Server Version#: 4.43.4 ubuntu
Player Version#: Any/All/Plexamp
I’m moving my music over to plex after the google music shutdown. For the most part the product has looked great, however, I’m having an issue where artists for which I have multiple albums are showing all tracks for all albums as belonging to just one album. Artists w/ only one album seem to show correctly. All other metadata (artist description, album cover, etc.) seems to work as far as I can tell.
I’ve followed the file structure recommended here which I created using MP3Tag to organize / rename the file’s according to their metadata (so things should match up there). I’ve also tried switching between the default Plex media agents and local media to no avail.
I’ve included a screenshot demonstrating the issue for Pretty Lights where 8 albums have been listed under one as well as the recommended file structure.
Could you screenshot a couple of these albums in MP3Tag? I’d like to see at least these fields: Filename, Album Title, Track Title, Album Artist, Track Artist, Disc Number, Track Number.
Is Plex configured to prefer local metadata, or are you depending on online sources?
Yup, here you go. Currently its set to prefer local metadata, I actually followed the linked tutorial to try the local metadata route so the settings are consistent w/ the article you linked to. I had the same issue under the default settings (which is why i tried the local metadata).
I think Plex is known to have trouble with the Disc Number and Track number values of ‘1/12’. Try changing those to just ‘1’, ‘2’, etc., for an album and see if Plex does any better.
If it’s a single-disc album, the discnumber can be ‘1’ or blank, it doesn’t matter. For multi-disc sets, it needs to be populated, but without the ‘/x’.
The “year” tag: Either it contains a valid year or it is completely empty. Don’t put a 0 into there if the release year is unknown.
Same applies to ‘Disc number’ and ‘Track number’ tags.
I recommend you to always fill the ‘Album Artist’ tag.
Its content must be identical for all tracks within an album.
All tracks which are stored in the same subfolder must have identical content in their ‘Album title’ meta tags. i.e. you must not store tracks from different albums within the same subfolder.
Hm, so I’ve adopted all the above suggestions but still have the same issue. (see screenshot below for tags). Is there any documentation on how the plex tagging / organizing works beyond the directions to put things in recommended folder structure? I feel like I’m troubleshooting in the dark a bit. Any other suggestions? Thanks for the help so far.
Track numbers may still be the problem. The tip about removing ‘/x’ applies to both disc and track numbers.
As for documentation, I don’t think there’s anything beyond the Help page you found. Most of what Otto and I have said come from experience. There’s the industry standard for embedded tags, but that standard allows for disc and track numbers to have ‘1 of 3’ or ‘1/3’ tags, which Plex doesn’t follow, so that wouldn’t help much.
Got it, so fixed up the track numbers and still have a similar result. Interestingly, it looks like the disc numbers are now working (one album has a second disc) but everything is still listed under the same album. Not quite sure why it wouldn’t pick up the albums given the folder / metadata.
For anyone else reading in the future, here is an MP3Tag function to do a conversion from the ‘1/2’ track format to just the track number - $left(%track%, $sub($strrchr(%track%,‘/’),1))
After making these changes, did you just do a ‘Refresh metadata’ or ‘Scan Library Files?’ If so, I’d like to have you try one more thing (you shouldn’t have to, Plex took a big step toward reducing the need to do this, but it’s kind of the ‘nuclear option,’ and there are still time when it’s necessary).
Move the “Pretty Lights” folder out of the Music folder (I assume your Plex Music library is pointing to the “Music” folder, correct?).
Have Plex scan the music library. This should remove Pretty Lights from the library.
I’d tried both refreshing, scanning, and scanning -> refreshing but they all had the same result. Just did the nuclear option and that worked! I’ll run through our steps again on some of the other artists this is happening with and will let you know how that goes. Hopefully, I’ll be able to figure out which of the steps we took was the root cause (or its possibly all). Appreciate the help!
It’s probably “all,” or at least “most.” Plex did a major overhaul of the music scanner last year. It’s a lot more accurate than the old scanner when tags are exactly as Plex expects them, but the tradeoff is that it’s a lot pickier about the tags being exactly as it expects. It’s also pickier about the folder structure and filenaming, which seems completely illogical to me, but so it is.
Update: As of build Plex Media Server build1.23.3.4692, Plex is no longer dependent on the folder structure or filenames.
Plex has a lot more to do in this area. I remain hopeful.
