Server Version#: 1.18.0.1944, Player Version#: Most recent versions available on a number of platforms,
Greetings,
Recently (as in today) I have noticed that Plex Server on my QNAP have somehow either replaced or created entries for all Album Artists that previously were Various Artists with Hans Zimmer (see example on attached below picture)…
My music collection (almost entirely made up of Soundtracks) is correctly tagged with Album and Artist entries but contains no Album Artist entry. When I added my collection to Plex Music Library it was correctly catalogued and sorted and remained so for at least the last six months. In case of multiple Artists per Album Plex correctly assigned Various Artists entry. I have not edited the actual MP3 tags on the files and just let it all sit comfortably, minding its own business, on my QNAP while I was using Sonos Speakers and/or Plex Player on iPhone to listen to my music…
Today, as I was browsing music on Plex Player on Apple TV, I noticed that a number of Albums all of the sudden include Hans Zimmer as the Album Artist and after careful investigation it looks like that all Albums that have more than one Artist somehow ended up being assigned Hans Zimmer as the Album Artist.
I have tried scanning library, refreshing metadata and un-matching, to no effect…
I have verified this as an issue on all Plex Players that I have installed around my place, including Plex Player via Web, on Apple TV, on Sonos, on Windows 10 as an application and on my iPhone. So it does not appear to be a player problem.
The files themselves remain unchanged and I have not edited Plex configuration in a while so this is either a result of a bug or a feature that was recently implemented during the the server update (I updated my Plex Server at least once a month) that I just noticed now…
PMS version 1.18 introduced the new Plex Music agent feature that kindly takes over your music library and makes it better
Because it’s been a while since you posted, it’s possible you found the announce thread or all the threads that ChuckPA has made over the years about naming and tagging Various Artists tracks, or maybe you saw the website articles about naming your media.
I can’t improve on their work. So I’ll just ask what you’ve tried since you posted?
Thank you for your reply…
I have not tried anything since my original post.
I would greatly appreciate if you could post link(s) to those articles and/or point me in a right direction if I am expected to find them on my own.
On a personal note:
Plex is a tool, a complicated tool but a tool never the less, I do expect it to work, especially if it has worked in the past and I do expect this being more or less a guarantee, especially if I am a paying customer. My music is tagged correctly, I say this because every single music application or service I use/used reads it and catalogues it correctly, many of which are free applications.
For Plex Development team to think that they can improve on something and in a process expect me to change something that has worked fine and continues to work fine with every application I can think of because otherwise their “improved” process will break something is simply unacceptable…
Plex is not a hobby for me, I have better things to do with my time than to fix the way it reads tags, I would rather be listening to the music or watching films I have than trying to fix/resolve a problem that was introduced for whatever reason…
Plex is either part of a solution or part of a problem…
Basically, the new music system requires that “Various Artists” albums need to have the album artist metadata tagged with exactly “Various Artists” if you want them to show up in your library that way.
If albums don’t have an embedded Album Artist tag, and all of the “Track Artist” tags are not identical, it will usually assign the album as “Various Artists.”
However, if the new agent thinks it’s found a better match, and that an album should actually be by “Hans Zimmer,” because it’s listed that way at MusicBrainz, all of your Various Artists albums will now be by that Artist. This can happen with or without the required “Album Artist” tag. (a Plex developer or Ninja can correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s my experience)
The support articles mentioned by @nibbles are for the old system Plex used for music, and a lot of the information is not relevant, or is not correct for the new system.
Unfortunately, that section is located in the “Features” section. The average person would probably not look for help in that section when their music library has been upgraded to the new system. They would naturally find (or are directed by someone to) the old, out-dated help articles, which will provide little or no useful information regarding mismatches, library organizing, etc that the new system has brought.
There isn’t a link to the new articles there, neither, so you end up following the out-dated guidelines, and your problem isn’t corrected.
