Better support for multiple versions of Music Albums

I’ve got a lot of different versions of albums in my collection (original release, Deluxe Editions, versions from other markets and so on), although the versions are represented on discogs (which I believe is one of the sources for album info) I generally only get 1-2 options in Fix Incorrect Match, and frequently not the option I’m looking for.

I’d like to see better support for this.

I have noticed this with most notably Rumours 35th Anniversary and Tusk (Remastered)

I have to agree.

I usually have a tag in [] in the name. I would be nice if plex preserved these tags in the album name.

Example: Van Halen [2015 Remaster]

That’s really strange how unpopular this suggestion is. Gave my last vote for it. Hope we will see something similar to movies merging.

1 Like

Yes, this is a horrible bug.

So I just yesterday needle dropped a rip of the remastered In the Court of the Crimson King. Go to find it after scanning and it apparently has been lumped in with the blu-ray files I ripped from a box set a couple of years ago, nearly impossible to distinguish the new files from old. All using musicbrainz tagging under separate directories, plex can’t find the files clearly and reliably.

Overall I have found it impossible to enjoy these reissue sets with plex music… with the way this is so broken I need to go to Kodi to simply play the files directly in order to know what I’m getting. (Don’t even get me started with how pitiful the Jethro Tull collections look in plex.)

Haven’t been able to find a decent explanation of this on this forum, whether there are filename/tagging workarounds or what have you. Plex is the only platform where this is an issue for me.

thx for reading

2 Likes

As I said in another suggestion: This would be a very welcome feature. The movie library already shows how it could be done (great system!). I want Plex to become my one-stop media library, but the music section is hardly usable (for me) with all the duplicate albums/tracks.

Please consider this, it would make for a much more consistent usability of Plex.

For completeness and while we clean-up some (other) redundant suggestions…

Here’s a summary of how you can already get that kind of different releases of the same album to work within Plex (using embedded metadata).

https://forums.plex.tv/t/feature-request-music-albums-group-alternate-versions/655775/4?u=tom80h

This obviously doesn’t negate this suggestion or any votes – maybe there’s one or the other who is ok with the alternate approach.

2 Likes

I love the new “Editions” feature for movies, and I feel like Music is a great candidate for that feature.

Many artists, especially long established ones, have multiple versions of a single album (original release, remaster, remix, another remaster, etc).

Take The Beatles for example (and I agree, this is an extreme example haha) but there are only 10 distinct albums visible in this screen shot, but there’s 30 releases in total!

Dream scenario
It would be great if each release could be visually consolidated down to a single album and then have a way of selecting which version you want to listen to. However, I realize that this adds some friction and complexity to the UI and might take some thinking to figure out the best approach.

Acceptable scenario
An alternative would be to simply add the edition name next to the date, exactly like how it’s done with movies…

While this doesn’t reduce the visual clutter, it does allow the album name can remain true to the original release (instead of having stuff like “25th Anniversary Edition” in the album name itself, which I find ugly).

I know that Plex devs are uneasy about straying from MusicBrainz metadata or implementing additions to it, but this could be handled completely by choice by the user simply by choosing to name the album folder in a way that triggers the Edition feature… eg: Let It Be {edition-2021 Super Deluxe Edition}

Once this groundwork is laid, my dream scenario above could be implemented at a later date.

2 Likes

+1 here on exactly this. The movie UI lets you add “edition” in the metadata, not just by modifying the file name. Could be added by the user after getting the album info from MusicBrainz.

Agreed that its not a huge use case, but I have the Beatles box set in stereo and mono for both FLAC and High-Res 24/96. I’d love to be able to more easily listen to one version vs. another, or at least more easily pick the version I want. Remastered, Deluxe, Super Deluxe, HD Tracks, needle drop, etc., would all be welcome additional editions.

1 Like

Also looking for a feature like this.

This really needs to be implemented, it impacts almost every library and it is a constant struggle to manage.

1 Like

Just started using Plexamp again. Works great. Except the duplicates issue.
I previously gave up with Plex for music as it just didn’t work for me.
Now I see some real value, but there are issues.
To be fair - I’m experiencing this issue on multiple platforms - BluOS, and KODI don’t seem to have any easy way of filtering and sorting duplicates.

I have plexamp on a variety of devices - Windows, iOS, Android - and the interface is very nice with the exception of dealing with multiple versions of content.- albums, songs, etc.

I don’t think I’m unique in having multiple versions of content.
What Plexamp does not do is give any way to sort these different versions to differentiate them.
Each version is a unique file in a unique location - but there is no way to display file information such as file name, location, or ID3 Tags.

I’ve been using Mediamonkey for years and it’s ability to display any field you desire as well as having multiple levels of sorting (Sort first by Album Artist, then year, then file plath) allow me to ensure I can quickly navigate the different duplicate versions - whether it be based on location, or type, or encoding scheme, or some other unique identifier in the metadata.

In plex - for video content you can display media info which provides all the metadata associated along with the full file path.

I have not been able to customise the way duplicate content is displayed for me to differentiate them. I could search for a song and have 20 or more instances that show up in albums, covers, compilations, yet the only information displayed is Title then Artist. No other information is displayed. If I search for the term “roxanne” in mediamonkey I have 71 instances that I can clearly differentiate between the versions due to the customisation of the interface.
If there was a way to customise the display to add additional metadata, or file path and ability to sort - that would solve the issue.

It’s a shame that the interface can’t be customised to take advantage of the device being used and the available resolution/screen size - example a desktop full screen could display tons of information, as could say a tablet.

+1 would also love this feature. With so many new versions/expanded editions/re-releases etc I really need a way to easily spot the variations and not have them lumped together into a “Franken-album”. :slight_smile:

+1 for this feature, Plexamp is great and I’d prefer to stay in its ecosystem, but trying to shoe-horn multiple versions / releases of an album into it today is pretty bad. Would absolutely love having the ability to rename to include edition.

I have voted for this already and would love to see something implemented soon.

I had tried Roon and thought the way they handled versions was great. They had a preferred version which was seen and other versions hidden until selecting the album. They could still hold different version names for reference, but were behind the preferred version

I have several of the same albums but they have different bit and sample rates/versions. cd quality, hi res, dsd, mqa… etc… It is difficult to quickly figure out what albums are what formats and versions from the library area.

It would be nice to have more info about an album format and sample rate on the album cover area of the library.

It would also clean up the library area if you were able to Group multiple versions of the same album so they appear as one single album in the plex library, but you can still access the all the other versions and you can also set which version to show as the default version when an album is selected.

Agreed. Plex is great because I can have 27 different versions of a movie. But if I have 3 versions of an album or track, Plex takes its ball and goes home.

Also, MQA tags are often present in FLAC files, can we use them please? Thx.

1 Like

Please consider doing this. As it is now, I get duplicated albums cluttering my library and no way to tell them apart. Focus on the album as the entity and my local files as entries for that entity - like it already is for the movie library (great job, btw!).
It would greatly help with establishing Plex as the one-stop-solution for all media.

Not to dismiss the original request above (which I’d personally like as well), but there actually is a way already.
Key is to:

  1. “Prefer local metadata”
  2. store each album in a dedicated folder, inside the Artist folder (Just like they were completely different albums. Do not stack the different editions of an album in a common album folder.)
  3. Use embedded meta tags and give each edition of an album a distinct Album Title

Notice the differences in album title and covers in this screenshot:

1 Like

In addition to Otto’s description of how to achieve this today, there’s already an existing suggestion asking for that same feature (therefore considering this suggestion a duplicate).

[mod-edit: merged threads to preserve votes]

1 Like