I have different editions of some albums. I’ve tried to add them to my library in many different ways, but Plex always seem to mix them together. Am I doing something wrong here or is it just not possible get this right?
One example would be Paul McCartneys “Flowers in the Dirt”.
I have given the three folders the following names:
Flowers in the Dirt (with 13 tracks)
Flowers in the Dirt [Special Edition] [Remastered] (with 22 tracks)
Flowers in the Dirt [Vinyl] (with 12 tracks)
I’ve tried to add one album at a time, but when I’m finished with the last one Plex has mixed songs from the three albums into anything from 2 to 5 different “albums”.
On my last try theVinyl version with 12 tracks got the final track of the standard version so that it has 12, but the vinyl version has 13. The remastered version appears to be “ok”…
Tip! : Most users should not enable this option and we do not recommend doing so by default. Only enable the preference if you really know that you need it.
Before enabling this, what will happen to my already created music library? Will everything be messed up? Will all poster images be removed for example if not already embedded in the file?
In all my music files I’ve already, from day one, made sure that at least the Title, Artist and Album fields are correct using Mp3tag. Would this be enough? Album cover however are not embedded to my files.
I’ve tried this on the above-mentioned Flowers in the Dirt album and it does not work.
What seem to have worked on -this- specific album however was to add them one by one starting with the version with the greatest number of songs and ending with the Vinyl version that only have 12.
Other albums have equal numbers and even though I add them one by one there also, Plex mixes them together when the 2nd album is added…
It’s possible, but not as badly as it used to get in the past.
Most important is that you add Album Artist meta tags into your albums. Particularly those, where you have different Artist tags within one and the same album. Which applies to pretty many sampler albums, but also to guest appearances of artists on other artist’s albums.
Avoid “grouping” the different versions of an album, by storing them together as subfolders within a common album title folder.
Instead, treat each version as a completely separate album.
Follow always the folder structure
/Music
/Albumartist
/Album title
01 - track title - track artist.mp3
This applies to all sampler and soundtrack albums as well. The only difference is the name of the album artist, which is usually “Various Artists”. Not following this, is the greatest source of chaos after enabling “prefer local metadata”.
So stick to it.
If there is no album art as local asset, Plex will still go out to Musicbrainz and fetch missing detail information.
(Although if you want maximum control over the picture and its quality, you should store it as cover.jpg in the album folder.)
