Organizing Music - Soundtracks and Various Artists (Hit collections)

General Discussions
1

I have a lot of soundtrack CDs that I have ripped and all of my folder / filenames don’t agree with Plex’s suggested naming convention, which I am find to alter, using tag editors and bash scripts, but before I undertake all that, I want to be sure I get it right.

Searching Google and the plex forums directly, I wasn’t able to determine the preferred method for organizing, for example the files from my Armageddon soundtrack. When I backed up my CD collection initially, the ripper created folders by artist, album and they look like this…

Based on what I read, I should aim to have folders like “artist - album” and files like “TrackNum - trackName”

My current collection
Music / Aerosmith
Music / Aerosmith / Armageddon
Music / Aerosmith / Armageddon / 01 - Aerosmith - I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.mp3
Music / Aerosmith / Armageddon / 03 - Aerosmith - What Kind Of Love Are You On.mp3
Music / Aerosmith / Armageddon / 07 - Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion.mp3
Music / Aerosmith / Armageddon / 09 - Aerosmith - Come Together.mp3

would look like this after conversion
Music / Aerosmith - Armageddon / 01 - I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.mp3
Music / Aerosmith - Armageddon / 03 - What Kind Of Love Are You On.mp3
Music / Aerosmith - Armageddon / 07 - Sweet Emotion.mp3
Music / Aerosmith - Armageddon / 09 - Come Together.mp3

And somewhere else, in another folder, I’d expect to find the tracks numberd 02, 04, 05, 06, 08, …, etc.
Does that look right?

2

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.

=====

It is recommended to do it like your version “after conversion”.
You can usually get by with the version before conversion if your metatags are well maintained.
I’d recommend to use a different delimiter character after the track number. It is easier to distinguish for automated renaming and tagging software which part of the file name is which information. I use dots.

If you have a lot of albums, it is no problem to insert an additional level of ‘artist’ folders:
If you are just starting with plex and want to reorganize your files anyway, I recommend the following approach

Music /
   Artist /
      Albumartist - Albumtitle /
         1. trackartist - tracktitle.mp3
         2. trackartist - tracktitle.mp3
         ...

and for a multi-disc album:

Music /
   Artist /
      Albumartist - Albumtitle /
         Disc 1 /
            1. trackartist - tracktitle.mp3
            2. trackartist - tracktitle.mp3
            ...
         Disc 2 /
            1. trackartist - tracktitle.mp3
            2. trackartist - tracktitle.mp3
            ...

do note the distinction between Albumartist and Trackartist.
There are separate metatags for these. You need to fill both.

This then provides a means to deal with sampler albums:
The typical sampler simply uses as Albumartist Various Artists
And that is what you should use too, since Plex treats ‘Various Artists’ a little different. (the standard album sorting mechanism is by release year, descending whereas for Various Artists it is alphabetically, ascending)

If you are on Windows, I recommend you to use mp3tag. It can read and write metatags for all the common music fileformats + mp4/m4v
It also supports deriving metatags from folder/filenames and vice versa, which is excellent for bringing your collection into shape.

3

I don’t understand what you wrote here:

And somewhere else, in another folder, I’d expect to find the tracks numberd 02, 04, 05, 06, 08, …, etc. Does that look right?

Do you mean you have the odd track numbers in one folder and the even track numbers in another folder?
That would be weird. :slight_smile:

4

@OttoKerner said:
I don’t understand what you wrote here:

That would be weird. :slight_smile:

No I only meant that for that example, Armageddon, Aerosmith was the artist for tracks 1, 3, 7, and 9, where the other tracks are scattered in other folders such as…

Music / Jon Bon Jovi / Armageddon / 08 - Jon Bon Jovi - Mister Big Time.mp3

So I guess considering your part about albumArtist -vs- trackArtist, these would ultimately be converged into a single folder…
Music / Various Artists - Armageddon / tracksIn_TrackNumber_TrackArtist_TrackTitle_Format

5

@kdford said:
So I guess considering your part about albumArtist -vs- trackArtist, these would ultimately be converged into a single folder…

Precisely. Tracks which are part of a common album go into a common folder. Plex has no other way of knowing they belong together.

Music / Various Artists - Armageddon / tracksIn_TrackNumber_TrackArtist_TrackTitle_Format

What does tracksln stand for? If it’s track length, please don’t make that part of the filename. That’s what meta tags are for. It would only interfere with Plex’s scanner.

6

tracksIn was a typo on my part, probably a result of copy/paste… Thanks

7

Various Artist Compilations are handled very badly these days. I made a suggestion in another post,
but like to repeat my suggestion:

I do have many compilations, like Bravo Hits, Fetenhits, Future Trance … you name them.
Since days I try to figure out what would be the best way to rename all Tags to get the

  • Artist Name
  • Track Name
    shown also within compilations and be able to search for them properly.

Example:

  • Artist Name: Fury in the Slaughterhouse
  • Track Name: Time To Wonder
  • Album: Fetenhits - The Real Classics 1

Some have suggested in this forum to use the Album Artist to add the Compilation name: Fetenhits.
Now all music is sorted not as Various Artist anymore but as Fetenhits,
Well … now I can search for Fetenhits but still not for the Artist

On the Web-Access at least I can see Fury in the Slaughterhouse in the list, but when I search,
I only see the Artist Fetenhits with the Title: Time To Wonder.
On my Plex for Android, I even don’t see the Artist in List when I go to Fetenhits.

After searching the Net, I would suggest the following:
iTunes is using a Tag which is called: Compilation
ITunes actually only check if this field is set to 1 and automatically change an Album to a compilation when the Album Name is the same.

This field is actually not used anywhere else, so why not using this field to add the Compilation name.
I checked it with iTunes. as long as the field is not empty, it is sorted as a compilation.

More information here: help.mp3tag.de/main_tags.html

Then a Tag would look like this:

  • Artist Name: Fury in the Slaughterhouse
  • Album Artist: empty -> which would be interpreted as Various Artist, but check Compilation!
  • Track Name: Time To Wonder
  • Album: Fetenhits - The Real Classics 1
  • Compilation: Fetenhits

Now it could be sorted in Artist View under Fury in the Slaughterhouse (where it belongs to!!)
It would also be visible Albums under Fetenhits Compilations > Fetenhits the Real Classics 1
And to make it really complete, an additional Tab which is called Compilations would be great.

If that would be implemented, it would be way more visible and a great improvement!
I am seriously looking forward to this!
Best regards, Kevvv

8

I would support that. However, keep in mind that showing samplers on the artists page seriously spoils the discography of an artists. In my opinion it would be preferable that albums, samplers and maybe even singles/maxi singles are displayed seperatly like e.g. when browsing an artist at discogs.

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9

Hi, to resolve some problems scanning multi-disc albums by various artists, I have patched AudioFiles.py as follows:

diff -r C:\Program Files (x86)\Plex\Plex Media Server\Resources\Plug-ins-ad6e39743\Scanners.bundle\Contents\Resources\Common\AudioFiles.py R:\AudioFiles.py
67,69c67,73
<           track, new_title = int(m.group(1)), m.group(2)
<           if track > 100 and track % 100 < 50:
<             disc = track / 100
---
>           # check if this is a multidisc track, numbered as P-Q or P-QQ or PPP-QQQ etc
>           mm = re.match("^-([0-9]{1,3})([^0-9].*)$", m.group(2));
>           if mm:
>             disc, track, new_title = int(m.group(1)), int(mm.group(1)), mm.group(2)
>           else:
>             disc, track, new_title = 1, int(m.group(1)), m.group(2)
>             disc = 1
86c90
<       elif parentDir and parentDir.count(' - ') == 1 and (artist == '[Unknown Artist]' or album == '[Unknown Album]'):  #see if we can parse the folder dir for artist - album
---
>       if parentDir and parentDir.count(' - ') == 1 and (artist == '[Unknown Artist]' or album == '[Unknown Album]'):  #see if we can parse the folder dir for artist - album
92c96
<       t = Media.Track(cleanPass(artist), cleanPass(album), cleanPass(title), track, disc=disc, album_artist=cleanPass(album_artist), guid=None, album_guid=None)
---
>       t = Media.Track(artist=cleanPass(artist), album=cleanPass(album), title=cleanPass(title), index=track, disc=disc, album_artist=cleanPass(album_artist), guid=None, album_guid=None)

The following library now scans correctly:

E:\MUSIC
+---Christina Aguilera - Back To Basics
|       1-01 Intro (Back To Basics).wav
|       1-02 Makes Me Wanna Pray.wav
|       1-03 Back In The Day.wav
|       1-04 Ain't No Other Man.wav
|       1-05 Understand.wav
|       1-06 Slow Down Baby.wav
|       1-07 Oh Mother.wav
|       1-08 F.U.S.S. (Interlude).wav
|       1-09 On Our Way.wav
|       1-10 Without You.wav
|       1-11 Still Dirrty.wav
|       1-12 Here To Stay.wav
|       1-13 Thank You (Dedication To Fans...).wav
|       2-01 Enter The Circus.wav
|       2-02 Welcome.wav
|       2-03 Candyman.wav
|       2-04 Nasty Naughty Boy.wav
|       2-05 I Got Trouble.wav
|       2-06 Hurt.wav
|       2-07 Mercy On Me.wav
|       2-08 Save Me From Myself.wav
|       2-09 The Right Man.wav
|       Cover.jpg
|       
\---Compilations - Divas
        1-01 Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Murder On The Dancefloor.wav
        1-02 Ce Ce Peniston - Finally.wav
        1-03 Diana Ross - Upside Down.wav
        1-04 Texas - Say What You Want.wav
        1-05 Suzanne Vega - Tom's Diner.wav
        1-06 Cher - The Shoop Shoop Song.wav
        1-07 Oleta Adams - Get Here.wav
        1-08 Elkie Brooks - Pearl's A Singer.wav
        1-09 Gabrielle - Dreams.wav
        1-10 Grace Jones - Private Life.wav
        1-11 Diana Ross - I'm Still Waiting.wav
        1-12 Donna Summer - Love To Love You Baby.wav
        1-13 Dina Carroll - It's Too Late.wav
        1-14 Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive.wav
        1-15 Gladys Knight - The Look Of Love.wav
        1-16 Mary Jane Girls - All Night Long.wav
        2-01 Stephanie Mills - Never Knew Love Like This Before.wav
        2-02 Texas - Black Eyed Boy.wav
        2-03 Shania Twain - Man! I Feel Like A Woman!.wav
        2-04 Crystal Waters - Gypsy Woman.wav
        2-05 Jody Watley - Looking For A New Love.wav
        2-06 Yvonne Elliman - If I Can't Have You.wav
        2-07 Gladys Knight - Licence To Kill.wav
        2-08 Jennifer Holiday - And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going.wav
        2-09 Teena Marie - Behind The Groove.wav
        2-10 Pebbles - Girlfriend.wav
        2-11 Nina Simona - Feeling Good.wav
        2-12 Shanice - I Love Your Smile.wav
        2-13 Edie Brickell - What I Am.wav
        2-14 Brenda Russell - Piano In The Dark.wav
        2-15 Gwen Guthrie - Ain't Nothin' Goin' On But The Rent.wav
        2-16 Donna Summer - Hot Stuff.wav
        Cover.jpg

Kind regards,
Bart

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