Server Version: latest (Synology NAS)
Player Version: latest
I already have this issue for a couple of months, but it never bothered me that much to post it as an issue. The time has come.
I have my own library for new music to listen to before moving them to the core library. A couple of months ago, the media scanner started - doesn’t make a difference, if using full or partial scans - to screw up the artist/album artist meta data of single tracks of the same album. Even, if the to be added album is perfectly tagged, there is a chance of about 50% that it takes one of the artists that were added before and replaces the artist of the new album with this (wrong) artist.
Disabling automatic external meta data didn’t help. I have even tried adding the same album several times and it is like throwing dice. Sometimes the artist stays as tagged, sometimes it is changed. The versions of the server and player have been updated many times since i discovered this behaviour, so this can’t be the source either.
In addition, when changing the artist manually, the field is updated, but the scanner doesn’t recognize the changes. Even if doing a complete scan. There is also no write protection on the folder or file.
The only observation i made is, that the scanner always uses the same couple of artists to replace others (approx 5 out of 100). Only a complete wipe of the library let’s him change that. But the error always returns after some scans.
As an example:
Artist A - Album A is already in the library. I add Artist B - Album B and the tracks of this album will randomly be splitted into Artist A and Artist B.
My plex server has been running perfectly fine for almost 7 years straight with very minor issues in between. The structure or folder management of my library hasn’t been changed since the beginning.
Keep also in mind that there can only be ONE artist as the Album Artist for any album/release.
There is a separate meta tag for that. All tracks of a release must use the same Album Artist.
All albums that are stored within the same artist folder in the above linked folder structure must use the same album artist.
Neglecting these rules (or trying to bend them) will very likely result in the difficulties you described.
I will try the folder structure as per FAQ with some of my files. Still, the current structure with one main folder “MUSIC” and two subfolders “MAIN” and “NEW” (with all albums as separate folders below each) have always worked just fine.
Same Album artist for all tracks is known, i have been tagging my files for over 25 years. Wouldn’t make sense otherwise.
I will go back to tinker around and hope the structure helps.
I finally figured it out. It wasn’t only the structure, but in part also the metadata, that Plex is handling a little different that i know from other media libraries.
Now i know how to tackle it all and everything new gets added perfectly.
BUT: I still have different MUSIC folders, but they are also working fine, since i figured out the above.
