Separating artists of the same name

General Discussions
1

I have 2 or 3 instances where Plex has correctly identified that there is more than one artist with the same name. An example is Genesis where there is a UK band (well known) and a US band (not so well known). I have albums from each of these but Plex places them all in the same artist listing. Is there a way to separate them?

I have tried naming the artists Genesis UK and Genesis US but Plex reverts this name and puts all albums back in the same artist listing.

2

I think in this situation there is only one cure:
Tell Plex to use embedded metadata from your files primarily and only fill in the rest from last.fm.

Settings - Server - Agents - Albums
Drag the line ‘Local Media Assets’ to the top of the stack

Of course this requires that your files embedded meta tags are more or less in order.

In the case of the double Genesis, you then have to
a) put them into a proper folder structure with separate Artist folder
b) change all embedded metadata of the Genesis (2) tracks. Both AlbumArtist and TrackArtist tags. [I picked the `Genesis (2)` name from [discogs.com](https://www.discogs.com/artist/192651-Genesis-2 “discogs.com”)]

a)

Music /
   Genesis /
      A Trick Of The Tail (1976) /
         1. Genesis - Dance on a Volcano.mp3
         2. Genesis - Entangled.mp3
         ...
      Duke (1980) /
         1. Genesis - Behind the Lines.mp3
         2. Genesis - Duchess.mp3
         ...
      ...
   Genesis (2) /
       In The Beginning (1968) /
         1. Genesis (2) - Angeline.mp3
         2. Genesis (2) - Suzanne.mp3
         ...

After bringing a) and b) into order, perform the Plex Dance (with music, step 4 can be omitted).

3

Thanks for that suggestion. I am in the process of updating ALL metadata at the moment to try to reduce the huge number albums/tracks which have been dumped into “unknown artist” and “various artists”. It is big job! I’ll make sure when I get to these duplicate band names that they each have a different description in artist and trackartist tags.

I’ll let you know how successful I am when I am done.

PS. I seem to do the “Plex dance” 3-4 times a day at the moment!

4

In case I didn’t mention it yet :wink: : my tool of choice for bringing music into shape is mp3tag

It can derive metatags from filenames or vice versa.
Querying online data sources is also possible.

5

Thanks, yes that’s what I am using