Problems with tracks in a Various Artists album matching to the artist

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Server Version#: 3.57.1
Player Version#: N/A

Hi

I have Now 78
CD1 Track 3 is Jessie J - Do It Like A Dude
CD2 Track 1 is Jessie J - Price Tag

When I first loaded this into Plex I can see the tags
Album Artist = Various Artists
Artist = Jessie J

If I search for ‘Jessie J’ then these tracks show as ‘Tracks’, but there is no Artists listed as Jessie J
If I change the Album Artist to Jessie J and rescan the library then I can now see an artist called Jessie J, and if I click on her I see these tracks.
However now the Album ‘Now 78’ has been split so there are two, one with Album Artist Jessie J and just the two tracks above, and the other with Album Artist = Various Artists and listing the other 40 tracks in the album.

The reason this is important to me is that when I asked Amazon Echo using the Plex skill ‘Alexa tell plex to play music by Jessie J’ then it only works if the Plex Media Server knows the artist Jessie J and then it will play songs belonging to that artist. However I also want to be able to say ‘Alexa tell plex to play album Now 78’.

I thought the original tagging was correct in that the Album Artist is Various Artists and the track Artist is Jessie J, but in that configuration Plex fails to create an Artist called Jessie J.

I have read numerous threads on the forum but haven’t found an answer to this problem.
I believe I have the file naming convention right as
/Music/Various Artists/Now 78/Disc 1/Jessie J - Do It Like A Dude.mp3
Ref: Organizing Music - Soundtracks and Various Artists (Hit collections)
I know there are suggestions of adding the album artist to the album name, but that doesn’t change this problem, my Plex Media Server is using the tags.

I’ve also done the Plex Dance to double check that I’m not looking at cached results.
Ref: Plex incorrectly identifying TV episodes

Please could someone help me understand how to correctly setup Plex to work with a Various Artists album as well as recognising tracks by the performing artist.

Cheers,
Mark

2

You did it right at the beginning.
This is a weakness of Plex. It doesn’t list artists which only appear on sampler albums.

There’s nothing you can do to change that, you have already tried both approaches. You’ll have to decide which is the lesser evil.

3

Hi Otto,
Thank you very much for your reply. It’s great to have a clear concise answer.

I wonder whether it makes sense to ask the Plex development team to construct the Artists list from the Artist tag instead of the Album Artist tag. From my limited knowledge of PMS that would seem like it would give us both a Various Artists album and knowledge of per Artist tracks. Perhaps if this change would impact other users in a negative way then it could be made available as a settings choice to use Album Artist or (Track) Artist, with the default being the current behaviour.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Mark

4

The feature request exists already.
Please add your vote by clickong on VOTE left of the thread title.

5

Thank you Otto.
I think that request opens up a more complicated area which will be more difficult to develop where a track has more than one associated artist, and that complexity may mean that it is never tackled. I will post my suggestion just for dealing with Various Artist albums in the hopes that a simpler request may get more attention.
Cheers,
Mark

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