Plex "merging" album artists incorrectly

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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1

Server Version#: 1.42.2.10156
Player Version#: Latest (web)

For whatever reason, I’ve had a deeply strange issue with Plex “merging” my album artists in weird ways, usually when collaborators are involved.

I make sure to tag all of my music using MusicBrainz Picard. All of my tags, on the files, look correct. For this example, I’ll use Anamanaguchi.

Their album, Endless Fantasy, is just by them. No big deal, that shows in the tags just fine:

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Looks good to me!

But then, let’s say, I have one of their EPs like S/S17, which has Hatsune Miku featured all over the album and in the tags. That’s all tagged correctly, too.

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I don’t know how Plex is normally supposed to handle this. I’m well aware that multiple-artist support is bordering on nonexistent right now, but for whatever reason, after importing, Plex has decided to merge every single Anamanaguchi album under the tag “Anamanaguchi feat. Hatsune Miku”. Every single one.

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This isn’t the only artist that Plex has done this to. For example, it merged all of Porter Robinson’s discography into “Porter Robinson & Riot Games Music Team”, merging it with his release Everything Goes On:

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I’m well-aware that this is an easy fix, and I am working through it all to fix it. But the problem is deeply frustrating to run into, because it feels like I’m spending a not-insignificant amount of time working on my tags just to have to fix them all again when importing them into Plex.

What’s the optimal fix here? Or is this just a software bug that I’ll have to wait to get fixed Eventually™? Is it an issue with my scanning agent or something else?

2

Plex has no support for more than one AlbumArtist.
You’ll have to decide which one of the involved artists shall be the AlbumArtist, then fill the AlbumArtist tag accordingly.

Then put the album into the appropriate artist folder. i.e. the media file storage should follow the folder structure laid out here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/
Never, ever mix albums with deviating content in their AlbumArtist tags into the same artist folder.
Samplers/Compilations are no exception from this rule. Typically they use “Various Artists” as AlbumArtist.

Don’t try to work around this, it’ll always end in chaos.

3

That’s what mostly baffles me, though. I would expect Plex to respect the local metadata - I am 100% okay with “Anamanaguchi feat. Hatsune Miku” being a separate entry from “Anamanaguchi”, similar to how iTunes handles it. On a technical level, that’s how it’s tagged, too - the album artist for one is “Anamanaguchi”, and the album artist for the other is “Anamanaguchi feat. Hatsune Miku”. They’re even in separate folders!

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It’s why Plex deciding to combine them at all is so baffling to me.

4

It is reading the AlbumArtist tag and matches the first part to the already existing Artist “Anamanaguchi”, effectively merging the two.
If you have “prefer local metatags” activated, this can then even mean that the existing Artist name “Anamanaguchi” in your Plex library is replaced by “Anamanaguchi & Flux Pavillon” (or any of the other combos).

5

Ah, gotcha, I see. Must have misinterpreted what Prefer Local does. I appreciate it, thank you, I’ll fiddle around with leaving that disabled.