Server Version#: 1.19.5.3112
Player Version#: 4.34.3
Hi guys, i am having this problem for a few days now, and noticed that is happening all the time.
When i add new songs to my music folder the server is joining multiple songs in the same album and calling it Various Artists. But the songs are not from the same singer and not the same album.
The Album artist field is correctly tagged and on itunes the album shows correctly.
Here two songs is on the same album but they are from different artists and both are tagged correctly.
Last time this happened i edited manually but now i am sure that something is wrong that is happening all the time.
Thanks in advance.
How did you configure that library?
Is it set to prefer embedded/local metadata or might Plex try matching the songs based on folder / file names (if soā¦ how are they named)?
I set the option to prefer local metadata.
I have basically three main folders for music:
Artists, Genre and Soundtracks.
On artists folder i put complete albums and use subfolders with artist name and inside i put the albums. The files are named like ā02)Metallica - Master of Puppets.mp3ā
One genre folders i used just a few standard genres but not too specific, for example heavy metal, pop rock, rock, and āsimilar genresā goes into rock folder. On these folders the songs are there without any additional folder, is for songs that i donāt have the full album. Here the songs are āMetallica - Master of Puppetsā
And on soundtracks is where most of āVarious Artistsā albums are, each with the correct subfolder. Naming is the same as the artists folder.
Plex always worked fine until this week. I just put the songs in the folder and scanned the library and it always picked the files with correct tags. I just noticed that files that have this problem are on āGenresā folder. I put a new album on artists folder and it added with correct tags.
I think i misclicked in the upgrade to plex music a few days ago but nothing happened but maybe it have something to do with the problem.
This will either cause the songs to not get recognised at all or lead to the above described issue with Plex assigning āVarious Artistsā as the album artist.
In Plex, you need to have this folder structure:
/music
/ Album Artist
/ Album Title
1 - song title.ext
2 - song title.ext
...
Additionally,
all tracks within one album folder must use identical content in their āAlbum Titleā meta tags. The same applies to the āAlbum Artistā meta tag.
The tag āAlbum Artistā must be present, if not all tracks of an album use the same āArtistā name.
All the albums inside a certain āArtistā folder must use the same, identical āAlbum Artistā
This never happened, one of the folders have more than 300 songs and i previously just put the songs there and plex used the tags to organize. Maybe i changed something or plex changed the way it was handling things.
EDIT: i think i fixed it. It was the option āUpgrade to Plex Musicā that messed up things. Maybe it changed the scanner from Plex media scanner to plex music and agent from last.fm to Plex Music.
And what about songs that donāt have an album because they are āsinglesā by an artist? For example, remixes in electronic music or unique creations of āunknownā artists.
And no, it is not worth āYou can construct an artificial albumā.
Right now, singles are handled just like albums. i.e. you tag them as if you had an album with just 1 or a couple of tracks.
This means also that you cannot have a folder named āsinglesā where you directly throw in āsingleā tracks from various artists. Because this will cause Plex to try and find a common artist for this folder (which then will most likely be āVarious Artistsā).
The full program with āartistā folder and in there an āalbumā sub folder is necessary, or things will get messed up.
I think meta data values should over ride the directory structure. Plex has listed some Beatles albums with the release year as the artist ā 1964, 1967, etc. ā because that parent directory has a few different versions of albums. The 2017 remaster of Sgt. Pepper is shown as [Unknown Album] ā this deserves a gold medal truly! There are a bunch of Beatles albums listed as [Unknown Album], some of the best known albums of all time.
This is not directed at you, Otto, I appreciate your efforts to help. This is a general feedback to the Plex team. The music library handling is atrocious. It is not even beta level usability, it is alpha level software. I am not exaggerating. The movies and TV shows are handled smoothly. It is a satisfactory experience. Music is not ready for prime time.
