Plex Displays Random Wrong Combined Artist Names

[EarthBoundX5]

Server Version#: 1.25.2.5319
Player Version#: 4.72.0
Plex Media Server Logs_2022-01-06_19-26-51.zip (5.5 MB)

I’ve had a few random artists show up oddly in Plex. The one I’m reporting here to figure out a solution around is combined artists names for single artists. In this example, I’ll use SonReal.

You can see here I have several SonReal albums, all listed as “SonReal & Rich Kidd”.

However, only the album “The Closers” has this distinction of being a joint artist album. The rest should just be SonReal.

What is strange is that these both show as separate artists correctly. Clicking on the artist for The Closers brings me here:

URL/details?key=%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F176848&context=home%3Ahub.music.recent.added~6~3

Now when I goto the artist for the other albums, I get here:

URL/details?key=%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F176761&context=home%3Ahub.music.recent.added~6~4

This is technically correct, 2x separate artists for the albums. However, the 2nd should just be SonReal and not a collaboration artist.

I could leave it here and correct the issue…however, selecting the 2nd artist and clicking to Fix Match, then searching and selecting just SonReal has turned this into a bit of a mess. Now, it’s combined both into the first artist entry with all albums under the collaboration artist entry…no idea how in the world the steps would result in this…

URL/details?key=%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F176848&context=home%3Ahub.music.recent.added~6~3

So now, I am at a loss. I did what I was supposed to, attempted to Fix Match and now have a combined entry that is more wrong than before. This is clearly not how these operations should…operate…

And for reference, I use Picard for all my music content prior to importing to Plex. I have zero issues with my local metadata, which is prioritized in my library for Music.

[beckfield]

These problems usually occur due to some issue in metadata, or Plex isn’t fully configured to prefer embedded tags.

Take a look at this How-To and see if it helps. If you still have problems, please provide screenshots of your embedded tags for an album that Plex is having trouble with.

[HowTo] Configure Plex to use embedded metadata (music)

[EarthBoundX5]

Sadly, this didn’t seem to resolve anything. I think the problem is deeper. I mean, there should be zero reason that 2x separate artists “SonReal” and “SonReal & Rich Kidd” should both carry the same name. Plex clearly took the artist name from one and applied it to the other for some reason…?

There isn’t any logical reason apart from a bug in metadata handling that I can think of that would cause these both to have the same artist name of “SonReal & Rich Kidd” upon importing into Plex.

[OttoKerner]

Folder organization.
Music / AlbumArtist / AlbumTitle / Tracks

All albums, with all their tracks inside a certain “Album Artist” folder must be tagged with the same album artist name.
If there is even only one track with a wrong or missing album artist tag inside there, it can set off all other albums.
Find that deviating track(s).

I’m assuming that you have both albums with “SonReal” and “SonReal & Rich Kidd” tagged as AlbumArtist inside the same albumartist folder.

[EarthBoundX5]

No, I do not, they each have separate folders.

I’m full in on Picard with sorting and tagging all my music, using album artist as folder names and organization is exactly as you list. The only caveat of course is compilations, soundtracks, and the sort; but that’s irrelevant for this reported issue.

[OttoKerner]

This is a collaboration album.
Plex can’t handle collaboration albums. i.e. it will usually match the album to the first artist name.

If you have a separate artist folder, you can usually perform the “Split” command in Plex, at the artist level.
But you won’t get correct artist metadata automatically.

[EarthBoundX5]

Ah, ok, makes sense then. I assume it’s not high on the list for feature improvements?

[OttoKerner]

I’m afraid, I’m unable to tell anyhing about priorities.
Developers are well-aware about it.