@gcoupe said:
What is somewhat irritating is that Windows Media Center allowed for searching and browsing by Album Artist, Track Artist, and Composer back in 2004. Here we are almost in 2016, and Plex still can’t do it…
Much like iTunes has done for donkeys years.
Ah, yes, but then I don’t use any Apple products at all, so I wouldn’t know…
@daveinc said:
This question has been sitting in the general forum for a few weeks now with no answers, so I’m reposting here. It doesn’t seem like a ninja appropriate question to me, but maybe it’s more complicated than I understand!Original post: https://forums.plex.tv/topic/155683-searching-by-artist-where-album-artist-is-various/
–
Hi, I’ve been converting over my library to Plex, and I’ve noticed what seems like an omission when using the search.
If I search for a specific artist, it will not show results where the album artist is set to “Various” or “Various Artists”.
For example, I have a compilation album “The Best of the 90s”. I have it all tagged appropriately, and it appears in the Plex Library correctly.
The album contains a track “Billy Joel - River of Dreams”.
The track is tagged with:
- Album: The Best of the 90s
- Artists: Billy Joel
- AlbumArtist: Various
- Title: River of Dreams
If I search “River of Dreams”, it will return the track as a result.
If I search “The Best of the 90s”, it will return the album.
However, if I search “Billy Joel”, I get nothing!
I’m using Plex Server (Version 0.9.11.7) on my ReadyNAS, and I’ve tested with both the web frontend and the android client. Both give the same results with the search.
Any help or pointers would be great!
I nearly thought they had implemented this in the Plex Media Server 0.9.14.0 released today; I fast forward read: “Get all genres for album and artist from tracks.” I think i’m attuned to anything with the word ‘music’ in for hope that searching for an artist within a compilation (Various Artists) album is supported and that searching by composer in added.
p.s. i think this forum should be moved to the ideas and bugs one. Not really suited to ‘ask a ninja’.
Ok, despite the lack of any mention in the change log, it seems like this may be significantly improved in 0.9.14.0!
I’ve just installed it, and I’m now able to find tracks is by artists within various artists albums!
It’s still hard to read the results, as all the albums are just listed as “Various Artists” and then the track title… But this is a big step forward.
Appreciate the efforts Plex devs… But I’d encourage improved transparency going forward! The last few months I’ve been considering dumping my subscription based on the lack of any feedback on this issue. The only thing holding me back is the lack of any real competition in the space.
Do you really want that to be the only reason you hold onto your users?
@daveinc said:
Ok, despite the lack of any mention in the change log, it seems like this may be significantly improved in 0.9.14.0!I’ve just installed it, and I’m now able to find tracks is by artists within various artists albums!
It’s still hard to read the results, as all the albums are just listed as “Various Artists” and then the track title… But this is a big step forward.Appreciate the efforts Plex devs… But I’d encourage improved transparency going forward! The last few months I’ve been considering dumping my subscription based on the lack of any feedback on this issue. The only thing holding me back is the lack of any real competition in the space.
Do you really want that to be the only reason you hold onto your users?
My goodness, this certainly does need to be clarified in the changelog, or no one will know (that would have included me). I deleted music from plex because i simply could not find anything due to not being able to find tracks by artists within various artists albums. And also no filter/search by composer (most of my music is classical) being available. Listing as ‘various artists’ is still annoying. I think i’ll leave off till music for plex has matured.
could you post screen shots of what the new search looks like?
Ok, the interface looks exactly the same, but here’s a sample search:
(Ignore the poor album art… That’s a problem for another day.)
You’ll note that it’s found a bunch of Radiohead songs in compilation albums now.
It doesn’t highlight any of the actual Radiohead albums that I have though.
Additionally, pulled up the android app yesterday evening, and tested the same search on there… No dice. The app obviously needs to be updated too.
Plex, any advice on if this update is in the works?
@daveinc said:
Ok, the interface looks exactly the same, but here’s a sample search:(Ignore the poor album art… That’s a problem for another day.)
You’ll note that it’s found a bunch of Radiohead songs in compilation albums now.
It doesn’t highlight any of the actual Radiohead albums that I have though.Additionally, pulled up the android app yesterday evening, and tested the same search on there… No dice. The app obviously needs to be updated too.
Plex, any advice on if this update is in the works?
This seems to only work if you are at the server home page. If you go into your Music library and search from there, the search is unchanged, as far as I can tell, UNLESS you set your library view to “Tracks.” Then it will find tracks with the search term in the track name or the track artist name. Not sure if that part is new.
@daveinc said:
Ok, the interface looks exactly the same, but here’s a sample search:(Ignore the poor album art… That’s a problem for another day.)
You’ll note that it’s found a bunch of Radiohead songs in compilation albums now.
It doesn’t highlight any of the actual Radiohead albums that I have though.Additionally, pulled up the android app yesterday evening, and tested the same search on there… No dice. The app obviously needs to be updated too.
Plex, any advice on if this update is in the works?
Thanks very much for this. You are quite right, the ‘various artist’ looks awful, doesn’t really convey much information at all. In my opinion, i still think that search should auto filter by: Song, Album, Artist and Composer through an ‘All’ option in search, which happens to be exactly how iTunes works as regards to search; i rabbited on about this somewhere else. I forget where.
@beckfield said:
@daveinc said:
Ok, the interface looks exactly the same, but here’s a sample search:(Ignore the poor album art… That’s a problem for another day.)
You’ll note that it’s found a bunch of Radiohead songs in compilation albums now.
It doesn’t highlight any of the actual Radiohead albums that I have though.Additionally, pulled up the android app yesterday evening, and tested the same search on there… No dice. The app obviously needs to be updated too.
Plex, any advice on if this update is in the works?
This seems to only work if you are at the server home page. If you go into your Music library and search from there, the search is unchanged, as far as I can tell, UNLESS you set your library view to “Tracks.” Then it will find tracks with the search term in the track name or the track artist name. Not sure if that part is new.
I think that the FAQ section for music could benefit from an addition on searching a music library; I had to explain how it works to the other half. I am really hoping that music gets a little more attention now we have seen the move to PMP, which might just free up developer time. I spend more time listening to music than I do watching movies or tv shows, so I would appreciate these little enhancements: a) Being able to find tracks by artists within various artists albums. b) Filter/search by composer. Listing as ‘various artists’ is still annoying.
definitely +1
FYI: not to start a discussion over here about what is the best software, but currently I am experimenting with EMBY (https://emby.media/). The same concept as PLEX, but with a very fast and efficient search AND searching in Artist, Albumartists, Persons, etc…
It seems this problem is resolved, or at least for the search…???
Running server 0.9.14.3 and the world famous artist “schnappi” is found on some of my CD’s:
many thanx to the developpers!!!
is the iOS app released today allowing artist search within various artist albums?
@Afullmark : yes
@bartplessers said:
@Afullmark : yes
Omg. No mention in release notes of either iOS or PMS.
@chrisallen said:
Unfortunately searching for an artist within a compilation (Various Artists) album is not yet supported. It is however, something we are aware of and it’ll be supported in an upcoming release.
Sad to see that the new, major re-design of Search still doesn’t do this.
@beckfield said:
Sad to see that the new, major re-design of Search still doesn’t do this.
This works for me. See the first result for “tracks”
@OttoKerner said:
@beckfield said:
Sad to see that the new, major re-design of Search still doesn’t do this.This works for me. See the first result for “tracks”
Hmm, I missed that. I was expecting to see it under Artists.
Only that the amount of songs displayed in the “tracks” section is limited to my understanding to about 30 entries. So in case I have several albums of an artist and more songs of the same artist on different sampler albums there is no reliable way songs from the sampler show up in the search results. A seperate section for contributions to sampler albums would be an idea or maybe a toggle on the artists page to include / exclude contributions to samplers. Currently it is still pretty confusing especially so because the typical idea of a sampler is to feature very popular songs of artists. If you are not able to reliably find these it is a kind of setback for the user experience.
Bumping this.
I just got a Prince double-CD where it’s considered “various artists.” The credits of the tracks are Prince, Prince & the Revolution and Prince & the New Power Generation.
If you search in Plex for Prince, the songs credited to Prince will display under “tracks.”
But the search results will not display anything for Prince & the Revolution and Prince & the New Power Generation as an artist result.
If you click on Prince (the artist) none of the tracks from the CD will display.
Someone wrote a thread on how this could be handled better in Plex but I cannot find it here on the forum.
