Sorting music by album then title does not produce the expected results. What's going on here?

General Discussions
1

Hi

So normally when I sort music by album then title i expect a compilation album to appear once. Yet Plex maintains a top level sorting based on artist/composer regardless what I choose (see the picture for an example). Is this intentional?

3rpw9qsnchq1.png1637×382 557 KB

2

This is not a sorting issue. Plex is splitting these albums because the folder structure or embedded metadata tell it to do so.

A collection of files which are supposed to appear in a common album in Plex must be in the same, separate folder.
The embedded metatags of these files must

  • have an identical entry in the ‘Album Title’ (appendages like “Disc 1” are not allowed)
  • have an identical entry in the ‘Album Artist’ (this is a separate tag from the ‘Artist’!)

Here are some tips regarding music

multi-disc albums
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1050849/#Comment_1050849

handling singles and EP’s
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1093611/#Comment_1093611

possible ‘side car’ files for music
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1319703/#Comment_1319703

soundtracks and ‘various artists’
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1472799/#Comment_1472799

3

Thanks for a swift reply. I will try your answers, but to be honest it does’nt change the fact that this is completely wrongly sorted compared to the sorting options. I never told Plex to care about the artist at all so if it’s reading ‘Album Artist’ and ‘Artist’ shouldn’t matter.

Now if I had used the ‘Artist’ option as the first or second criteria for sorting I would agree with you. While I agree that two artists can produce an album with the exact same name and thus understand the logic that Plex is applying here I think it’s annoying that this assumption is beeing made whithout the user being made awware of it.

I have used Foobar2000 in the past just for music and it makes a similar assumption, but it informs the user about it by having a field labelled ‘Artist/Album Title’ and displaying it the same way. Naturally if you still like to you can sort on the ‘Artist’ and ‘Album Title’ individually with any mixups that may happen being your own problem to deal with.

4

@Anderstn said:
If i sorted this based on the “artist” option would that sort on the ‘Artist’ or ‘Album Artist’ tag?

Album Artist

5

@OttoKerner said:

@Anderstn said:
If i sorted this based on the “artist” option would that sort on the ‘Artist’ or ‘Album Artist’ tag?

Album Artist

I re-wrote my last answer, but this is still good to know. Annoying that they can’t just name the option the same as the tag they are actually using to avoid confusion though.

6

I wrote this up as a new post in a more appropriate part of the forum as what I’m really asking for is more of a future request (or a bug) rather than a general discussion subject. I will mark this thread as resolved to avoid duplicates.