Plex does not index albums where the first track has a different Artist from the main AlbumArtist

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

Server Version#: latest version 4.87.2 running on Netgear ReadyNAS 426
Been using Plex for a while but only just noticed this problem where Plex does not index albums where the first track has a different Artist from the main AlbumArtist. I am not taking about albums tagged as compilations/various artists.
Eg Crosby, Stills & Nash double album “Carry On”. First track is Woodstock which is by “Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young” and is correctly tagged as such in the Artist field. AlbumArtist is “Crosby, Stills & Nash”.
Similar problem with “The Best Of Chicago: 40th Anniversary Edition”, where first track is by Chicago Transit Authority
In both cases these are also double albums

I have ticked “prefer local metadata”. Agent order for Albums is Personal Media Data and then Local Media Assets (Albums). Both ticked, although it makes no difference if either are not ticked.
The album shows up in Music Library in the folders view, but no metadata is updated and hence it does not appear in the main Music artist/album views
Any idea what is causing this please?
Thanks

2

When you enable “prefer local metadata”, it is crucial that your folder organization is immaculate.

  1. verify that all tracks of this album have their AlbumArtist tags populated at all and with identical content
  2. all albums which are stored together inside an AlbumArtist folder (like below) must have identical content in their AlbumArtist meta tags.

So, at all times stick to this folder organization (that includes samplers and compilations!):

/Music
   /Various Artists
      /SamplerTitle1
         01 - Track Artist - Track Title.ext
         02 - Track Artist - Track Title.ext
         03 - Track Artist - Track Title.ext
         ...
      /SamplerTitle2
         01 - Track Artist - Track Title.ext
         02 - Track Artist - Track Title.ext
         03 - Track Artist - Track Title.ext
         ...
   ...
   /Chicago
      /The Best Of Chicago 40th Anniversary Edition
         01 - Chicago Transit Authority - Track Title.ext
         02 - Chicago - Track Title.ext
         03 - Chicago - Track Title.ext
         ...

If you edit AlbumArtist folders or generally all kinds of tags which should cause a structural change in your library (like the switch to a different Album Artist), you might have to perform a Plex Dance “light” for the change to take.
(“light” meaning you can omit step 4 of the dance)

3

Thanks
My folder structure is:

/Chicago
/2007 - The Best Of Chicago - 40th Anniversary Edition
/CD1
01. Track Title.ext (I don’t include artist in file name as in some cases it gets too long)
02. etc
/CD2
01. Track Title.ext
02. etc

In the case of the above album the AlbumArtist is the same for all tracks across the 2 CD’s but neither CD have been indexed including CD2 where the Artist is the same for all tracks as well (only track 1 on CD1 has a different Artist)

This is the same structure for all my media and other double albums have indexed fine, albeit Plex shows them as a single album with Disc1 and Disc2

Strange I will keep investigating to find a pattern
Thanks

4

Investigate other albums. Sometimes “missing” tracks are merged into existing albums.

Investigate the content of the AlbumTitle meta tag. It must not contain the disc number. There is a separate meta tag for this.

I forgot: if you find that several albums of different AlbumArtists have been intermingled, you need to Plex Dance all albums of all involved Album Artists.

That’s OK. The Artist in the file name of my examples was partly a stand-in for the corresponding meta tag – just to illustrate it better.

Check the meta tags also for missing or empty “Track Number” tags.

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