I still haven't figured out how to properly tag classical music

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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I apologize if this has been asked an answered. Due to the nature of it, I need to write this out and ask for advice specific to what I’m looking at on my desktop.

If I go to a record store, I’m not looking in the LSO section, I’m going to look in the Mahler section.

But there’s enough albums by an orchestra that have more than one composer on them.

For example, there’s this mess…

Mussorgsky / Ravel / Stravinsky, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Riccardo Muti – Pictures At An Exhibition / The Firebird (Suite, 1919)

I suppose, ultimately, the question is if I’m going to listen to the entire performance as the conductor intended or am I going to go and just listen to Stravinsky’s The Firebird. I believe my answer to that would be that I’m going to listen to the whole album just as I’d put on a record or CD.

I’m using Music Tag Editor Pro to tag my files. So I’ve got a slot for composer and conductor. However, Plex doesn’t seem to make them usable. Which leaves me with Artist and Album Artist.

In my head, generally, the artist is the orchestra and the album artist is the composer. By tagging my files this way though, Plex is going to spilt an album based on the number of composers there are. Under Igor Stravinsky, I’ll have an album called Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition - Stravinsky: L’Oiseau de feu Suite missing the Mussorgsky tracks.

So, the solution would seem to be to make the artist the composer and the album artist the orchestra. Now the problem is that Plex is going to sort the albums by orchestra rather than composer. So browsing for albums by particular composers isn’t really possible.

I’ve been struggling with this for a while. Any friendly advise would be appreciated.

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Plex ain’t great for classical.

I would make a separate Classical library and then maybe use the Genre tag for the composer. That way, at least you can browse by composer.

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You’re right, Plex doesn’t use the Composer or conductor tags, and @BanzaiInstitute’s advice is good. I’ve had the same battle with Plex, and I created a feature request asking for support of tags that are necessary for classical music. That post also lists the most relevant tags, and which of those Plex does and doesn’t support. There’s also a request specifically for the Composer tag which would be the bare minimum necessity.

Until (if) that happens, my solution has been to create a library for Classical, and another library for everything else. I think the same as you, the artist is the orchestra and the album artist is the composer, so that’s how I tag them. Albums with multiple composers are simply going to end up as “Various Artist” albums, so I have a “Various Artist” artist in Plex that has all those albums. It’s not ideal, but ideal won’t be possible until Plex implements the bulk of my feature request.

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That’s actually a pretty good idea. Thanks!!

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I’ve come across the suggestion of using Various Artists before. Sounds dreadful to me.

The reality is that I’m not typically listening to classical too often, I just need a way to organize what I have. Creating a new Classical library and utilizing Genre for Composer, I think, makes a lot of sense and doing so as you’ve described should be sufficient.

Wow, going back to 2015 with that post. You’ve got my vote.

If/when Plex implements these features, having Classical in its own library is going to make updating the tags easier too. Thanks!!

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If you’re not already hip to mp3tag, check it out. It makes any tag/filename operation you can think of easy.

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Interesting. It doesn’t seem too different in features from Music Tag Editor Pro that I’ve been using but the UI is a bit more pleasing. I’ll give the 7 day trial a shot. Thanks!

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Sorry, I should have given you a link. The mp3tag I am using is freeware.

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Ah yes but I’m on a Mac so it’s $20 :roll_eyes:

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Sorry, didn’t realize. Well, check out the trial… it is really great software and even though it’s free on Windows, I sent the guy $20 anyway. You might love it too.

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