I’ve found a few other threads regarding duplicate songs and how plex handles them but they are many years old. Is there any plan to improve how plex handles multiple songs? My library often has both the artists primary album, but also greatest hits, compilations, etc that cause plex to list multiple of the same song.
The biggest issue i have is the rating system. If i rate one song as 5 star, all duplicate songs from different albums are rated as well! With me using a smart playlist for highest rated songs, it creates a playlist with tons of duplicates.
It’d be great if Plex rating would be based off of the song + album and not just the song title.
They can be different. Take Kim Wilde and Kids in America. This track is on album Kim Wilde (1981) and album Never Say Never (2006). Both are very different tracks but plex links them together because of this design.
What I done to help with at least the duplication when playing the playlist is to adjust the smart filter to only include tracks not played in the month. That way, when a track plays it won’t play the dup again until it comes around again.
If it does then Musicbrainz may have incorrect data, as that’s what the Plex Music agent uses to distinguish the different recordings (great albums, by the way).
We’ll have a “de-duping” option for smart playlists generally in the future.
Agree with Dokuro. Remastered is also another where I might like the original more than the remastered.
However my purpose is less about rating individual tracks and more trying to emulate Spotify’s “Liked Songs”. I have a smart playlist of all 5 star rated songs so I can easily find all my favorite songs. The problem is there might be 5 of the same songs listed in that playlist because they are in different albums. No one wants that.
I would assume the primary purpose of the rating system is so we can created filters and playlists based on how we feel about a song correct? Otherwise there really isn’t much use of the rating system if we are only browsing song by song. If what I said is the primary purpose, then I’d recommend rating be song + album specific so that we can meet the true purpose of the rating system.
Elan, really appreciate what you guys have built over the years! Been a user since 2012ish and I’ve been nothing but happy with Plex. Well done!
And that’s why we’re adding the de-dupe functionality (which is actually already baked into the auto-generated playlists Plexamp makes upon first signing in).
Your right, the musicbrainz_recordingid is the same between the tracks. I’ll now need to figure out how to go and fix this. Anyhow, I won’t derail this thread.
+1 to this. I’m one of the users mentioned in OP having made a thread - would kill to get this feature! Sometimes I’ve got 4 copies of a song in my smart playlist and have to skip multiple times to get to the real next track.
After years of using plex, I only started dabbling with smart playlists recently and found this ‘duplicates in smart playlists’ issue straight away that’s a real pain and puts me off using them further.
@elan if the de-dupe feature you’re talking about is all about solving this, definitely +1 looking forward to it being released! Thanks for all the continued great work with plexamp and plex!
The auto-created “Fresh ” smart playlist uses an upcoming feature which already de-dupes. You can use that for now, and the feature will be available to all smart playlists in an upcoming release.
The problem is as follows
(1) You want to create a Smart Playlist from a specific decade with the original track by rating it 5 stars. When Plex automatically rates the track on a compilation album 5 stars, then the track on the compilation album will be in the wrong decade.
(2) Another scenario is if Plex rates a remix 5 stars (which has occurred when I rated a song 5 stars), the user may not necessarily love the remixed track and wants to rate it as highly as the original.
Both tracks will be rated 5 stars, so a smart playlist by decade will still pick it up (regardless of which one you rate).
Agreed this is incorrect, and it generally boils down to bad MusicBrainz data; ratings are stored with recordings and a remix should be a different recording.
Ah I see it now on my primary plex account. Any way to get these on other home accounts? I have separate home music accounts for each person in my household and I only see these playlists on the main account.
Whether as something user configurable or as a single fixed configuration, having a priority logic for which of the duplicate songs gets pulled into the playlist would have value. Something like “always take the highest bitrate” or “FLAC>ALAC>Opus>AAC>MP3” would really help mixed libraries where the same song shows up in multiple file types across different albums added at different times.
” smart playlist uses an upcoming feature which already de-dupes. You can use that for now, and the feature will be available to all smart playlists in an upcoming release.