I am trying to understand how to tag and use albums with Various Artists in Plex.
In one scenario, I have two albums by the same artist that show up as two different artists even though they are spelled the same.
In other cases, I have albums with “Album Artist” tag as “Various Artist”, yet “Various Artist” does not show in PLEX as an Artist.
PLease advise.
Can you show us screenshots from your tagging app? Let’s do one case at a time. So pick an album from case #1 and show us the tags. We need to see these tags:
Filename, Album Title, Track Title, Album Artist, Track Artist, Disc Number, Track Number.
Here is how Josh Turner is shown twice in PLEX …
Here are the mp3tag tags that you requested …
I do not understand why these two albums are shown in PLEX separately under two different copies of Josh Turner.
Many thanks!
Is each album in its own folder under ‘Josh Turner?’ Everything else looks fine (I had to ask. Can’t tell you how many times someone said “My tags are perfect” when they weren’t.).
Did you happen to make any changes to filenames after adding the albums to Plex? Since the music scanner was rewritten last year, Plex is pretty good about updating when you change tags, but if filenames are changed, it tends to move the renamed files to a duplicated artist/album. If this is the case, it should be fixed by moving the folder with renamed files out of the library folder, scanning files in Plex to remove them from the library, then moving the folder(s) back into place and scanning again.
Hello Beckfield,
Yes, each album was in its own folder.
Since I was not sure about changing the filename, I just 1) moved the albums outside the PLEX folder, 2) synced the Plex Library, 3) move the folders back in the Plex folder and 4) resynced the library.
And, I not see both albums under the same Turner artist in PLEX.
But a new question…
See below. I see the albums together but I do not see the covers. Any idea why?
Also, is there any change I could have spotted the other issue just by reviewing the data in PLEX?
Many thanks!!!
Before sending the other problems albums, I will see if I can correct them the same way.
Are they ugly? 
I don’t know. Do you have local .jpg files for the covers? If not, Plex might be having difficulty getting them from the web.
Hard to say without knowing what’s causing it, but it’s always my first step in figuring it out.
You have both entry 1: Josh Turner and entry 2: Josh Turner feat. … under the Artists ---- I think that’s because of that one album tagged as various artists.
Yes, a jpg file is in each of the PLEX sync album folders.
But I have all Album Artist Set to “Josh Turner”.
Doesn’t that fix it?
I am afraid not. If there are different artists, Plex turns them into various artists.
I’m not exactly sure, but try to put the artist on Josh Turner in general.
That’s not right. If the Album Artist field is identical for all tracks in the album, it should appear in Plex as one album under “Various Artists.” If Album artist is not identical, or is blank and Artist is not identical for all tracks, Plex will automatically catalog it as ‘Various Artists.’
Tracks with “featured” artists will appear like this:
Local Files Only does not work for me. Still no covers shown.
You’re running ‘Refresh metadata’ after making these changes, right?
How will using “Various Artists” be handled by PLEX?
By the way, I should have mentioned this sooner - if you’re going to rely on embedded tags, there are a few steps to make sure Plex is configured to do so. It’s more than just the ‘prefer local metadata’ checkbox. I don’t think this is what’s causing your issues, but it’s worth pointing out.
Also, just for completeness, the album cover should be named ‘cover.jpg’ and is in the same folder as the tracks. The artist image should be in the artistname folder, and named either ‘folder.jpg’ or ‘artist-poster.jpg’.
I stole this from a post by one of the ninjas:
Music /
|--Albumartistname /
| artist-poster.jpg <--- a photo of the artist
| artist-background.jpg <--- a background/wallpaper particular to the artist
|--Albumtitle /
cover.jpg <--- album cover
background.jpg <--- album background/wallpaper [if not present, inherited from the 'albumartist' level]
1. Trackartist - Tracktitle.mp3
1. Trackartist - Tracktitle.txt
2. Trackartist - Tracktitle.mp3
2. Trackartist - Tracktitle.lrc
...
Hello backfield,
I have finally gotten back to cleaning up my metadata to have my albums combined properly in Plex.
To do this I removed my albums but now I cannot get them reloaded. See below …
Have I created the music library in the wrong location?
Thanks for your advise.
That path looks very different from the screenshot you posted earlier. Did you move the files to a new location?
