did anyone realize any effort from plex support?
Nope.
My Various Artists albums are being tagged as being by Boyzone, for some reason!
Yes, sometimes the scanner gets confused and starts assigning newly added compilations to another artist from your library instead of āVarious Artistsā. Itās a really weird bug, it has existed for some time. Manually fixing the artist for these albums and then Optimize Database usually solves it for a while.
Same problem here. And Iād add that forcing us to use āVarious Artistsā completely disregards the fact that a good chunk of us arenāt native English speakers. I have zero desire to have some random English words pop up when thereās no need to.
Yeah this is one of the annoyances caused by Plexās refusal to support the COMPILATION tag in FLAC (the TCMP tag in id3/mp3. @cpil in mp4, etc), you need to specifically enter a pseudo-artist āVarious Artistsā in English for compilations to get recognized.
If you use your own embedded meta tags, you can pick any wording instead of āVarious Artistsā.
You just have to do that on all your folder names and embedded meta tags.
You could even use several different āVarious Artistsā. For instance one for musical and soundtrack albums, and a different one for regular sampler albums.
I was going to point you towards a very interesting post I read on reddit about that. Turns out it was yours ^^
Iāll leave it here for others:
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Thatās something, thanks for your reply! Letās hope the whole thing gets revamped in a future version, though 
So now, after having purchased a lifetime Plex Pass BEFORE discovering this annoying lack of recognizing the Compilation tag āfeatureāā¦ can anyone recommend similar alternative media server software that DOES recognize the Compilation tag?
Not sure if this is related to this issue, but if I have a compilation album in ogg format, Plex isnāt reading the artist name from the metadata and leaving it blank.
This is still a mess. Simply having PLEX allowing us to lock the āARTISTā and not over riding unmatched albums would solve this.
Sometimes it works when you first load albums, sometimes not. I have no idea how to fix it, if it can be. All I know is that every other program I used allowed you to groups various artists albums under one āfakeā artist based on that Album Artist tag, but plex sh*ts the bed doing it.
From the reddit:
" - it has a strict hierarchical relationship for artists-albums-tracks. A track has one parent: the album. An album has one parent: the artist. Thereās no direct reference between track and artist. The many-to-many nature of compilations (one album, many tracks with many artists) doesnāt fit. Internally, a compilation is just a regular album by some dude called āVarious Artistsā. Note: this is also why collaboration albums (Artist A & Artist B) donāt work, an album has only one parent_id ."
Except it doesnāt work with that parent ID either. Otherwise my library would be fine since that parent ID is based on ALBUM ARTIST, not Artist tags.
still nothing helpful?
Nope, just being ignored it seemsā¦
Iāve stopped trying to fix it. Iām still in the process of adding updated metadata albums to a āperfectā library. Once done Iāll delete and reload all the various artist albums that didnāt stick the first time and clean it up. Thumbs held anyway.
Hello, Russāand anyone else who might help.
As my user name suggests, Iāve been using a Logitech Squeezebox for yearsāyears spent carefully editing my tags so compilations would appear where Iād want, Iād get the album art I wanted, etc. Now Iām trying to transition to Plex. After scanning my (pretty huge) library, there was a lot of weirdness. Discovered I needed to change my preferences to always prefer local metadata. Did that and re-scanned. That fixed many but not all problems.
For example, an obscure album I have by an acoustic group is still showing the wrong album art. (I know that the wrong art came from musicbrainz, itās what dbPoweramp wanted to use when I ripped it.) Do I need to delete the folder for the album, re-scan, then re-add it and re-scan again? Note, my album art is not embedded, Iām using sidecar files for it. Also, Iām using the latest version of Plex on a Windows computer as my server, and Plex on Roku as my player.
Thanks.
Sorry but Iām not a sure I can help since I donāt sidecar album art, Iām not sure what it means.
If the album art isnāt saved as metadata, the easiest way to add it is to manually add the file from your computer with choose an image, or use a link from the web under āenter a urlā.
I have it as metadata and saved as cover art in the folder as a jpg. Plex shows a third one. No idea why.
If youāre flat out getting a jumbled match, then I find it best to delete the folder, do the plex dance and then reload the folder for the album after a metadata check and hold thumbs it works.
Donāt use that. It will be lost at the next library rebuild, metadata refresh, temporary media storage outage etc.pp.
āSidecar cover artā means a file named cover.jpg in the same folder as all tracks of an album. In order for this file to get recognized, you have to stick to the folder hierarchy laid out in https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/
And that applies to sampler albums as well!
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Thanks Russ and Otto.
All of my music is on an external drive, and thatās the only thing on that drive. Itās all saved under one music folder as follows: Music/ArtistName/AlbumName/TrackNumber - TrackName.ext. And yes, in each AlbumName folder is a sidecar file ācover.jpg.ā
Yet after setting my preferences to always use local metadata, and doing a refresh of metadata (is that the Plex Dance?), Iām still getting the cover for some heavy metal band called Sacred Reich instead of the pleasant cover in my jpg file. Thatās why I wonder if I need to delete the album and re-scan, then put it back. Any thoughts?
Edit: I just checked the link. Looks like the dance might be the delete-rescan I was thinking of.
It doesnāt hurt much to try it, I reckon.
Look out for hidden graphics files in the folders. Those appear in collections which grew āorganicallyā over many years, particularly if the old Windows Media Player was at one time used to play these files.
Do also simply āeditā the album in Plex. Your sidecar cover might already be among the options to pick from under āPosterā.
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