Music Sorting Questions

[BradTheGeek]

Hello and thanks in advance for help!

 

I have been a plex user for some time with movies, shows and music.  I do not really use it much for music, but it is there.

 

I have a friend who has a gigantic music collection that I am migrating to Plex for him.  We are talking 1TB+ from multiple external drives and PCs.

Currently I have de-duplicated, used some tools to make sure tagging is correct, etc.  I now have what I think is a good set of his music collection at < than 1TB.

 

When it comes to organizing, Plex sorts based off of tags, then if tags are incomplete, folder name which as I understand should be in the format of Artist_Name - Album_Name

 

This is okay for a good portion if the music.  For example in Plex you would look for Led Zeppelin and see each album inside.

 

However, a large portion of this collection is DJ mix sets and other 'Various artist' albums.  This causes those albums to not to sort together.  For example, each track of a Paul Oakenfold album is by a different artist, and by the folder structure above, is in a different folder.

 

Will plex understand if I just use Album Name as a folder, instead of having artist as well?  Is there another solution I am missing?  I am using Picard and MediaMonkey to retag and sort, but unfortunately not all tagging is consistent, as some have Album Artist correct, and the song tagged with Contrib artist, others are the reverse.

 

Any input or links are much appreciated.

 

 

 

[Z3nyth]

For albums of the type you are describing;

-Album Artist Field

Populate this with either the name of the DJ that compiled the album, or "Various Artists" if it is some other album that is just a compilation.

-Part of a Compilation

Check this box if your metadata editor has it. Shouldn't be necessary if you use the album artist field, but for music management libraries that recognise it, the purpose is to signal that even though all tracks are by different artists, they should be kept together on the same album.

See screenshots as examples;

My source library looks like this.


In a tag editor, a track looks like this. Note the Album Artist field, and Part of a Compilation box.


In Plex, the album appears under Paul Oakenfold.


Drilling into the album, all tracks have the actual artist beside the title.


*******

If you use "Various Artists" as the album artist, then all such albums will appear under that. Store them however you feel is sensible. For instance, I have a folder "~Compilations", within that is a folder for each compilation album, or set of albums. They all appear behind the "Various Artists" block.



 

[Lacyt]

So…I’m confused. Plex doesn’t seem to have the options I want to sort my music the way I like it, which is the way I was able to do it in iTunes. By the by, I no longer use any local music player/organizer. I want to do Artist (singer/band) first, then by albums belonging to that artist.

In my Windows 7 and the ID tag software I use, the “title” field is populated by the name of each SONG, which is overburdensome as an organizing tool, IMHO. My other options are

Artist
Album Artist (which to me is the person who designed the album cover, such as Roger Dean for Yes, et al), and
Album

My Plex options are either

Album Artist, then
By Title (and others, but those don’t help at all, like year released, etc.).

or

Artist, then by
By Album Artist or
By Title (and the other less useful options)

Now, I have no desire whatsoever to go into my Windows and ID tag software “Title” field and change all my 3500+ songs one at a time from song title to album title in order to get Plex to organize my stuff in a way that makes sense to me…

So exactly what is Plex pulling from my local ID tags to determine Album, Album Artist, and By Title as it seems contrary to the way Windows, probably Mac/Apple (I don’t do Apple), and most, if not all, ID tagging software does it.

I want to sort by Artist (singer) then by Album Title for each respective singer. That’s all.

My local music folder is organized thusly:

x:/Music/Yes (the Artist) /Yessongs (the Album title) / songs (on that album)

That’s how I want Plex to display my music onscreen. I don’t see the options to do that.

Thank you.

[OttoKerner]

‘Album Artist’ ist Not the person who designed the album cover.
It is the artist name that appears on the front cover of the album.
So in the case of your Yes album, the Album Artist is ‘Yes’.

For a ‘sampler’-type album, the Album Artist is usually ‘Various Artists’.
Consequentially, this album will appear under the artist name ‘Various Artists’ within Plex.

[jefferson5436]

I have a pretty large music library (about 100GB) that I’d like to add to plex and I think it makes sense to add to this conversation as it is related to folder and file naming conventions (especially regarding Artists vs Album Artists). I plan to use software (such as Picard) to rename my music files and organize them into proper folders (a lot is disorganized right now with no tags). I’ve been searching over and over for proper Plex conventions for naming the files and folders and how to organize them in the best way for Plex. But I feel like the conversations are all over the place and I’m not finding some real basic info that is probably obvious to most. If this really should be a new thread please let me know and I can move it. But what is the ideal folder structure and naming conventions for music folders and files in a Plex library?

On Plex’s page I see the convention should be: Music/ArtistName - AlbumName/TrackNumber - TrackName.ext But I just want to be sure about whether the initial artist folder should be the artist or album artist and this doesn’t really answer questions regarding albums that might be label with multiple discs, or Soundtracks, compilations, etc.

So do I follow the folder convention of:
Artist/
Album/
artist - track name

OR Should it be by album artist instead?

Album Artist/
Album/
artist - track name

I think this would matter, because some albums have tracks featuring other artists and I wouldn’t want the albums to then appear again as individual albums with 1 single track in Plex, does that make sense? For instance, with the former convention (and what Plex seems to be suggesting) I might have:
2Pac/
Greatest Hits/
2Pac - track name
2Pac - track name
etc.
AND
2Pac feat. Snoop Dogg/
Greatest Hits/
2Pac feat. Snoop Dogg - track name
(and then no other tracks, i.e., just a single track under this “greatest hits” album)

Maybe this won’t really matter though and Plex will do a great job of placing artists and albums where they need to be?

And what about albums that have multiple discs?

Basically, I just want to organize my files and folder sin the best possible way to have the least amount of headache when I create my Plex music library. I’d like to avoid this “PLEX DANCE” I keep reading about, if possible, and just get it right (as best as possible) the first time. I’m sure these basic questions has been answered MANY times but I don’t seem to be having luck finding an answer to them.

[OttoKerner]

Give the linked posts in this posting a good read:

Music Sorting Naming Metadata Tips & Compilations/Poster Issues

Notice the screenshots in this post, how to configure Plex to use your embedded meta tags as the primary source of meta data. Most important for keeping albums and compilations from splitting up is to have identical content in the ‘AlbumTitle’ and ‘AlbumArtist’ meta tags in each track of one album. See below for more detail info: multi-disc albums possible ‘side car’ files for music soundtracks and ‘various artists’

[jefferson5436]

This was excellent help. Thank you! I’ve been going through my tracks in batches and it seems to be working well.

One question/issue: As I’ve been using other software to tag and organize my tracks I will need to go back in because there are some cases where I have albums that are “explicit” albums and others that are “edited” (or clean) albums. In a couple cases I own both versions (depending on whether i have the kiddos in the car with me). How should the albums folders or individual tracks be labelled for Plex to distinguish between edited/explicit versions once I begin to set up my plex music library? Is Plex able to do that?

[OttoKerner]

@jefferson5436

How should the albums folders or individual tracks be labelled for Plex to distinguish between edited/explicit versions once I begin to set up my plex music library? Is Plex able to do that?

If you incorporate the (explicit) label into both the folder name and the Albumtitle metatags, it should work.
You may want to add those ‘versions’ of the same album not at the same time into Plex.

[jefferson5436]

Thank you for your help on this. I’m excited this is all coming together!