Plex changes album name

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

I have a persistent and extremely annoying problem in Plex.
I own a lot of compilation CDs that I ripped on my NAS in a directory “Various Artists”. Every time I scan my library files in Plex the name “Various Artists” is changed to the name of one of the artists whose track appears on one of the compilation CDs.
Does anyone know a solution for this?

I use the Plex package on my Synology DS918+ NAS
WEB client version 4.8.4

Regards,
Koos

2

Set the embedded meta tag ‘Album Artist’ in each and every file to have the content Various Artists.
(note: ‘Album Artist’ is different from the regular ‘Artist’)
This is what is holding “sampler” albums together in Plex.

3

Thanks for your comment. Three questions:

  1. How do I find the embedded album tag ‘Album Artist’ in the files on my NAS?
  2. I have about 50 compilation CDs on my NAS with an average of 15 tracks. Do I have to manually adjust the meta tag “Album artist” of 750 tracks?
  3. Spread over those 50 CDs are 3 tracks from the artist Chris de Burgh, after scanning the library Plex changes the “Album artist” name of ALL those 50 CDs from Various Artists to “Chris de Burgh”. Why does Plex take that name specifically?

I don’t get it at all!

4
  1. You use a metatag editor software. I recommend mp3tag
  2. You can apply this change to dozens or hundreds of tracks at once with mp3tag
  3. This is a bit involved:

Plex requires you to organise your music in this folder structure:

/ Music
   / Artist
      / Album
         1. track.mp3
         2. track.mp3
         3. track.mp3
         ...

In the case of a sampler album, the artist’s name is ‘Various Artists’, so all your samplers need to be stored like this:

/ Music
   / Various Artists
      / Sampler Album Title
         1. track artist - track title.mp3
         2. track artist - track title.mp3
         3. track artist - track title.mp3
         ...

Now, if your files don’t have embedded ‘Album Artist’ tags, it can happen that Plex matches one album to a certain artist which plays on one of the tracks in there. But since this track is stored with all the other samplers in this ‘artist folder’, the “‘Various Artists’ artist” now takes the identity of this single artist.

I know it sounds confusing.
Moral of the story:

  • Tag your files with ‘album artist’ meta tags. All of them, to be on the safe side.
  • All tracks of an album must have the same ‘album artist’, or things will go haywire.
  • If you have an album from a regular artist, which has one or more tracks with “featured” artists, make sure that the featured artist only appears in the normal ‘Artist’ meta tag, but not in the ‘Album Artist’ tag.
5

Thanks again.
I have ripped my audio files in Flac format. I have seen that the MP3tag software also supports this. I’m going to work with it.
What I don’t understand, I ripped a couple of compilation CDs again tonight (I use dBPoweramp), paying careful attention that I gave the name “Various Artists” to the Album artist. In dBPoweramp, however, I cannot specify an album name for the individual tracks. After scanning the library in Plex, all the compilation albums, including those I ripped tonight, were given the name Chris de Burgh again.

Isn’t it normal that in Plex I always have to use a tag editor afterwards to correct the name of an album?
It seems to me a shortcoming in the Plex software.

6

Not sure what you mean by that.
It’s hard to believe that you cannot assign an album name in this software. And why would that be a shortcoming of Plex?

7

First of all, I am a starting user of Plex (but you will have understood that).
Hopefully you have some patience with me;)

My dBpoweramp ripper has a general part where a.o. the album artist can be specified (here I indicate “Various Artists”). I cannot specify an album artist for the individual tracks, this is not necessary either. Here the name of the track artist is entered automatically.

Why I think it is a shortcoming of Plex: When my compilation CDs are neatly ripped with the name “Various Artists” to my NAS and Plex just changes it to another name and I can no longer change that name in Plex, I think that a shortcoming in the software.
Even when I start editing the album in Plex and change the Artist there, choose “Save changes”, Plex still does not accept the change.

I have my compilation CDs on my NAS as follows:

/ Music / Library name/ Various Artists/ Sampler Album Title
1. track artist - track title.flac
2. track artist - track title.flac
3. track artist - track title.flac
…

8

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