Plex 1.23.3.4707 not processing Album Compilations with Various Artists anymore. Assigns Track Artist to Album Artist

[wingcomm]

Still an issue here. Would really appreciate Plex restoring functionality that we used to have for years.

[Chopdog011]

I know there are bigger problems in the world, but the lack of Compilations flag detection is an ABSOLUTE dealbreaker for me using Plex. I’m now actively looking for an alternative and the problem is, they are lazy. There’s not enough great competition so they don’t seem to both looking after their clients.

[PunkleJones]

@certuna

It’s no longer 2001, the Compilation tag has been universally adopted everywhere now, Plex is at this point pretty much the only library manager that doesn’t support it.

Also, the COMPILATION tag exists in FLAC (Vorbis) as well, which is a format that isn’t even supported by Apple and completely outside of the Apple ecosystem. Plex also has no issues using ‘proprietary’ extensions (which is a big scare word for one simple id3 frame btw) - it happily reads Musicbrainz tags for example.

Tagging compilations with Album Artist “Various Artists” or “Diverse Künstler” or “Varios Artistas” (i,e, treat compilations as if they were a regular album by a dude called “Various Artists”) is a hack for older software that cannot handle an empty album artist field, it makes no sense to impose that workaround on software that can.

Regardless, even if Plex doesn’t support the Compilation tag, it used to correctly detect compilations before, and since .4707 it doesn’t anymore - that’s a regression.

We all know why Plex always needs a pseudo-Album Artist and has all these limitations around track artists/album artists, it’s a limitation in its database design. We’re all hoping that at some point this gets refactored, but that’s the future. At this point the scanner needs to work around the limitations and populate the database with the pseudo-artist “Various Artists”. It used to do that correctly, now it doesn’t.

this^

[FromLMStoPLEX]

Have you tried Logitech Media Server?

Compilation treatment is one of the issues that has kept me from upgrading to the paid version of Plex. I was going to transition away from Logitech Media Server, but just have not been happy with various aspects of Plex. I have stuck with LMS because I can control things down to small details.

For example, consider a tribute album to Bob Dylan. The compilation flag is handled correctly. But if I want (and I do), I can uncheck the flag and change album artist to Bob Dylan and have the album grouped with him instead of under various artists. But if I look at all music by a particular artist, if that artist has a track on the tribute album, it will be listed.

I’ve also had problems with the way Plex handles metadata I’ve customized for album art, and for boxed sets.

I have a paid (cheap! but with great support!) Android Squeezebox player (SB Player by Angry Goat) installed on a Fire stick that is plugged into my HT system, and I control it using Squeezer (free) installed on an Android tablet and phone. Both apps are great. Used to use the paid OrangeSqueeze app as the controller, it was also great but is no longer being maintained.

The only problem I have – which is why I tried to transition to Plex – is the fear that LMS will stop being maintained. However, it still has many fans and fanatics doing what I’m doing, and creating players using Raspberry Pi, so I’m hoping it stays around for quite a while.

Cheers.