Music Local Artwork naming conventions

[coyote]

Server Version#: 1.14.1.5488

After setting up my music folders and finding some didn’t get automatic artist poster artwork matches, I realised that (unlike some support article template suggested) I want album folders within artist folders. And I really want to automate it as much as possible (particularly since I have 2 duplicate servers on 2 PCs for times one or the other are unavailable).

I’ve seen differing music artwork naming convention templates, and I want to use the optimal one. Is it:

Music /
Artistname /
poster.png
Albumartist - Albumtitle /
Disc 1 /
01 tracktitle.flac
…
24 tracktitle.mp3
cover.jpg
cover-2.png
background.jpg
background.png
Disc 2 /
01 tracktitle.flac
…
09 tracktitle.mp3
cover.jpg
cover-2.png
background.jpg
background.png

?

I’ve seen the “cover” files sometimes suggested as “poster” files; is “cover” better?

Or is OK to somehow prefix the artwork file names so it’s easier to make sure they’re put in the correct folders? (For example Artistname-poster.png and Albumartist-Albumtitle-poster.jpg ?

Does album artwork need to be in both disc 1 and disc 2 folders?

May I assume that disc subfolders can be omitted for single-disc albums?

I’m using mp3tag (after some frustrating trial-and-error I think I realized that if I manually tag multiple poster files, Plex uses 3/3 instead of 1/3!). Is there any way to mp3tag files with background art in addition to poster art?

Is
01 Trackartist - Tracktitle.mp3
better than
01 Tracktitle.mp3
?

Thank you in advance very much!

Edit: Aaargh; initially my indented-folder-trees worked but now I see the indenting is gone.

[OttoKerner]

Here are some tips regarding music

multi-disc albums

Organizing Music - Soundtracks and Various Artists (Hit collections)

I am going to do a bit of copy/paste of posts I did in the Plex Pass only forums: ===== 1.“Various Artists” is the usual choice for ‘Sampler’ style albums. There may be exceptions for ‘collaboration’ albums which are credited to all participating artists on the album cover. 2. use the title of the single as it appears on the cover. You can augment that information with (CDM) or (single) or (Maxi) or (EP) as it fits. If it is a genuine release, Gracenote should have no problem identifying it. …

handling singles and EP’s
https://forums.plex.tv/t/best-way-to-add-album-singles-ep-to-a-premium-music-library/128108/8

possible ‘side car’ files for music

Music Album artwork

Little tip: If you have lots of bootlegs etc. you want to bring your embedded metatags into order first. Then you need to have the Local Media Assets agent in top position. I wouldn’t trust last.fm to fetch correct info about bootlegs and special editions of albums, like those recent expanded re-releases of Zappa albums. Put as much info into the meta tags as possible. Put a cover art inside the album folder and you should be good. Makes sure to set at least ‘AlbumArtist’ and ‘AlbumTitle’ to…

soundtracks and ‘various artists’

Plex Folder View - folder.jpg not recognized?

@naddel81 said: album view does not work properly, because if you have various artists on an album (most cases) then it shows them as “various artists” instead of the album name. folder view would be the best option and I guess it has been asked before. is it too hard to implement? You can put what you like into the AlbumArtist meta tag, if you don’t like it to appear under VA. You could use the game title or the game developer or the game ‘universe’ (if you have several albums which fit in…

[coyote]

Thank you very much Otto, while reading many threads I saw some of those, great to know to take those as authoritative.
1.
There was disagreement between your 2nd and 3rd links about whether to call the album folder’s main image (i.e. the album’s cover image) :

folder.jpg or cover.jpg

are both equally good?
2.
I’m confused by:
|–Albumartistname /
| artist-poster.jpg
| artist-background.jpg

For artist-poster.jpg and artist-background.jpg did you mean artistname-poster.jpg and artistname-background.jpg ? (Or to literally use the word “artist” in each?)
3.
One question I have left after reading those threads:

I’m using mp3tag (after some frustrating trial-and-error I think I realized that if I manually tag multiple poster files, Plex uses 3/3 instead of 1/3!). Is there any way to mp3tag files with background art in addition to poster art?

[OttoKerner]

@coyote

folder.jpg or cover.jpg
are both equally good?

I tend to use folder.jpg

@coyote

literally use the word “artist” in each

^^^ this

@coyote

Is there any way to mp3tag files with background art in addition to poster art?

No, Plex reads embedded pictures only as ‘album’ cover art.
Everything else can only be done with “sidecar” files.

[coyote]

Thank you very much Otto for answering my every question!

In case anyone is interested, here’s what I’ve learned (I’m excited to implement it!):

[coyote]

One more question please. Almost everything worked perfectly once I used the proper artwork naming conventions (and also mp3tag-ed album poster-art into tracks).

Except in 3 similar cases the folder-2 image got used instead of the folder image. (Note that I Enabled “Use embedded tags”, and in each case the folder image was mp3tag-ed 1/2 and the folder-2 image was 2/2; swapping the order of the tagged images didn’t help.)

In each case the images are in the folder with the audio tracks.

Case 1:
Plex used folder-2.png instead of folder.jpg (folder.jpg tagged 1/2 and folder-2.png tagged 2/2 in all tracks)(no disc subfolders)

Case 2:
Plex used folder-2.png instead of folder.jpg (folder.jpg tagged 1/2 and folder-2.png tagged 2/2 in all 4 disc subfolders)

Case 3:
Plex used folder-2.png instead of folder.png (folder.png tagged 1/2 and folder-2.png tagged 2/2 in tracks in all 4 disc subfolders)

(Of course I imagine just getting rid of the folder-2 images would solve this, but I very much want to learn if there’s a better way!)

[OttoKerner]

I can’t tell you. Only log files from around the time when the metadata of these items were downloaded the first time could shed some light on this.

[coyote]

Thank you very much Otto. I’ll figure out how to post log files and do another test run with just the 3 albums.

[coyote]

Please find my logs attached.Plex Media Server Logs_2019-03-07_09-06-34.zip (2.0 MB)
Thank you very much Otto!!

Edit: One more issue to note (that I thought went away but came back with this load) if anyone is willing to take a look at these logs is that one of the artist-poster.png images didn’t get recognized by Plex.

[coyote]

Can anyone please suggest where I should start looking in the log files to discover what the issues are?