Music Help

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#: 1.19.5.3112
Player Version#:

My issue… I have songs that are not in albums, don’t want them in albums…

I want the Artist and a list of songs by that artist…

All I can seem to get is image

I have gone through all the Docs and Support and Forum threads…
And keep getting nothing useful…

Never had this much trouble with any other music manager…

OK I know file structure, tried them all (except the one that works if there is such a thing)

music/
artist name/
song title/artist name - song title.mp3

I think I’ve done every combination of that and still haven’t got it right.

it’s probably something stupid simply…

Another thing is I would like to use just the mp4 the music video if possible.
asking a lot I know but that’s life.

2

It is not you.

It’s plex.

plex hates anything that does not conform to

/music/artist/album/track

tracks that are not in albums? hates
lots of random tracks in a single folder? hates
compilations that use anything other than various artists as the album artist? hates
any music that does not match with musicbrainz? hates

these are fundamental restrictions of how plex has re-implemented music.

you might get some work arounds for some things, but just about anything with the above will cause problems with music.

good luck.

3

Then it unfortunately won’t work in Plex.

These are the rules, if you want it to work in Plex:

  • Each track belongs into an album.
  • Each Album belongs into an AlbumArtist.
  • All tracks stored within the same (album)folder belong into the same album.
  • All album folders stored within the same artist folder belong to the same AlbumArtist.
4

Well that answers that…

OK I am not going mad, Just wasted 3 days of trying to get something to work that wont.

So Plex users can’t listen to singles, that’s interesting.

Well it’s easy to delete a library, I had plenty of practice…

I guess then music video’s are also out…

5

Of course you can, if you treat them as mini-albums. i.e. precisely the same way.

Depends.
You can assign videos to a general album artist
or you can assign videos to a track on an album.

What does not work in Plex is a library of music videos, which are completely separate from a music library.

6

I use artist level music videos.

they are a separate path from music

/media/plex/musicvideos/artistname/whatever title-video.mkv

configure the artist local media assets agent

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plex docs @ https://support.plex.tv/articles/205568377-adding-local-artist-and-music-videos/

if you want a completely stand alone music video library, create an ‘other video’ library and organize it however you want (no fancy metadata will be downloaded by plex).

you can have singles, but

  1. they must be grouped in an album folder+have an album tag (even if there is only a single file, it should have its own folder. yes it is stupid)
  2. they should match up to single in musicbrainz (if not, plex will continually try to match them)
7

Thanks for the info…

I was looking at the Local Media Assets (Artists) setting…
When I put a path in that setting it shows in all the Local Media Assets ( * ) Settings.

So any reference to LMA would point to that one folder…
That doesn’t sound right to me… I would think it would be only for the one your changing…

8

Since it only applies to music libraries, it doesn’t matter that much.
Unless you have several of these and want different sets of music videos in each library.

9

If you have LMA enabled for movies it also shows the same folder that was added in Artists.

10

if you do not want a centralized music video location, then use the inline based videos as described in the article linked above.

both have their pro’s/con’s.

11

Yes, but it doesn’t matter, because a movie library is not a music library.

12

Was looking at your suggestions…

When I noticed that putting a folder in LMA that same folder shows up under every LMA under all the agents…

So for movies LMA would point to the same folder as for Artists etc…

13

it simply doesn’t matter for, or apply to anything other than music.

14

OK…

Guess I’ll have to find another option…

Another half baked Plex library… should have known…

15

you could simply move your problem files out of the path used for the rest of your music, so that you can still enjoy/make use of, the rest of your music which isn’t ‘singles’.

Even though I have plenty of ‘issues’ with the plex music philosophy and implementation, if you can get it working well enough with the rest of your music, and make use of PLEXAMP, you can still have a great way to listen to your music.

16

All my files are problem files…

I only buy what I like so I just don’t by the album…
I may one or two songs and that’s it…

But it’s still thousands of songs over the years…

17

Most of my my library is comprised of singles and it works well. They key is tagging your tracks yourself and forcing PLEX to use only the embedded tags.

It was a lot of work, but now that it’s done my tags are permanent, portable to any program or device and not dependent on the scanning engine or metadata sources PLEX uses.

See my related post here: Discography based audio collection : Studio Albums, Remastered Albums, Single Albums, Live Albums and Compilations

18

Thanks for your response…
I really thought that adding a single would just be there…
I’m getting tired of always trying to find a work around for things that I think should be basic in a feature that they add. But then again “movies” still are missing basic options that every other media manager just has…

I’ve looked at other options, I don’t want to have to edit every file.

Thanks

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19

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