Cannot add song which never appeared on any album, also cannot DELETE album

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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Server Version#: Version 4.130.0 (Mac Os)

I have a digital version (mp3) of a song which has never appeared on any album. I originally owned it as the B-side of a cassette single that I purchased in 1990. When the album of that single came out shortly thereafter, the B-side song was not on the album. Ironically, the album pretty much sucked, but this B-side single was terrific. I’d forgotten about it until just recently.

I already had the album in Plex (10 tracks). Because this single came out around the same time as the album, I decided to plunk the track onto the album as track #11. I use Music Tag Editor for Mac, and yes edited all the other tracks from the album to be track “x of 11” instead of “x of 10.”

The song did not show up, even after scanning library files.

Weird things are afoot. I finally decided to try what’s lovingly known as the Plex Dance. I deleted the folder of the album from the Plex library (moved it to my machine’s desktop). I scanned library files, and also emptied the trash.

The album is still there (the 10 tracks, not including the single I tried to add). I have restarted the server, gone back to confirm that the album is not in the filesystem, rescanned library multiple times, and yet the album not only remains but I can PLAY the tracks. Can’t explain this at all. I can practically guarantee that I’ve never even listened to this album on Plex before, so it’s nice like it exists in some cache from a recent play.

And yes, I’ve searched MusicBrainz. This song does not exist there. I suppose I could request that it be added, but that seems less than ideal.

And yes, under Manage Library > Edit > Advanced, the option for “Prefer Local Metadata” is definitely checked.

I really don’t know why this is so troublesome. I seem to fondly recall a time when I would drop a file into Plex, the spinning icon would appear demonstrating that the library was being updated, and the media would be available. Likewise, deleting something gave an instant result as well. For quite some time now (like, years) it seems I have to take the extra step of manually refreshing the library if I want to be able to find the media I’ve added.

But I just can’t explain my current issue. Those files are deleted, and yet they play …

Thoughts?

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You have added your obscure single to an official album of which it is not part, and so Plex is probably choosing to use the authoritative album info and just ignoring the presence of the new file because it doesn’t match.

I agree that “Prefer Local Metadata” should have handled this differently, and forced the addition.

The best thing to do would be to add that cassette single to MusicBrainz and set it up in Plex with the same info. It will then be able to match to MB which makes it happy. It’s not too hard to add a release to MB and the data will become available to Plex in 3-4 days.

The next best thing would be to just set it up as its own proper album that even if the data isn’t in MB. That may work OK if it decides to actually look at local metadata.

Plex is extremely fussy about music and sometimes it isn’t possible to organize music the way we might want.

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Okay, so I’ve submitted to MusicBrainz, and received a reply that the info has been added. The info appears here: Recording “Chuck's Lament” by Crosby, Stills & Nash - MusicBrainz

I still cannot figure out how to add it to Plex. Someone on Reddit suggested a simple subfolder (under the artist) in the Music Library called “Live It Up” which would then contain the single “02 Chuck’s Lament.mp3.” “Live It Up” was the A-side single of which this tune was the B-side. That worked for the person suggesting it, though I’d also add that it worked for him before anything was added to MusicBrainz, just on the basis of his own metadata. I have “prefer local metadata” checked but still this doesn’t show up.

I have the additional problem in that there is already a folder under this artist called “Live It Up” which contains the album by that name. So I tried naming the folder that contains this single “Live It Up (Single).” Doesn’t work.

Doesn’t work no matter what I do. Why is this so hard?

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That’s exactly what I would have done too. It is the most literal approach that best matches the real album in MusicBrainz … Though apparently it worked before for that guy too, which I’d also expect thanks to “prefer local metadata.” Strange it did not work for you.

If you just added it MB it can take a few days before it hits Plex’s copy of the MB data. I think once that happens you should be able to use Plex’s “fix match” function to force this to work. I can’t explain why it isn’t working already.

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I think today I will try removing the 10-track “Live It Up” album, and seeing if I can just add the single in a “Live It Up” folder. Of course there’s the problem I had above where I removed the album from the filesystem completely, and yet it remained in Plex and was fully playable. Really can’t figure that one out. My Plex Server and my Music Library are on two different compu—

Wait a minute. I think I just figured it out. Literally as I typed this …

Bought a new Mac Mini a couple years ago and decided to make the old one my Plex Server. At that time I mirrored the filesystem from the old one to the new one, so my “new” (primary) computer retains the entire iTunes library (haven’t used iTunes in ages, but the file structure worked nice for Plex). It occurs to me now that Plex is using the files on the same machine, not the files on my newer networked Mac, even though they are exactly the same.

And I was making all these changes on the newer machine. The file path reflected in Plex is, of course, the exact same, so it had me fooled.

And you’re thinking “How could this guy be so dim?” Haha. Truth is, I use Plex almost exclusively for video, all of which is on a NAS. I do have a large music library, but it’s legacy stuff and I rarely make any changes; only when there’s something like this tune that I can’t get on a streaming service. So I interact with those music files maybe once or twice a year at most.

I’m sure this is the problem.

Jeez.

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I think we have all done about the same. Hopefully, that’s the problem!

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