I use Plex server almost exclusively for remote access to my music collection, which includes a lot of live recordings in (mostly) FLAC, tagged with the concert date in the Date field and the venue/city in the Title field. (I use this to generate a music list using a PHP script that reads the FLAC tags.) It works great, but finding the albums/shows I want to listen to takes more time than I think is necessary.
The list of albums on an Artist page in Plex shows the albums in chronological order fortunately, although it is a pity only the year is shown.
When I have multiple versions of an album or live show, I make the folder name for the album sortable so it shows correctly in my folder and in my music list. So my directories are called like this (music folder at the top, next level is artists, next level is albums and shows):
Pink Floyd
1966-10-31, demo
1967-03-11a, Arnold Layne (single) (vinyl rip)
1967-03-11b, Arnold Layne (single) (CD release)
1967-05-14a, BBC (source 1)
1967-05-14b, BBC (source 2)
I could use Plex’s Sort Album field for items like that, but it would be great if I could do that from the tags and not within the Plex interface. Is that possible?
I could also make the album titles include the date so they can be sorted alphabetically. I don’t want to change the FLAC tags, only the Plex database for that.
I could generate extra files in each folder but then need a script to insert that data into the Plex database. Would this be the best way to do that?
There are actually embedded meta tags which hold the “Sort Titles”. Both for Artist and Album titles.
In Flac this would be ALBUMSORT and ARTISTSORT respectively. (there are equivalent tags for mp3 files as well)
But I have never tried to read these into Plex. Though I hear that they cause issues for other users from time to time, when they are set to e.g. Beatles, The (yuck!).
Another way would be to embed the correct “Release date” into the files. Then you only have to tell Plex to sort albums by Release Date with “Oldest first”. (Selectable in the properties of both the library and individual album artists).
The embedded meta tag for release date in flac files is RELEASETIME. (Go figure).
This one works verifiably in Plex, if you tell Plex to “prefer local meta tags” in the properties of the library.
I tried this and can say it works! Well, at least Plex picks up on these. For some reason, the order is off. I have two albums with the same date (1984) and the same title (Gratuitous Flash). One is the original release (1984) which has ALBUMSORT=1984a and the second has 1984b. With Plex sorting all albums from new to old, 1984a is above1984b. (I use the original release date to group different releases of the same album.) So the order is descending on DATE and within the same DATE the order becomes ascending on ALBUMSORT.
I see, so ALBUMSORT should be used when sorting on ALBUM, and RELEASETIME should be used when sorting on Newest/Oldest.
But… I was testing with ALBUMSORT. The library sort order is set to Library default (which I can’t seem to find how to set). The albums on the Artist page are listed from new (2016) to old (1982), and the 1984 items, all having the same title, are ordered having ALBUMSORT 1984a, 1984b, 1984c. Changing the ALBUMSORT field does change the order, while it should not make a difference, according to your statement.
I tried it again with a 1988 album, of which I have four versions. The release date is 1988 for all four. I set the ALBUMSORT to 1988a … 1988d. Order is as with the 1984 album: 1988a above 1988b, etc. I then changed the title (ALBUM field) to different texts that should influence the order, and that does not change a thing.
I’m going to test with RELEASETIME. But I set the library to Newest First and will wait till the library is scanned again.
I removed the ALBUMSORT tags, made sure the Plex values were as before (same as the album titles) and then used the RELEASETIME fields.
Setting them to 1984/b/c did exactly the same: albums ordered from new to old, but with the same release date they were ordered on RELEASETIME old to new.
Since 1984a is not a proper date, I also tested using proper dates, so 1984-01-01/02/03. And that works!
