I have two different music artists with the same name: Dr. Angus MacDonald and PM Angus MacDonald. The sole album I have by PM Angus is listed under Dr. Angus. I can edit the Artist to PM Angus but PMS reverts it back to Dr. Angus. The individual tracks in the album show as PM Angus; only the album is incorrect. The mp3 tags are correct (PM Angus), the file path is PM Angus, and the album is NOT matched with any online source (under the 3-dot menu it offers “Match…” but not “Unmatch” or “Fix Match”. Under the “match” option there is no suitable match.)
I can change the artist from Dr. Angus to something totally random and it preserves the change. If I then edit it to PM Angus, PMS changes it to Dr. Angus. Interestingly there is no lock icon beside the Artist field in the edit screen, although there is on other fields.
Any suggestions?
EDIT: More info. In the album view screen, the tracks display as “title – artist”. The artist, as I say above, showed PM Angus. However I just tried to edit one and in the edit panel, the album artist showed as Dr. Angus. I edited the album artist to PM Angus in all tracks. The album has disappeared from my album list, and when I search for it by name I get a little “+11” box next to the result. Clicking that brings up a panel titled “Choose Source” with my server listed 11 times (presumably once for each track). I rescanned the library and then had 11 albums containing 1 track each, all by Album Artist Dr. Angus. I selected them all and edited the album artist back to PM Angus en mass, and now I’m back to where I was at the beginning: album is listed as by Dr. Angus, can’t edit to PM Angus, individual tracks display as PM but upon editing are Dr.
There is no artist by the name “PM Angus” on musicbrainz.org
I think that is at least part of the problem.
If you feel up to it, create the artist on musicbrainz.org
That way, Plex has something it can match the artist to.
“Prefer local metatags” is not checked. It would seem to me that if the only metadata available is the local metadata, it should use it, yes? I’ve given pms everything it needs via the file system hierarchy and the embedded tags, why should it guess and override what’s there?
Is there a way to specify local vs online metadata that’s more granular than at the level of the entire library?
My filesystem hierarchy is …/media type/artist/album name/track name
So in this case I have two relevant directories
…/Music/Dr. Angus MacDonald/album/…
…/Music/PM Angus MacDonald/album/…
Yes – “artist” and “album artist” are both PM Angus MacDonald
EDIT: Probably unrelated (but maybe not) I see as I scan through that some time since the last time I looked, all my classical albums have had the album artist changed from the performer to the composer, and in the process made some incorrect “corrections” to the performers, poster, label, etc
You should be able to perform “Split” at the artist level.
Then make sure that the PM Angus is “unmatched”, while Dr. Angus MacDonald can be matched.
If you have a lot of special interest music, think about activating “Prefer local metatags”. Of course this should only be done if all your embedded metatags are complete and correct.
Thanks, but no dice. I split the artist (I would have never found that option on my own) then changed the one album to PM Angus. The album disappeared from the list. I rescanned the library and now it’s back to Dr. Angus.
It seems to me that anything edited in the pms interface should have absolute precedence over any embedded or online tag. Shouldn’t it?
I see that in addition to the classical music issues I mention above, a lot of my other edits (made to correct for missing/incomplete embedded metatags) have been discarded. Aughhh!
(I’m obviously frustrated by this but I do appreciate your help, OttoKerner)
Don’t change the album.
After splitting the artist, you should have two identically named artists. Now determine the one artist that is actually “PM Angus…” and make sure it is unmatched. Then rename the artist. The album underneath should follow.
That seems to have done it. Thanks again. That was not the least bit intuitive.
So that’s one issue fixed but still all the others to deal with. Sigh.
Cheers!
EDIT: Well, fixed it with one minor caveat. Changing the artist didn’t automatically change the “sort artist” as I expected. Usually changing something with an associated sort field changes the sort as well. Not this time… I’ve now changed it manually
