Music compilations, file metatdata, what Plex needs to discover and show them

Plex Media Server
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1

Hi
So I am totally confused and have gone around in circles to try to understand how file meteadata is used by Plex to scan into the Plex DB and then display what it has found.

I copied all my music to a server (as it happens it was being used in iTunes so the files already might have had some meta data set by iTunes)

I had Plex scan for music and it found all of it (I think) but not named as I would have expected.
What seems to be “wrong” are albums which are “compilations”.

In plex if I look at All>Albums I get to see all my albums, including compilations but they dont show up as the compilation name but as “Various artists” + Album name under it

If I open an album to see whats in it, I get the song title but no artist information.

If I go to edit the individual track details then the Album Artist is called “Various Artists” and the field called “Artist” is blank.

If I then go to look at what albums an artist performs on, of course thats wrong as well.

If I look at the file and folder structure in Windows, then I see I have a folder called “Compilations” which contains one folder for each album, and going into the same album I can see the track listing and for each song I can see the metadata attribute called “Contributing Artists” which contains the performers name and the “album artists” metadata which also contains the performers name. And then also in the metadata is a flag that says this track is part of a compilation.

I have quite a lot of compilation albums.

Can someone please tell me how the metadata in the file gets used by Plex when it scans it in and why Plex seems to have called all the artists on all the compilations as “Various Artists”.

Also can someone tell me the quickest/easiest way to fix it so that the performer information appears in the correct Plex field so the performer would show up as singing on the album in album view and also when switching plex to view by artists, the compilation album they sing on shows up there.

I hope I dont have to edit every single track in every single compilation album. And even if I do, is it the “Album Artist” or “artist” field that has to have the singers name (or maybe both)

As the information seems to exist as metadata in each song in the filing system for each file, is this an issue with Plex scanner?

All help gratefully received.

I really want to use Plex for all my media but it seems a bit clunky to get the database set up quickly, easily and automatically. I discovered I had this problem because playlists can no longer be imported from iTunes and you have to use a third party product to do it and it kept failing

Help please

Thanks

2

There are a lot of variables here. Plex, in its default configuration, uses the folder/filenames of your files to identify your albums, and match them with an online database (Musicbrainz) to get metadata, which Plex stores in its database. If there are tags embedded in the music files, they may not be used in this configuration.

I don’t tend to pay much attention to that case, because I’ve found that the online databases have too many errors for my liking. I’ve put in the work to perfect the embedded tags in my files, and have configured Plex to prefer them over online sources. If your Plex server is configured to prefer embedded tags, the article at that link shows what you need to do. But keep in mind that your embedded tags must be very accurate in order for it to work.

In either case, the folder/file structure is important. This guide can help:

3

Hi Beckfield

Thanks for the response

As an iTunes user I guess I am used to its way of working and showing things.

Plex has somehow managed to mess up a lot of my music tracks - for example 20+ compilation albums all have the same singer for every track (ironically she doesnt feature on any of them). This was after I did a refresh of metea data, which I only did because lots of albums and artists somehow got merged into a different artist (and I am still finding those)

Other than deleting the whole thing (loathed to do as there are about 14+ tracks and I have little confidence rescnning it wont do the same thing again) I am looking like I have to manually check each track on each album.

Which leads me to cheekily ask another question of you.

If I view the database by artist by title, I get a view of each artists and within that folder a list of all the albums they appear on which is fine and logical. If I wish to view by album it still seems to show artists first then the albums they appear on. Which to me is illogical as I would expected to have seen a list of albums (one album per folder like when you view by artists) and then within each album who plays on it. Is Plex working correctly in doing this and showing it this way and its just my database thats messed up, or maybe my tags. Is there a way to show albums and then artists on the albums

Many thanks for your help

Regards

4

Plex currently requires you to store all albums in a folder structure like this:

/music
   /album artist
      /album title
         01. track artist - track title.ext
         02. track artist - track title.ext
         03. track artist - track title.ext
         ...

This applies to sampler albums as well, because Plex currently has no concept of “sampler”/“compilation” albums.
Which requires the use of “Album Artist” together with “Album Title” as the unifying properties of a sampler album.
The regular compilation in Plex therefore has an Album Artist of the name “Various Artists”.

Additionally, each different Album Artist needs to have its assigned albums be stored in a separate artist folder on disk.
If this rule is violated, you suddenly see all compilations to assume the album artist from any one of the albums which are stored inside the same folder. i.e. exactly what you experienced.

Therefore for all your compilations, if they cannot be assigned to one “real” artist, do the following:

  • remove them from their respective folders inside the artist folder of other artists, into a folder which is named after their common Album Artist – which means a folder name of “Various Artists” for most of them
  • insert a AlbumArtist metatag with identical content into all tracks of any one album. This is not the same tag as the regular “Artist”/“TrackArtist”!
  • make sure that the Album Title meta tag of every track inside a particular album has also identical content. (The “disc number” does not belong in there!)
  • assign Track Number meta tags to all tracks
  • assign Disc Number meta tags to all tracks of a multi-disc album

VariousArtists
VariousArtists1396×276 20 KB

The “compilation” meta tag from iTunes is not used.

5

Hi Otto

Thanks, I shall experiment tomorrow.

If I understand this correctly, the result will be that in album view of the database I will see a series of folders all with the Artist called “Various Artists”, with the compilation album name under that. By then going into that first folder called “various Artists” “Complation 1” I will see a track listing of song, artist and track number assuming I have filled in the meta data correctly.

And then for the next compilation that will be in the second folder (in album view) called “Various Artists” and “compilation 2” underneath that and on opening the folder the track listing/artist etc

Is my understanding correct?

Many thanks

6

Yes, just try it.

1 Like
7

Hi Otto

Thanks.

Do you know if Plex have on their development plans the concept of “compilations”?

I have a load of work to do on 14k tracks to delete some tracks, reclassify them, rescan, add in artist/track metadata etc

Regards

8

I cannot speak for Plex Inc.
I know this is a long-term design goal, but there are no details on the when.

9

Thanks.

10

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