I have searched and searched and can’t seem to understand this.
I understand the need to sort all of my music by folders (artist/album/track). I also understand the options of using internal tags versus allowing Plex to do its magic. Here is what I am not clear on:
I have a number of songs that are part of ‘Various Artist’ albums. Following the rules, I have a folder called ‘Various Artists’ with the appropriate subfolders. What I don’t understand is why when I my songs on the main page by track by artist, why is the artist showing as ‘Various Artists’?
When I drill down into the album, it shows the correct artist. It’s as though the main page is NOT showing track by artist, but track by ALBUM ARTIST. Why would it do that? I have tried allowing Plex to assign metadata as well as forcing internal tags to be prioritized. No difference.
Clearly Plex knows who the track artist is (shown when I drill down to the album level), so why is is not displaying the correct artist at the higher level?
Screen shots below show high level and then drill down to album level when sorted by track-artist:
Thank you very much for the quick reply. I just find it peculiar because clearly PLEX knows and understands the difference between an Album Artist and an Artist. So if I select a sort by track and then artist, I would expect (case above) to see Rod Stewart as the artist, not Various Artists. Especially when there is also an option to sort by track and album artist as an option. It seems they are both returning the SAME results when one could reasonably expect a different result.
Its almost as if PLEX is using the folder name as the Artist instead of the actual Artist name (?)
The way Plex stores music information for a library is that all tracks belong to an album. All albums belong to an artist (Album artist). Track can also have their own artist information (track artist). I brought up the confusion in the terminology of “Artist” with our team for discussion.
The main library page only shows Album Artist. There is no way to show Track Artists like this. I believe there is a feature request to be able to show the Track Artist and their related tracks.
Perhaps as an interim solution they could remove ‘Artist’ as a sort option. The confusion is that the drop down implies I can sort by EITHER Album Artist or just Artist. If Plex removes the Artist option from the sort list then that would at least remove the confusion.
