Here is the problem: When you have tracks with the same name across multiple album release types plex will often place an incorrect track in the popular tracks list. Point and example below. When I added the ZZ Top
album RAW: 'That Little Ol' Band From Texas' Original Soundtrack
to my server my popular tracks went from this …
to …
The RAW album has the album; soundtrack
sub release tags set and is grouped within Soundtracks in the plex UI which now has the most popular tracks. Doing a plex dance on the album and the entire ZZ Top artist does nothing to effect the popular tracks in this scenario, and I’ll explain why below.
Why does plex do this: When plex scans an album it does this by timestamp, going from newest to oldest based on the timestamp of the album folder on disk. In this example we can see from below the RAW album has the newest timestamp so its scanned first.
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Afterburner (1985)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Antenna (1993)'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 plex plex 965296 Nov 11 14:51 artist-background.jpg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 plex plex 211768 Nov 11 14:50 artist-poster.jpg
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Deguello (1979)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Eliminator (1983)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'El Loco (1981)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Fandango! (1975)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Goin'\'' 50 (2019)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Greatest Hits (1992)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'La Futura (2012)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Live! Greatest Hits From Around the World (2016)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Mescalero (2003)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:26 'RAW - '\''That Little Ol'\'' Band From Texas'\'' Original Soundtrack (2022)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Recycler (1990)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Rhythmeen (1996)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Rio Grande Mud (1972)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Tejas (1976)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'Tres Hombres (1973)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'XXX (1999)'
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 11 19:22 'ZZ Top'\''s First Album (1971)'
As its scanned first its the first reference to the tracks and plex then decides its the most popular track and places it on the list. This is stupid, wrong and flawed.
This happens for Soundracks, Live Albums, Singles & EPs but does not happen for Complications as this release type is excluded from popular tracks.
Fool Plex to Pick Albums only: The workaround I used for this is somewhat simple but a real pain due to the poor design of popular tracks. Anyhow, I decided to do the following:
- using MusicBrainz Picard add the
%releasetype%
to the naming of folders (I’ll copy the code for this below) - this is so I can search for only albums in the next step - touch any folders which has the
album
only release typefind ~ -type d -name '*\[album\]' -exec touch '{}' \;
- plex dance my entire music library
Doing this results in anything that is a album only release now having a later timestamp than everything else so plex will scan them first under an artist before getting to the other albums.
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'Afterburner (1985) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'Antenna (1993) [album]'/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 plex plex 965296 Nov 11 14:51 artist-background.jpg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 plex plex 211768 Nov 11 14:50 artist-poster.jpg
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'Deguello (1979) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'Eliminator (1983) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'El Loco (1981) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'Fandango! (1975) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:55 'Goin'\'' 50 (2019) [album; compilation]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:55 'Greatest Hits (1992) [album; compilation]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'La Futura (2012) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:55 'Live! Greatest Hits From Around the World (2016) [album; compilation; live]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'Mescalero (2003) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:55 'RAW_ '\''That Little Ol'\'' Band From Texas'\'' Original Soundtrack (2022) [album; soundtrack]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'Recycler (1990) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'Rhythmeen (1996) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'Rio Grande Mud (1972) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'Tejas (1976) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'Tres Hombres (1973) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'XXX (1999) [album]'/
drwxrwxr-x 2 plex plex 4096 Nov 12 11:58 'ZZ Top'\''s First Album (1971) [album]'/
You can now see from the above that [album]
, [album; compilation; live]
, [album; soundtrack]
etc… have been added the folder names of the albums AND the timestamps for the [album]
only releases are later. This now places album tracks in the popular tracks list as they are scanned first.
Many many topics have been created over the years on this which get ignored so I hope this information is of help to someone…
https://forums.plex.tv/t/popular-tracks-does-not-reference-what-album-the-popular-track-is-from/571711
https://forums.plex.tv/t/should-album-demo-release-tracks-be-placed-into-popular-tracks-list/812210
https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-music-how-to-remove-live-tracks-from-popular-tracks-list/326986
https://forums.plex.tv/t/album-live-albums-popular-tracks-display/790970
MusicBrainz Rename Script:
$if2(%albumartist%,%artist%)/
$if(%albumartist%,%album%) ($left(%originaldate%,4)) [%releasetype%]/
$if($gt(%totaldiscs%,1),%discnumber%,)
$if($and(%albumartist%,%tracknumber%),$num(%tracknumber%,2),) - %title%