I think I’ve discovered a work around for the Various Artists issue. At least it has been holding for three days without reverting back to Various Artists.
The Problem: Compilation albums correctly indicate the album contains ‘Various Artists’. The songs contained in the album all present the artist name as “Various Artists” even though the data field for ‘track artist’ lists the artist by name.
The Solution: Manually change the blank ‘artist’ data field in the track listing to the name of the artist AND change the album name to the name of the original artist album which contained the song. Periodically empty the trash while editing multiple listings and when you quit for the day, empty the trash again.
Simply entering the song title in the album data field seems to work also.
Comments: I am a huge fan of FOSS programming and have a high tolerance level for glitches and bugs because I know that the people working on the software are volunteers. If I PAY for software, I expect the owners of the software to be responsive to issues concerning that software.
The issue with Various Artists appears to have been festering for several years with no help from the owners. My workaround is a huge pain in the sit-down-place for anyone who has extensive music collections of compilation albums. A few lines of code should be able to fix this issue for everyone.
I hope that this post is helpful for those people wanting to rid their screens of the dreaded ‘Various Artist’ performer who is repeatedly popping up in their artist listings.
Perhaps a bit more information would help clarify my position. I have an extensive digital collection which I have been acquiring for decades. It is close to 30,000 titles.
A particular structure favored by LastFM or Gracenotes was not something I was concerned about decades ago. Even as a retired person, I just do not have the time to rebuild the structure of my collection and rebuild the metadata. Retired life has too much other things to do.
What I’ve noticed is that nearly every single track data entry we have access to which lists ‘Various Artist’ in the artist field ALSO lists the correct artist in the ‘track artist’ field.
How difficult can it be to write a routine which checks for ‘Various Artist’ in the artist field and replace it with ‘Track Artist’? Make a switch in the setup section which allows us to decide whether to activate that feature or not.
Purists who want to restructure every aspect of their music collection to conform to LastFM or Gracenotes preferred structure can do that. Those of us who just want to listen to our music and check the screen for the artist’s name can be made happy too.
As I said before, when I pay someone for creating something that makes my life happy and saves me time, I expect they will spend a little time catering to my problems.
Plex is a wonderful program. I jumped onto the bandwagon when I discovered that I could have a program which offers integration with Kodi AND gives me a much more sophisticated way of having my music presented to me than Kodi does.
The Kodi addon is represented as a beta product. I’m patiently waiting for the Plex Companion aspect to be added because that is one of the listed goals for the addon.
The Plex server and web app are represented as finished products. They need to fix the problem of ‘Various Artists’ in a non-labor intensive way for their customers before it truly is a ‘finished product’.
I bought a year’s pass. I almost bought a lifetime one. I’m glad now I didn’t. I wish I had bought a monthly one because I may not be using Plex next month. There must be some company out there which not only makes a better mouse trap but also works with its customers to make them happy.
It isn’t a matter that the Plex software does not know the artist performing any particular track. The software DOES know the track artist. All one needs to do to see that is true is edit a track which is reporting ‘Various Artist’ to the screen while being played. The track artist is displayed correctly in the edit fields.
Various Artists is a valid heading for an ALBUM with various artists. It is NOT a valid heading for an individual song.
While my folders and metadata are a mess, they are not the source of this issue. The software knows the correct artist, it simply is not programmed to use that information during playback.
My workaround makes a mess out of the album listings. At least for me, I could care less what albums I have. I’m interested in listening to the music and being able to see the artist and title of the song that is playing.
The real fix so that albums display properly while songs and artists are displayed on the screen properly should come from the company selling the product. The company advertises that they use ‘fingerprinting’ technology from Gracenotes to identify songs when one pays for pass access.
I PAID for pass access. There is no reason why a description that is appropriate for an album be used to tell what the name of the artist on a particular song is. The information is there, it should be used.
I agree. All of my metadata is correct and it’s still an issue. For example, I have a Christmas Music library. Most of the albums are various artist. If I select the “Tracks” view, I feel that it shouldn’t show “Various Artists” as the artist of the tracks.
I understand the grouping of “Album Artist” tag since there are a lot of albums called “Greatest Hits” and grouping by just the album name wouldn’t work well. It might be better if Plex used the “Part of a compilation” tag for various artists but that’s not really my main concern. If I view by “Artists” or “Tracks” I should be able to see the actual track artist, not “Various Artists”.
I’m not sure why the snottiness is needed but my tags are setup that way. I’ve had them that way for years using Tag&Rename. If you like, I can provide screenshots.
Edit: Also, I’m talking about the web client. The IOS app displays them as expected.
Not sure if @trumpy81 's comment is addressed to the OP or to dgcurtis, but I don’t think dgcurtis is talking about looking at the Album page. I think he’s talking about changing the “view by” to Tracks on the main Library page. That list shows only the album artist and the track name, and nothing else. And I agree, this page would be more useful with more information.
@zephcom, I’m not sure which app you are looking at, or if you are talking about the same ‘Track View’ page that dgcurtis mentioned. In every Plex client I have, (Web, Android, Roku, Plex Media Player), when a track from a Various Artist album is playing, it always shows the track artist, if the track artist ID3 tag is populated.
On the other hand, I went through the effort to get my tags in order which, granted, takes a long time, and I don’t have nearly as many titles as you do. If your tags are in good order, renaming your folders/files should not be necessary.
I went through that effort because I found that depending on Last.FM or Gracenote for metadata was too error-prone to be reliable. Both of those services are filled with errors in their metadata for popular music, and even worse for classical. Plex can hardly be blamed for that. So I got my embedded tags in order, and configured Plex to use them instead of Gracenote/Last.FM.
@beckfield said:
Not sure if @trumpy81 's comment is addressed to the OP or to dgcurtis, but I don’t think dgcurtis is talking about looking at the Album page. I think he’s talking about changing the “view by” to Tracks on the main Library page. That list shows only the album artist and the track name, and nothing else. And I agree, this page would be more useful with more information.
Yes, the track listing was what I was looking at also.
My ultimate goal with Plex is to be able to use the Kodi client to play my music library because my home theater is where my Bose speakers are connected. My computer does not even have speakers connected to it.
Right now, the Kodi client displays a playlist with the Artists name, Album, Song Title and play time. Perhaps the Kodi client is really trying to display the Album’s artist which really would be Various Artists for a compilation album, the Album and then the song title. But if that is the case, then there should be yet another line for the track artist.
Whatever the case, the artists listing and track listings in the Web app should show the actual artist for those listing to be functional.
It is still just a work-around for the flaw in Plex which insists on presenting the album artist instead of track artist when in artist or tracks view.
But it also is a great way to correct the tagging AND directory layout of a music library. The software is free and multi-platform. It is command line only but once it is set up it works pretty smoothly. It does not over write your existing tagging. Rather it makes new files with the extensive tagging available on the Internet. In writing new files, it also organizes the directories properly.
To get around the flaw in Plex, one should import all compilation albums as single songs. Single artist albums can be imported as albums. That means one loses the ability to play a compilation album as an album but unless Plex is willing to fix the flaw in their software there really doesn’t appear to be a better solution.
OTOH, getting a nicely laid out directory structure and extensive tagging in a largely automated and free process, it is a pretty nice solution.
Caveat: You do have to monitor the process because some situations still need instruction from a human. But the vast majority of the work is automated.
Now if Plex would just finish the Plex for Kodi addon…
