How can I make a really really simple music library?

General Discussions
1

I have mp3 files of about 200 gramophone records, and I would like to get a nice library in Plex. I organized the files religiously following the Media Preparation guidelines of Plex. Thus I have for example the following 5 files on the disk in the parent folder “Music\Matthias_Schallplatten” which is the base folder for the library:

      Laurie Anderson - Big Science\01 - Seite 1.mp3
      Laurie Anderson - Big Science\02 - Seite 2.mp3
      Laurie Anderson - Just Like a Woman DRS 1985\01 - Seite 1.mp3
      Laurie Anderson - Ohne Titel\01 - Seite 1.mp3

(“Seite” meaning Side). I expected to get from Plex the following catalog:

   Laurie Anderson
      Big Science
         Seite 1
         Seite 2
      Just Like a Woman DRS 1985
         Seite 1
      Ohne Titel
         Seite 1

Instead I get

   Anderson Laurie
      [Unknown Album]
         Ohne Titel
         Big Science
      [Unknown Album]
         Just Like a
      [Unknown Album]
         Big Science

I have checked “make simple music library” when I created it. I have unchecked about every checkbox that I could see. Especially I have unchecked “Use embedded tags”.
First, the folders are mixed up in an unexplainable way.
Second, notice the cut off title “Just Like a” and the switched name “Anderson Laurie”. I think that this is from the mp3’s metadata that contains only one entry, namely

   Title: Anderson Laurie - Just Like a

that must have been added at the time when I “ripped” my gramophone records more than 10 years ago.

So: Why is Plex using the embedded tags, although I have unchecked the “use embedded tags” option?
I have created the library several times with many combinations of the options, with always the same bad result.

Why can’t I have a simple library that respects the naming of the files on the disk without trying to be “smart” about anything? All recognition algorithms are going to fail anyway because the first 5 to 10 seconds of these captures of gramophone records typically are white noise anyway.

What am I doing wrong?

Matthias Kläy

P.S. I’m running Plex Version 1.2.4.2949 (updated about an hour ago) on qnap NAS HS-251+ Firmware Version 4.2.2 Build 20161021

2

I recommend the Musicbrainz Picard program to control naming and structure.

PMS prefers to have each song identified. If you have one long rip, I recommend naming it as song 01. title_of_song_one

I have Picard rename to directory /synb/MusicBrainz/ as its start point.

The complete naming rule in the graphic is:

$if2(%albumartist%,%artist%)/%album%/$if($gt(%totaldiscs%,1),Disc %discnumber%/,)$num(%tracknumber%,2) -$if(%compilation%, %artist% -,) %title%

This also handles each album in a set.

When Picard is done, I take the structure it creates under /synb/MusicBrains (which beings with ‘Artist’) and move this directly into my Music library.
This gives me:

Music/
Artist/
Album/
Tracks

Below is the graphic of my settings if this helps.

3

Thank you very much for your tip, it set me on the right track (pun intended…):

The idea is to modify the tags of the mp3 files in such a way that PMS can build a good library.
I experimented with Picard but this program is still way too smart for me.
However, I found the tag editor Mp3tag. It has a function to convert file names to tags. After using the tag editor and rebuilding the library in PMS I got exactly what I wanted!

Anyway, it would be great if PMS would include this tag conversion function itself. They go to great lengths to explain how one should organize the files in the Media Preparation guide only to ignore this structure when the library is built.

4

MP3tag is the way to go. If I had seen this question earlier that’s exactly what I would have recommended. In my experience you can ignore directory structure-based organization and really just rely on the metadata attached to your files.

5

Mp3tag is a good tool too. Since it’s not available on all platforms, I recommended MusicBrainz.

The answer is… Whatever works and you’re most comfortable with using.

6

Thank you guys for your help.

7

@ChuckPa said:
Mp3tag is a good tool too. Since it’s not available on all platforms, I recommended MusicBrainz.

The answer is… Whatever works and you’re most comfortable with using.

Yeah only discovered Picard a few days ago. It’s finally sorted out my last few niggles with my flac files. Especially with Various artist albums . :slight_smile: