Fix music showing under Various Artists

Plex groups music mainly by Album Artist, not folder names. Tracks ripped from Tidal or other streaming services often land under Various Artists because of soundtrack metadata, multi-artist tags, or online album matching.

Symptoms

• Songs appear under Various Artists instead of the performer
• Soundtrack singles (e.g. Shakira on a Disney soundtrack) file under the composer or label
• Collab tracks (e.g. Akon; Eminem) split across multiple artists or compilations

Root causes

Fix the file tags

Use a tag editor or mutagen in Python. For each track:

1. Album Artist = the artist you want in Plex (e.g. Shakira, Akon)
2. Artist = primary artist only — move features into the title (e.g. Smack That (feat. Eminem))
3. Album = rename soundtrack albums to something like Singles if you only have one or two tracks from the release
4. compilation = 0
5. Remove UPC, ISRC, and streaming IDs (tidal_*, MusicBrainz IDs) that trigger online compilation matching

Example with mutagen

from mutagen import File

audio = File("Shakira/Singles/Shakira - Try Everything.flac")

audio["artist"] = "Shakira"
audio["albumartist"] = "Shakira"
audio["album"] = "Singles"
audio["title"] = "Try Everything"
audio["compilation"] = "0"

for key in list(audio.keys()):
    if key.lower() in {"upc", "isrc", "tidal_album_id", "tidal_track_id",
                       "tidal_album_url", "tidal_track_url", "tidal_data"}:
        del audio[key]

audio.save()

Organize folders

Plex prefers Artist/Album/track.ext:

Shakira/Singles/Shakira - Try Everything.flac
Akon/Konvicted/Akon - Smack That.flac

Avoid special characters in folder names on SMB/NAS shares (e.g. use LOVE instead of LOVE?).

Refresh Plex

A library scan alone often keeps stale metadata. After retagging:

1. Open the music library → Various Artists
2. Select affected tracks → ⋯ → Delete (remove from library, not delete files)
3. ⋯ → Empty Trash
4. Settings → Manage → Libraries → ⋯ → Scan Library Files

If tracks still misfile:

5. Settings → Agents → enable Local Media Assets for Artist and Album, above online sources
6. On a track: ⋯ → Get Info → Tags to confirm local tags
7. ⋯ → Refresh Metadata with replace/prefer local tags if available

Quick checklist

Notes

• Featured artists in the Artist tag cause misgrouping — keep them in Title instead.
• Plex caches online matches; deleting stale library entries is usually required after retagging.
• Studio albums with correct album artist (e.g. Konvicted under Akon) can keep their original album name.