Can I get Plex to re-organize my file system to match organization in Plex?

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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Server Version#: 4.46.2
Player Version#: webplayer?

Situation:
So I combined my music library with my wife’s via file-folder sync program. The result was both of our libraries, without duplicates, organized somewhat. The folder structure is like this:

  • Artist (well organized)
  • – Album (poorly organized)
  • ---- Song (well organized)

So for example I might have a folder that’s “The Beatles”. Within that folder are folder like “Sgt Pepper”, “Abbey Road”, whatever. But then there’s “Sarah’s Beatles Mix” or some such, which was probably a burned mix cd that my wife made herself at some point in the past and the file structure stuck. But in “Sarah’s Beatles Mix” are songs from other albums, say a handful of songs from “Revolver”, some from “Rubber Soul”, etc, all of which are labeled accurately.

Question
I’m going through Plex and labeling the songs bundled in random mixes by their actual album. Can I get Plex to re-organize my file folder structure to match the organized songs into their organized album folders as they now appear in Plex?

Let me know if any of this is unclear. Thanks in advance for the help.

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Plex will not organise (aka move ) your media files.

1 Like
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I recommend Mediamonkey.

Other alternatives include musicbrainz picard, mp3tag, foobar.

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MediaMonkey looks like something I should use instead of spending any time organizing things in Plex. Is that right?

If I use MediaMonkey to organize the file structure itself on my server, then Plex should be able to display everything appropriately. Rather than organizing in Plex, having it display appropriately, but leaving the file structure a mess.

Yeah?

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mediamonkey and plex are something entirely different from each other.

other than being able to play music, they have different purposes.

plex is for streaming your media (audio/video) to just about anywhere to another plex client, all which run on a variety of platforms.

mediamonkey is a windows based music/media manager/player, that has some basic dlna streaming, and phone syncing abilities, along with a bunch of different skins and plugins/scripts that expand functionality.

in order for anything to properly organize your files, they must be properly tagged. Then an organizer program can then rename according to the tags.

how plex wants music organized @ https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/

for tagging, I recommend musicbrainz picard, its not really a bulk tagger though, but works best an album (or a few albums) at a time. picard can rename too, but its not really a music manager/player like mediamonkey or foobar is.

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You could also use Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr if you want a downloader/organizer. Definitely not a functionality of Plex though!

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IMHO,

MusicBrainz - Picard

with hand-written renaming rules

%albumartist%/
$if($ne(%albumartist%,),%album%,)/
$if($gt(%totaldiscs%,1),Disc %discnumber%/,)
$num(%tracknumber%,2) - %title%

You only need supply the top level directory and one

[chuck@lizum Elton John.512]$ ls -R *Blue*
Elton John - Blue Moves:
Disc 1/  Disc 2/

Elton John - Blue Moves/Disc 1:
01 - Your Starter For.mp3  04 - Chameleon.mp3          07 - Crazy Water.mp3       Elton John - Blue Moves Disc 1.m3u
02 - Tonight.mp3           05 - Boogie Pilgrim.mp3     08 - Shoulder Holster.mp3
03 - One Horse Town.mp3    06 - Cage The Songbird.mp3  cover.jpg

Elton John - Blue Moves/Disc 2:
01 - Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word.mp3  07 - If There's A God In Heaven (What's He Waiting For?).mp3
02 - Out Of The Blue.mp3                     08 - Idol.mp3
03 - Between Seventeen And Twenty.mp3        09 - Theme From A Non-Existent TV Series.mp3
04 - The Wide Eyed And Laughing.mp3          10 - Bite Your Lip (Get Up And Dance!).mp3
05 - Someone's Final Song.mp3                cover.jpg
06 - Where's The Shoorah?.mp3                Elton John - Blue Moves Disc 2.m3u
[chuck@lizum Elton John.513]$

Plex is Read-Only on your media except for the ONE case where you can give it permission to delete DVR media after playing.

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Ok, I played with MediaMonkey and I love how it auto-organizes files according to rules. It’s exactly the tool I needed.

Now that that’s covered, I’m realizing that I have a different problem. I have a bunch of songs where the ID3 Tags are messed up and I don’t know of an efficient way to fix them. Per my example above, I have a bunch of Beatles songs with the correct artist, and title, but incorrect album. The album is currently “Sarah’s Beatles Mix”, which I can remove, sure, but then what album do I replace it with? I’ve been poking around in MusicMonkey, trying to get MusicBrainz to do what I want, but I can’t seem to sort it out.

How can I ask the MusicBrains plugin withing Media Monkey, here’s a bunch of random songs by the same artist, what album is each song on?

edit: I get that this has become a MediaMonkey question, so I’ll understand if it’s outside of the scope of this forum.

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