Using the latest version of PMS.
I manually edit the artist from Disney to Elton John and it still shows up under Disney. I removed all the Elton John albums from my library by moving the Elton John directory to another drive and rescanned my library. All the albums disappeared. I added back the directory, and rescanned and they popped up under Disney again.
Files are FLAC and I confirmed that the Vorbis Comment for artist and albumartist are both set to Elton John.
From what I have seen, the problem you describe can appear when some other artist in the library has a metadata problem. In other words, while you are seeing Disney and Elton John get scrambled, there might be a problem in Pink Floyd that is causing it. I suspect that problems in Various Artists may be more likely to trigger this issue.
The only way I have been able to solve this problem is to check the entire library to make sure the filenames and tags are kosher. Plex for music is extremely picky.
Follow all the naming and organizing rules. These are among the most important.
If you are fighting with a broken library I recommend simply deleting the library and re-adding it whenever you make a major organization update. This will be much faster than doing the Plex Dance for single artists, especially since the root causes of some library problems may not be in the artist you suspect. Just turn off all the advanced metadata lookups and audio analysis – once the basics are correct and you are done re-doing the library, you can turn that stuff back on, and start making playlists.
If you do everything right in the filenames, folder structure, and tags, then you won’t HAVE to edit much stuff manually. Organize your library so the automatic lookups work – that is the goal.
This may be antithetical to the way you would like to organize your music. But if you are going to use Plex, it does have to be this way. This is just how it is. 
This is only one of many problems I am having now. I have a TON of split albums. I spent an hour last night fixing matches to clean that up and I think I only got â…“ ofd the way through all the split albums.
I really recommend attacking the problem at the source: file organization, naming, and tagging. If you have all of your files set up right, you won’t have to fix almost anything manually.
There are some things that Plex do in a way which is technically correct but not to your tastes. For example the way releases are tagged as singles, albums, or mixes depends on how those releases are categorized at MusicBrainz. You may disagree with some of those decisions, or maybe all your albums aren’t categorized. That’s the sort of thing you may have to spend time fixing. But if you have a lot of releases that are broken into parts, under the wrong name, or have other huge errors – don’t fix that with the Plex GUI, fix the files.
I installed another music server, Navidrome, and it imported my files perfectly, so I have to assume all my tags are good. I will double check that all compilation albums use the Various Artists tag and check directory structure.
Your tags may be good for Navidrome but Plex is pathologically fussy. Everything has to be exactly how Plex wants it, and a small inconsistency can cause weird problems like what you have seen.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/
Hmm…
This is forcing me to use an organization method I don’t want to use.
For multi-disc albums I name them DD-TT - Song.ext: 01-01 - Come Sail Away.flac. I don’t really want to do 101-Come Sail Away.flac.
And my folder structure is Music/Format/Artist/Album: /mnt/music-library/flac/Styx/The Grand Illusion.
If Plex can’t handle this path structure, that’s really disappointing. Navidrome just scans everything and sorts by id tags/vorbis comments, which is what I want.
I had my own way of doing things too. I gave up and did what Plex wanted, because I had to if I wanted to use Plex. And it turned out to be fine. I realized that it didn’t matter to me what the filenames were as long as the system was sensible (and it is). I don’t even think about it now, I have my tools set up to do things the Plex way and I just add music all the time without thinking about it. YMMV.
If you can’t tolerate the Plex way, and a lot of people cannot, then Plex definitely isn’t for you because a noncompliant library will cause endless problems. You can get away with a lot in TV and especially movie libraries, but not music.
I have a workaround I am trying now. I’ll report back.
I don’t understand why it needs to be done “the Plex way,” when almost all other music servers just use the tag info.
How about this?
[chuck@lizum music.2003]$ cd The\ Beach\ Boys/
[chuck@lizum The Beach Boys.2004]$ cd Made\ in\ California/
[chuck@lizum Made in California.2005]$ ls -la
total 28
drwxr-xr-x 8 chuck chuck 118 Apr 11 2023 ./
drwxr-xr-x 12 chuck chuck 4096 Apr 11 2023 ../
drwxr-xr-x 2 chuck chuck 4096 Apr 11 2023 Disc 1/
drwxr-xr-x 2 chuck chuck 4096 Apr 11 2023 Disc 2/
drwxr-xr-x 2 chuck chuck 4096 Apr 11 2023 Disc 3/
drwxr-xr-x 2 chuck chuck 4096 Apr 11 2023 Disc 4/
drwxr-xr-x 2 chuck chuck 4096 Apr 11 2023 Disc 5/
drwxr-xr-x 2 chuck chuck 4096 Apr 11 2023 Disc 6/
[chuck@lizum Made in California.2006]$ ls *1
01 - Home Recordings_Surfin' Rehearsal Highlights (2012 edit, mono).flac
02 - Surfin' (with session intro, mono).flac
03 - Their Hearts Were Full of Spring (demo, mono).flac
04 - Surfin' Safari (original mono long version).flac
05 - 409 (original mono long version).flac
06 - Lonely Sea (original mono mix).flac
07 - Surfin' U.S.A..flac
08 - Shut Down (2003 stereo mix).flac
09 - Surfer Girl.flac
10 - Little Deuce Coupe.flac
11 - Catch a Wave.flac
12 - Our Car Club.flac
13 - Surfers Rule (with session intro).flac
14 - In My Room.flac
15 - Back Home.flac
16 - Be True to Your School (mono single version).flac
17 - Ballad of Ole' Betsy.flac
18 - Little Saint Nick (stereo single version).flac
19 - Fun, Fun, Fun.flac
20 - Little Honda.flac
21 - Don't Worry Baby (2009 stereo mix).flac
22 - Why Do Fools Fall in Love (2009 stereo mix).flac
23 - The Warmth of the Sun.flac
24 - I Get Around (with session intro, mono).flac
25 - Wendy (2007 stereo mix).flac
26 - All Summer Long (2007 stereo mix).flac
27 - Girls on the Beach.flac
28 - Don't Back Down.flac
29 - When I Grow Up (to Be a Man) (2012 stereo mix).flac
30 - All Dressed Up for School (mono).flac
31 - Please Let Me Wonder (2007 stereo mix).flac
32 - Kiss Me, Baby (2000 stereo mix).flac
33 - In the Back of My Mind (2012 stereo mix).flac
34 - Dance, Dance, Dance (2003 stereo mix).flac
cover.jpg
Made in California [Disc 1].cue
The Beach Boys - Made in California [Disc 1].jpg
The Beach Boys - Made in California [Disc 1].m3u
[chuck@lizum Made in California.2007]$
I have a renaming rule to automate this if desired.
The top level music directory is sorted by Artist
Elton John with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/ Steely Dan/
Enigma/ Stevie Nicks/
Eric Marienthal/ Stevie Wonder/
Eric Woolfson & Alan Parsons/ Supertramp/
Eurythmics/ Supertramp [mp3 - orig]/
Fleetwood Mac/ Sweetback/
Foreigner/ Swiatkowsky, Chet (Piano Solo)/
Gene Ammons/ The Alan Parsons Project/
George Michael/ The Beach Boys/
Gordon Lightfoot/ The Beatles Discography/
Hans Zimmer/ The Beatles [FLAC]/
Hugh Laurie/ The Beatles - The U.S. Albums (2014)/
James Horner/ The Mick Fleetwood Band/
James Taylor/ Tina Turner/
Janet Jackson/ Toto/
Jefferson Starship/ Various/
Jeff Wayne/ Various Artists/
Jennifer Lopez/ Whitney Houston/
Jerry Goldsmith/ Williams, Roger/
Jim Croce/ Youngstown/
Jimmy Buffett/ Yusuf Islam/
John Barry/
[chuck@lizum music.2011]$
So, here is what I did. I added multiple directories to my music library, so now I have:
/mnt/music-library/flac
/mnt/music-library/mp3
/mnt/music-library/aac
/mnt/music-library/alac
/mnt/music-library/ape
This seems to work and also lets me exclude my dsd files.
So far, everything looks OK.
Then I guess I never understood what you were trying to do since this is the first time you mentioned DSD files, but I am glad you got it working.
I have been considering redoing my music library because I recently realized that the use of “Various Artist” for my many compilation albums, which are setup per the official folder structure including a My Favorite Songs album of singles, I cannot reliably look up a song by either title or artist. Perhaps there are issues with the tags and other info not correct so I am looking at using Musicbrain to fix those; but I wonder about other ways to organize these songs from the compilation albums.
I do not really care that the songs are from a compilation album, I do care that I can find and access them easily. So would it not be better to create the folder structure of a particular artist with all the original albums the various songs came from and put them there, even if there is only 1 or two songs in that album folder? Does Plex care if all the songs are there when an album is identified as its own folder under the artist?
Here is another twist, Movie sound tracks. These could be a couple different ways, original artists or actors/cover bands. I suppose by definition they are compilation albums but do they have to be in the “Various Artists” folder or could they also be under the Artist folder in an album folder named for the movie sound track? I guess I would put the actor/cover band songs in the “Various Artists” folder with the movie soundtrack as the album folder.
I realize that either of these organization I propose would prevent me from playing the complication or movie soundtrack album in its entirety but I typically listen to all my music from a play list in shuffle, like listening to a radio station.
Thanks for your recommendations.
So if the Album Artist is “Various Artists,” when you search for the Artist or Title nothing comes up? It should definitely not be like that, I just tested my library. Obscure one-track artists buried in Various Artists albums pop right up in search.
Well, Plex would probably prefer it that way. Plex really, really wants to look up real info for every album. Plex would probably prefer to see a real album that only had track 7 in it, if that’s the only track you like.
But that’s obviously a huge hassle, so I don’t do it. I have several fake Various Artist albums for some music genres, and the files are searchable and Plex understands the Artist and Track name. Here is an example of a track in a fake VA album, and this is also the only place this Artist name is used.
If you are unable to use the search feature to find music that you know is in the library, then it sounds like something needs to be changed. It should work.
I have had Plex for a number of years, but only recently been motivated to learn it better and add new music so I’m still kind of a newbie. When I said I was looking up songs and artists what I really should have said is that I was trying to find them using the Filter in the Tracks listing to locate them, and this never works for me. Probably not using this feature right. It did not occur to me to use the more global Search function, that does work to find songs and artists, even if they are in a VA album.
Thank-you for the recommendations for folder structures and verifying my understanding of how Plex would prefer to see these files organized. I only have 7 compilation albums so not a huge deal to re-structure the songs to their respective artists folders so I think that is the way I am going to go with that.
After trying a bunch of songs it has proven to be a lot of work and almost impossible to identify exactly which original artists album a song from a compilation album came from. I did not realize this, but I guess it makes sense that there are a lot of versions of songs that really complicates things. When you use Musicbrains to figure out a song it tells you correctly it is from the compilation album.
Plus I know there a number of songs that I retagged to try and fit into specific albums that somehow got mixed up and the song playing is not what’s being displayed. Therefore I am just going to accept that their rightful place is in VA and the respective compilation album and use Musicbrains to straighten out those problem. Afterall the Search as discussed above does work, not sure about the Filters, but I can manage otherwise.
However, I will say, and if any Plex employees read this, it would be nice if when you look at an Artist from the library that there would be a section that just lists all the songs by album and not make you go to the album and find it. Or am I missing something?
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