Audiobook wrong metadata

General Discussions
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There is no support for audiobooks in Plex.
Therefore, strictly speaking, there is no “correct” folder structure for audiobooks as such.

If these are audio-only files, then you have them added to a “music”-type library in Plex.
Which means that they must follow the rules for music.
Which can be a bit complicated, because the general rule which Plex is applying to music doesn’t always work well with audio books.

I am recommending an combined approach, by using both folder structure and embedded meta tags to organize and label your files.

Determine what should be the equivalent of the “Album Artist” for your audio books.
Most people will probably use the author’s name, but there can be tricky situations when a franchise/universe of books has been authored by different people. You need to use a common name if you want all books to appear together under one artist name.

You then need to put this decision into practice, by both:

  • adding an Album Artist meta tag to all files (which must have the exact same content within a book)
  • storing all books tagged with the same Album Artist inside the same artist folder on your drive. Do not allow deviant album artists with that folder, or your “albums” will get misappropriated to (one of) the deviant album artists!
    (You are however free to store whatever you like into the Track Artist tag [i.e. the “regular” Artist tag] in each track – even someone completely different, like the reader.

Don’t forget to also add Track Number tags (and a Disc Number tag, if your album/book consists of several discs).

The folder structure you will then end up with should be like this:

/Audiobooks <-- this folder is added to the Plex library
   /Authors Name 1
      /Book Title 1
         1 - Chapter one.mp3
         2 - Chapter two.mp3
         ...
      /Book Title 2
         1 - Chapter one.mp3
         2 - Chapter two.mp3
         ...
     ...
   /Another Authors Name 2
      /Book Title 1
         1 - Chapter one.mp3
         2 - Chapter two.mp3
         ...
     ...
   ...

I strongly advise you to store audio books and music in separate Plex libraries.
Now enable the checkbox “Prefer local metadata” in the Advanced properties sof your audio book library.

After you have made all these changes, it is probably best to either remove and recreate your audio book library completely or at least perform the Plex Dance with all books by the same author.