[Implemented] Treat multi-disc albums as a single album

Feature Suggestions
1

I'm sorry if this was already posted as a bug. I did a search on this forum and didn't see a topic. If I somehow missed it, please go ahead and lock this one.

 

I would like to request a fix for how PLEX handles albums with multiple discs. Right now, if an album is tagged properly with the discnumber field filled out for each specific disc, PLEX will show each disc as a separate album when viewing a music list. I have several game and anime soundtracks which usually have 2-3 discs worth of music, and PLEX always has multiple entries for these albums even though they are single entities.

 

PLEX should consolidate all discs under a single album listing; discs should not show up as separate albums, because discs aren't separate albums. This would also help when trying to listen to an entire album straight through; I shouldn't have to "change discs" when my music collection is digital!

 

Hope you folks take this under consideration. I really like PLEX and to be honest I've tried a bunch of other solutions for streaming my music collection before and I could never get any of them to even work. PLEX just made things really easy and for the most part it does exactly what I want it to do. It's just this multi-disc album thing that's keeping it from being perfect.

 

Thanks for your time.

 

 

2

PLEX should consolidate all discs under a single album listing

Totally agree.
 
When I realised that Plex did not treat two CDs as one album, I tried the Merge button. What a mess. Now when I play the album i get track 1 form cd 1, the track 1 from cd 2, thern track 2 from cd1 .... And I can't even 'unmerge'.
 
The music section of plex is not ready for prime time, to put it mildly.

3

At the moment Plex is sorting tracks inside an album accordingly to track numbers. CD-numbers are used only to recognize separate albums.


It would be great if this additional information would be used also in this case and as far as I remember it used to be before the split in server and clients. Since this information is stored in the database there is hope that the developers will add this extremely important feature.


At the moment a possible workaround is to change the tracknumbers before adding the tracks to the library to something like xyy where x stands for the CD-number and yy for the track number. This should be done on the tag-level. After this the albums can be merged to one without the mess described in the previous post.


Unsplitting merged music albums is not possible in Plex at the moment. Reverting an error in this case requires a long workaround.



When things don’t work, Plex usually addresses users to the media preparation guide. Unfortunately the guide is very basic when it comes to music and doesn’t give any useful advices about tagging or problems like the one this thread is about.



IMO Plex should not rely too much on the ability and the goodwill of its users to edit filenames and tags or even try experiments in order to adapt their media to Plex. There are some important basic features that should work out of the box. Otherwise Plex simply becomes useless to many potential users

4

IMO Plex should not rely too much on the ability and the goodwill of its users to edit filenames and tags or even try experiments in order to adapt their media to Plex. There are some important basic features that should work out of the box. Otherwise Plex simply becomes useless to many potential users

I agree! I shouldn't have to change tags that are already correct just to get my files to work in PLEX. PLEX should accurately interpret metadata, and in this case, it isn't doing that.

5

+1


I’m all out of likes for the day, but I’ll come back and like this request.

6

Well technically Plex IS interpreting the metadata correctly. Your Metadata is telling plex these are separate albums and it is listing them accordingly.

The problem your facing is present in every program not just Plex. The only real way to solve it is to change the ID3 tags so that there is no disc 1 & 2 in the Album field (there is a separate ID3 tag for Disc you can set to retain original disc info for archival purposes) and to renumber the Disc 2 tracks to play in the proper order. Then Place them all in the same folder 

This is more proper for a Digital Library anyway since there is no more Disc Limitations involved.

Once done it makes future life much easier because if you ever want to make an MP3 CD of the album all you need to do is copy that folder to it and it will play the entire album properly. 

I understand the desire for a computer to just read your mind and do what you want but it will only organize as good as the tags are. XBMC exhibits the same behavior.

I suggest a program like MP3Tag which I use to fix all of my Album ID3 tags before importing them into my Library.

7

Well technically Plex IS interpreting the metadata correctly. Your Metadata is telling plex these are separate albums and it is listing them accordingly.

The problem your facing is present in every program not just Plex. The only real way to solve it is to change the ID3 tags so that there is no disc 1 & 2 in the Album field (there is a separate ID3 tag for Disc you can set to retain original disc info for archival purposes) and to renumber the Disc 2 tracks to play in the proper order. Then Place them all in the same folder 

This is more proper for a Digital Library anyway since there is no more Disc Limitations involved.

Once done it makes future life much easier because if you ever want to make an MP3 CD of the album all you need to do is copy that folder to it and it will play the entire album properly. 

I understand the desire for a computer to just read your mind and do what you want but it will only organize as good as the tags are. XBMC exhibits the same behavior.

I suggest a program like MP3Tag which I use to fix all of my Album ID3 tags before importing them into my Library.

Sorry, but I have to disagree. A disc number is a disc number, not an album number. That's the differentiation. An album is not limited to one disc. An album release for large soundtracks can always include multiple discs. Yes, this is a result of describing physical media, but it's still an accurate description of the structure of the album.

Also I think you're misunderstanding: I'm not talking about when an album includes something like "Frozen Original Soundtrack (Disc 2)" in the album field. I'm talking about when all tracks in an album have the same value for the album field (i.e. "Frozen Original Soundtrack") and accurately indicate the disc number in the discnumber field (i.e. "2").

This isn't a desire for "a computer to just read [my] mind." That's a pretty dismissive thing to say. I'm not asking PLEX to read my mind, I'm asking PLEX to read my metadata. My accurate metadata where the album and discnumber fields are properly populated. My files are tagged properly with album title, disc number, and track number information. PLEX should read and interpret this data correctly. If XBMC exhibits the same behavior, then XBMC is doing it wrong too.

I'm a musician and I've been involved with album releases, both digital and physical. Even when releasing a digital album, using "discs" to structure and album a specific way is not unheard of. I'm no stranger to metadata, and routinely use MP3tag for these kinds of things. But I shouldn't have to change my files which are already tagged accurately to work with PLEX.

8

Sorry, but I have to disagree. A disc number is a disc number, not an album number. That's the differentiation. An album is not limited to one disc. An album release for large soundtracks can always include multiple discs. Yes, this is a result of describing physical media, but it's still an accurate description of the structure of the album.

Also I think you're misunderstanding: I'm not talking about when an album includes something like "Frozen Original Soundtrack (Disc 2)" in the album field. I'm talking about when all tracks in an album have the same value for the album field (i.e. "Frozen Original Soundtrack") and accurately indicate the disc number in the discnumber field (i.e. "2").

This isn't a desire for "a computer to just read [my] mind." That's a pretty dismissive thing to say. I'm not asking PLEX to read my mind, I'm asking PLEX to read my metadata. My accurate metadata where the album and discnumber fields are properly populated. My files are tagged properly with album title, disc number, and track number information. PLEX should read and interpret this data correctly. If XBMC exhibits the same behavior, then XBMC is doing it wrong too.

I'm a musician and I've been involved with album releases, both digital and physical. Even when releasing a digital album, using "discs" to structure and album a specific way is not unheard of. I'm no stranger to metadata, and routinely use MP3tag for these kinds of things. But I shouldn't have to change my files which are already tagged accurately to work with PLEX.

Yes there are multiple discs..all with the SAME TITLE!

hence the DISC tag being different from the TITLE tag....

They should all have the same title with a different DISC tag.

When you made your release the discs themselves did not have distinct titles they were all the same Album title!

The ID3 tag system was deigned to handle all of these properly but people are still clinging to their old ways of doing things...

Tell me do any of your re-released albums separate your CD based on Vinyl sides as well?

So Side one is Disc 1 Track 1 and side two is Disc Two Track 1?

No it isn't done that way is it?

Multiple discs are a product of Media restrictions not good cataloging and Library.

That same Album that takes two Discs on CD can all be put on a single BRay and should the naming convention still apply?

An Album is an Album and all discs in that album are part of it.

Album Tag should never be used to denote what disc it is thats why the disc tag was invented.

You have to stop thinking about content as a Media format and start thinking about them as WORKS of Art that should catalogued and tagged based on the work not the distribution method.

A release that was Four Albums on Vinyl is a Two CD Set and Two CD set is a One Disc BluRay.

None of that applies to a Library on a hard drive that has no space limitations as far as one albums worth of content is concerned.

9

Yes there are multiple discs..all with the SAME TITLE!

hence the DISC tag being different from the TITLE tag....

They should all have the same title with a different DISC tag.

They do. That's what I'm saying. You think you're arguing with me but you're actually agreeing with me. My entire argument is that PLEX is looking at the discnumber field and using that to create multiple album listings out of a single album. If I tag an album as follows: 

album: Frozen Original Soundtrack

discnumber: 1


album: Frozen Original Soundtrack

discnumber: 2

then PLEX currently lists that as two albums. That is wrong. It should list it as one album, with the tracks in the correct order based on the discnumber and track fields.

And I shouldn't have to change my tags to remove the discnumber field and change all the track numbers on the second disc in order to make that work. PLEX should correctly interpret the metadata that is present in the files. That metadata is not wrong. I am not tagging an album with the disc number in the album field. I'm using the proper fields for the proper data. The album field is the album title. The discnumber is the disc number.

10

They do. That's what I'm saying. You think you're arguing with me but you're actually agreeing with me. My entire argument is that PLEX is looking at the discnumber field and using that to create multiple album listings out of a single album. If I tag an album as follows:
 

then PLEX currently lists that as two albums. That is wrong. It should list it as one album, with the tracks in the correct order based on the discnumber and track fields.

And I shouldn't have to change my tags to remove the discnumber field and change all the track numbers on the second disc in order to make that work. PLEX should correctly interpret the metadata that is present in the files. That metadata is not wrong. I am not tagging an album with the disc number in the album field. I'm using the proper fields for the proper data. The album field is the album title. The discnumber is the disc number.

Are they in separate folders?

Or are they all in one?

If they are all in one then I agree with you something is not scraping right..

But if they are in separate folders or the track numbers are not correct for the order of the complete work then it's going based on the tagging as separate discs.

11

Are they in separate folders?

Or are they all in one?

If they are all in one then I agree with you something is not scraping right..

But if they are in separate folders or the track numbers are not correct for the order of the complete work then it's going based on the tagging as separate discs.

They're not in separate folders. It doesn't really matter if they're in separate folders because PLEX reads ID3 metadata and builds its music library that way, but again, no, they're not in separate folders.

I really want to emphasize here that I'm not trying to troubleshoot anything. This isn't a problem that I'm trying to work around. I'm very specifically asking for PLEX to change how it reads metadata so that it doesn't create multiple albums based on the discnumber field, because that behavior is wrong.

12

The support pages suggest that Plex is using "mainly" file-names and directory structure to index music files. But this is not even half the story.

Plex actually reads also tags and accordingly to observed behavior if they are available they get prioritized over other information.

This is not described on the support pages, actually there are only a few very generic sentences without much content.

If you edit the database and look at the music-entries you can get an idea which tags are read and stored there: Among others there is also the information about the CD-number.

The point is that this information is not used by Plex to place tracks from the same album but stored on separate CD's together and in the right order.

This would be actually quite easy to accomplish by sorting tracks this way:

Album /cd1-track01, cd1-track02,... cd2-track01, cd2-track02,...

Plex does it this way instead:

Album-cd1/track-01, track-02,...

Album-cd2/track-01, track-02...

And if you merge Album-cd1 with Album-cd2 you get:

Album-cd1/track-01, track-01, track-02, track-02,...

which is a total mess unless the user knows how Plex behaves and manually changes the content of tags.

But how can Plex expect it's users to change tags that are ok to something that is not?

The information to make this in the right way are collected and stored within Plex but simply are not used in the right way.

IMO even having to merge Album-cd1 with Album-cd2 manually would be still acceptable if the order of the track would be right afterwards.

I consider this a real bug!

IMO it's one that could be easily corrected since the data are inside the database already and probably just a few codes have to be adjusted.

13

+1 for this feature.

I tag all my flac files with Musicbrainz Picard, and then Plex scrapes everything correctly other than splitting multi disc albums into separate albums.

Picard tags them as being disc 1 of 2 etc, and the files are all in the same folder, and the track numbers are 1-01, 1-02... 2-01,2-02,2-03 etc.

You'd think Plex would be smart enough to correlate the same album name and the disc tags into one album with multiple discs :-)

An acknowledgement from Plex staff over whether they consider this an issue or "working as intended" would be good. I don't want to go through all my albums attempting to implement a workaround if this will be resolved - although from reading around it's been requested for over 3 years, so not sure it's considered an issue.

14

I'd like to +3524364 this feature request.

If iTunes can do it, then so should Plex! :D

15

Me being the OCD person that I am, this is really bugging me now!

It's worse given the number of deluxe albums that are getting released. I always buy the deluxe usually, since it is usually the same price as the standard version.

Does anyone have a suitable workaround?

I've even looked at the iTunes channel as an alternative to manage my music, but I need to be able to sync music to 3 iPhones (mine, daughter & wife) which doesn't seem possible if I use iTunes.

iTunes match is not an option either, since I have all my music in ALAC files and prefer them to be played as such.

I was on the verge of purchasing 2 more Plexpass subs for the other 2 iPhones, but am a bit tentative now..

Any suggestions?

16

+1 This would be a great future!

17

This exact issue with multi disk albums stops me from using PLEX for music completely. I now use XBMC for music and PLEX for movies/tv shows. I really wish PLEX's music capabilities would improve so I can use it for all my media.

18

A picture paints a thousand words.

post-186795-0-26459300-1391534333.jpg

Suppose you have 200 2CD albums correctly tagged using the Disc Tag. This is NOT 400 albums, but it's the way Plex treats it. 

Renaming/re-editting/messing with my filenames or perfect ID3 Tags is not a workaround. It means if or when Plex decide to repair this minor flaw, I'll end up with an incredible amount of work to do on my collection again (not happening!!)

400 Album list = a lot longer loading times, especially remotely on a handset device. This is something I'm struggling with as my music library is massive and perfectly organised! 

Completely agree this feature or simply support for the Disc Tag should have been implemented long ago. I still use AirPlay and iTunes (yes - poxy iTunes and I'm an Android user!) for now til Plex can solve this extremely minor flaw.

--edit

Be even nicer if there was a little support for the 'Part of a Compilation' ID3 Tag instead of generalising with 'Various Artists'.  ;)

19

+1

(not the most urgent feature, but still nice if fixed)

20

No, not the most urgent feature, but it makes a mess of the music layout.

The fact that there's never been a response from a dev about the issue is a bit disheartening.

I've stopped using Plex completely and switched to Mediabrowser 3 - whilst that also has it's own shortcomings at present, the devs do at least take user feedback on board and I feel like I can hopefully help shape how the software develops.