Importing different versions of same album title results in tracks mixed randomly between albums

General Discussions
1

So, I’m importing a large music library (20,000+ albums) into Plex and for the most part everything is going well. I use iTunes to keep folders organized and all my metadata is meticulous and correct.

The one problem I can’t seem to solve is the way Plex handles different “versions” of albums with the same title. I know Plex ignores square bracket and anything inside them, so that’s certainly at the root of the problem. Here’s an example of my naming:

/Music
/U2
/The Unforgettable Fire
/The Unforgettable Fire [Bonus Disc]
/The Unforgettable Fire [U.K. 12_]
/The Unforgettable Fire [U.K. Double 7_]

I have Local Media Assets enabled and at the top of the Agents list, and Use Embedded Metadata is checked. The ID3 tags for Album and Sort Album follow the same naming convention as the folder tree, e.g., with the information in square brackets after the album name. Track and Disc numbers are all set correctly and none are blank.

On import, what happens is that the tracks are more or less randomly scattered between the four album entries, seemingly without any rhyme or reason. Tracks belonging to the Bonus Disc end up on the Double 7", tracks from the main album are on the 12" single, etc. If I delete and reimport the albums again, say one at a time, then the addition of each album causes the existing tracks to re-sort in unpredictable ways. For example, adding just the main album works fine. Then adding the Bonus Disc causes some of the tracks from that disc to appear in the main album listing, and vice versa.

Now, I’m aware that the problem is the square brackets – as far as Plex is concerned, every album appears to be called “The Unforgettable Fire” and nothing else. My question is, I get that Plex can’t figure out how to sort the tracks based on the metadata alone – but shouldn’t there be some overriding logic that says, “When all else fails, just keep things together according to the folder tree”?

I’m guessing the answer is going to be, use parentheses instead – but that would involve renaming thousands of tracks (and even with tools like Filebot, that’s going to wreak some havoc with iTunes). Is there any other solution? And is there a reason Plex can’t simply use the folder tree as a “tiebreaker” when it doesn’t know how else to group tracks by album?

[PMS Version 1.13.8.5395 on Windows 10]

2

There are 4 places where you can move the LMA agent to the top.
Do you have it in the top position under
Settings - Server - Agents - Albums - last.fm ?
And if you did, was this before you added all those files into Plex or after?
Same applies to the ‘use meta tags’ checkbox. Did you activate it before or after adding the files?

If the answer to one or both of these questions is ‘after’, then you’ll need to perform the Plex Dance with the affected albums.

(With music you can omit step 4)

3

Thanks for the quick reply! Yes, the LMA agent is at the top in all four places, and was before the library was created, and yes Use Metadata was checked when the library was created, before any music was added.

I think the issue is just that Plex ignores square brackets and hence sees all four albums in my example as all having exactly the same title. However, if that’s the case, I’d expect it to just dump all the tracks into one giant album. But instead it still creates four separate album entries – it just doesn’t assign the correct tracks to the correct albums.

Of course if it were only these four I could just fix it manually – but unfortunately the error is repeated hundreds of times across my library because I have hundreds of instances like this where there are multiple versions of the same album.

One additional piece of information: If I add the albums one at a time and let the scan complete each time, adding each successive album usually causes the tracks to move around in some way. HOWEVER, if I add them in order from the album with the MOST tracks to the album with the FEWEST, then Plex keeps things in the right place. (Yes, even though the naming is the same, the bonus disc in my example has 16 tracks, the original album has 10, the 12" has 5, and the 7" has 5 tracks as well. If I add them one at a time and in that specific order, all the tracks will stay with the correct album.)

Other suggestions? Or should I report this as a bug?

4

Try to replace the square brackets by parentheses. Then repeat the Plex Dance.

5

Hmm, well yes – I already know it will work with parentheses because I copied the folders and edited the metadata to change the square brackets to parentheses, then imported the changed files into a new library and it works fine.

But even Plex recommends using square brackets to add information like the album edition, or to differentiate a FLAC version from an MP3 version, or different encoding rates, etc. So you would kind of expect that it would keep those grouped together according to the folder they’re in, even if it doesn’t actually read the stuff in the brackets.

6

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