correct way to index compilations

Dev Community Dev/API Corner
1

What's the required folder structure for a compilation of music by various artists, say a favorite playlist?

 

It's not described here: http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/Media_Naming_and_Organization_Guide#Music_Added_to_Plex_Media_Server

 

I placed things in a subfolder /Compilations/MySongs but it didn't extract track/artist/title correctly, even though the ID3v2 information is complete.

 

Before I engage on another hour of reverse engineering Plex's Scanners, I'm wondering if anyone could simply describe this?

 

I suspect a lot of people have a bunch of MP3 in their collection that doesn't fall into the artist/album classification but want Plex to keep it together.

2

I'm having the same problem, where you able to get a solution?

3

I've resorted to using the "Album Artist" field with the album name. 

That way I can find the album i'm looking for and the individual tracks retain their own metadata for "Artist"

4

That's a great work around, but if you have say, hundreds of compilations with Various Artists, it doesn't work to well. 

I'm always getting freeze ups when browsing Various Artists because of the unnecessary display of 2-3 times as many albums than I actually have. 

I'm currently going through my Music and trying to organise it properly. Marking my compilations as compilations has no effect with Plex and IMO, it should.

Consolidating these Albums with 'Part of a Compilation' checked is a must. 

I have the entire Now Collection (all 86 Albums), but when browsing, it displays 172 Album covers and can crash my client.

With other 3x or 4x CD albums it's worse. 

Another 'bodge job' is to start the track numbers from 101 and go to say 320. But that looks real ugly imo

See attached photo for a clear example.

5

I'm not defending my method, and it doesn't necessarily work for everyone. 

But I do have hundreds of compilation CDs (used to work in the music industry), and I tend to think of those in terms of the title, so using the album artist workaround seems to fit most of my needs.

And I use %discnumber%%tracknumber% %title% - %artist% as my main syntax for music, so the 101 - 320 track thing doesn't bother me in the least. 

But in the image you shared I can obviously understand the frustration. I was dealing with the exact same thing with the Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan box set. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006H3MIV8/) Its not like I really want it under "Bob Dylan" but I'm trying to find a pragmatic solution to a problem. 

Surely we'd all like it if Plex handled music better, and if all of the players handled the Various Artists situation differently. So I'm settling for the "least painful" solution rather than letting a search for perfection prevent me from having something usable. 

6

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