NO! NO! NO!

I cannot over stress how that would be completely unacceptable for me. I simply could not use a system that did that. My artists list would grow from about 600 to many thousands and be orders of magnitude harder to work with. Absolutely NO way should that be imposed on everyone.

As an option, if that’s what you want, fine. But Plex must absolutely NEVER force its users to work this way.

One of the main uses of iTunes ‘part of a Compilation’ tag was to allow all Various Artist type compilations to be grouped together and prevent the main artist list from being contaminated with all the artists from the individual tracks. If I only have a single track by that artist (on a compilation), why on earth would I want that artist cluttering up the main artist list. If I really wanted to find what I have of theirs, I can search.

Sorry, but this is crucially important that the modus operandi as suggested is NOT made the only way.

As I said, making it an option would be ok as I accept others may want to view their music data differently, even though I will never understand why they would want this.

I would also agree that when viewing an artist’s content, not only should all their own albums be shown, but also their tracks on any other compilation albums on which they exist. So exactly as iTunes already does, although Plex could improve on that by displaying those in a separate section on the screen rather than just mixed in with the artist’s own album list.

In case I haven’t been clear, :grinning: track artists from Various Artist compilations must NOT be forced into the main artists list.

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This is literally the oposite of what most people in this thread has requested though. I, and many others, have requested that every artist in the library should be presented as such. If tags are read properly this is what should be happening. For example this record. https://musicbrainz.org/release/96955858-5354-44db-8cef-f645a982d260
Most of these artists does actually have artist listings in my library, but the album is not showing up on any of them, bacause of this bad design choice from Plex. And all of them are artist present in my library, because I have this record.

Plex should just group them based on whether the artist is album artist or just featured on a track. It’s not “hard” to separate the two in the album list under the Artist in question. You have albums by the artist, and you have albums featuring the artist.