Plex Music metadata linking

[miked47170]

Server Version#:1.32.5.7210-77f7f99fa
Player Version#:1.71.1.3888-b32ecaf8

I have been a long time user of Plex for movies and TV but I recently decided to try the music feature. Overall it does work but there are some things with the metadata and the way the library is setup that just seems off.

I have just rebuilt my entire music library from Amazon so I could get everything with the proper names, song titles and quality. I use musicbrainz picard to make sure everything is tagged properly, and mp3tag to easily go through and remove feat artists from the artist tag and at them to the title name so I have a clean single primary artist for every song and then have mp3tag change the file name to %artist% - %title% and auto sort them by %artist% and %album%. So far this works well Plex sees all my media and has organized them correctly with very little issue.

My issues, are that various artists (which I have setup based on https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/) do not link back to the track artist. I would expect that yes it would be under the various artist section but under the actual artist that those albums like soundtracks would be linked in the compilation area. It appears that plex does not ever look at the artist only the album artist which makes it difficult to see every song in one place you have from that artist. I have tried this with local metadata preferred turned on and off

To further this the only way I can see and sort by artist instead of of album artist is to do a view by tracks, then I can sort by Artist. However this has issues because if the artist name and the artist album name are the same then the artist section is blank. If I change my metadata for it to be different names (i.e. change The Beastie Boys to Beastie Boys) then it will show up, or I have to manually select all the tracks for an album artist an manually add them. Then I can sort by artist and see every song that artist has in their albums and in Various Artists albums.

Is this a bug or by design to prevent you from linking and sorting your media by artist so you can see everything you have from them, or I am just doing something wrong?

[OttoKerner]

@miked47170

I use musicbrainz picard to make sure everything is tagged properly, and mp3tag to easily go through and remove feat artists from the artist tag and at them to the title name so I have a clean single primary artist for every song and then have mp3tag change the file name to %artist% - %title% and auto sort them by %artist% and %album%.

This is unnecessary. That’s what the AlbumArtist meta tag is for.

As for the rest, see this post: Plex not pulling id3 information - #6 by OttoKerner

[miked47170]

The link you provided I don’t think relates to what I am seeing, if so I missed it. It looks like it is not pulling in the metadata at all due to a bad structure. Plex pulls in the data just fine for the Various Artists, the issues I have is that it is not also linked to the track artist. I would think that if there is a Various Artist category that when scanning metadata it would look in that folder and match the artist with an existing album artist and also add that as a compilation album under them. It is also reading in my metadata just fine with the track view it just ignores the artist if it matches the album artist.

Here is the structure I have, other than putting the track number in my file name (which I hate and doesn’t seem to have any issues with matching) I think I have everything correct

[OttoKerner]

Plex does only link Album Artists. All songs on samplers etc. are not linked to the Artists view.

[miked47170]

Okay, so it is by design then I am not doing something wrong. I had just assumed that if there was a compilation area under an artist and you had that artist on a compilation album like a soundtrack or Rock Ballads of the 80’s for example that it was suppose to show up under the compilations section for that artist. Thank you for the answer.