Plex importing two CD set and creating multiple albums

[Jwmcc]

Server Version#: 1.25.9.5721
Player Version#: 4.76.1
Running on Centos 7 in an ESXi VM v6.5

Trying to add a 2-CD set of Britten Rarities to Music on my plexserver.

Ripped the CDs in Music app on Mac Monterey 12.3.1, to my Mac, then copied the two resulting folders and files to plex media server.

I can see them all in Finder via Network/plexserver/plexmedia/music

But the files have been indexed by Plex into 11 separate albums, separated by different combinations of artists into 11 different Album Artists.

I would like them back in ONE album, all by the same Album Artist Benjamin Britten, with two disks in the one album.

How can I manage this?

And why does the Plex indexing algorithm make it so difficult to manage multi-CD Classical albums?

It seems to be missing the concept of Composer, which is the commonest way I want to title the albums.

One way might be to go into each individual track, and change the Artist to Benjamin Britten.

Is that the best or only way to do it?

If it is, I’m in trouble, because it doesn’t seem to work. I’ve done that for half a dozen tracks, and they stay in their separate albums, although now grouped under one Artist (Benjamin Britten) even after re-running Scan Library files for the Music library and also changing the album details to show Benjamin Britten as the Artist, as well as editing the individual track Artist details.

[beckfield]

Yes, Plex is missing support for Composer, as well as some other tags, which does indeed hamper its ability to manage classical music. But you can manage it with some work.

Forgive me if the following is overly basic – I don’t know your level of expertise.

Plex basically has two ways to identify your albums - by the folder/filename structure, or by embedded tags. If you’re depending on the folder/filename structure (Plex’s default), then you might look into whether your files are organized in such a way that Plex can interpret them.
note: Even if the files are well organized, if there are embedded metadata tags in the folders and they aren’t correct or consistent, it may be confusing Plex. So you might look at the tags in these files and either correct them, or remove them.

If you have Plex configured to prefer embedded tags, the problem may be in your tags. This How-To article should help.

[Jwmcc]

Sorry for delayed reply. I’ve looked at the How To reference to using tags. It’s from 2016, and asks me to check a box that isn’t present anywhere I can find in my current server settings.

I’ve looked in these three places:
Menu beside Music on the Home screen

Settings/ Library

and Manage/Libraries

Is this setting still available? If so, where can I find it?

[beckfield]

From this menu, click “Edit…”:

This should bring up the following dialog. Click “Advanced”:

The setting should be here. Depending on your display, you may need to scroll down:

[Jwmcc]

Many thanks. I’ll have to try that.

I’ve gone round in circles, failing to combine the albums with any amount of editing of Artist, Album Artist, and individual tracks in Plex to use just Benjamin Britten as the only name in all of these. I still have four albums, and a lot of missing tracks that I can’t find anywhere in Plex - not under Britten, anyway.

I think I’ll start from scratch with the two folders of mp3 files that Apple Music ripped from the two CD set.

[Jwmcc]

Well, I’ve done various things including deleting all the Britten files from the plexserver which I’d attempted to edit in Plex, then re-copied the original ripped CD files (two folders - Disc 1 and Disc 2) to the plexserver, and scanned the files again.

I’d already followed your suggestions above, and checked the box “Prefer local metadata” but that doesn’t seem to have helped, although perhaps it would if I were now to go on to edit the individual track data in Plex?

But before editing anything, I find I now have eleven ‘albums’ and am rather worse than back to square one - I ‘only’ got five albums on my previous try!

At the moment, I can’t see what to do to consolidate these eleven albums into either one Britten Rarities album, or even the two original CDs each as a separate album.

I have the kid3 app which can edit the mp3 files individually, but what do I edit them to?

Make all the Artist entries Benjamin Britten? That would lose the detail of who is playing what, but I could live with that if it worked. I’d tried that partially earlier, but found that many tracks had ‘gone missing’ and weren’t in any album.

Alternatively, what could I edit in Plex to consolidate the tracks? I don’t mind editing either Album data, or individual track data, but don’t know how Plex will respond.

Here’s one example of what kid3 sees in the .mp3 file for track 1 of Disk 1.

There is a composer field in the track, but Plex has no concept of Composer to use it.

And the Album entry is already either Britten Rarities [Disk 1] or Britten Rarities [Disk 2] in each track and that is shown in the Album detail in Plex too:

But in spite of that, I get eleven different albums! Here are the first five to show what’s happening in the Plex listing by Album:

Why are they split by the Plex indexing algorithm?

What seems to be confusing Plex is the multiplicity of combinations of artists, which are a mixture of different performers for the different pieces included in the CD.

As far as I can see, the files are sensibly named by the Music app.

And that’s essentially what I’d like to see in Plex - one album, two disks and 26 tracks listed in one place.

Any suggestions would be welcome for how to get Plex to see these two CDs as one album with two disks.

[beckfield]

@Jwmcc

Alternatively, what could I edit in Plex to consolidate the tracks?

I don’t recommend editing the information within Plex. This information will be saved in Plex’s database, and not written back to the media files, so if you rebuild the library again, you’ll lose those edits. Edit the tags using Kid3 or whatever app you choose.

I see several things in your tags that the How-To article I linked to says not to do.

• The album title must be identical in all files, so remove the “[disc x]” from the album title.
• The Track number and Disc number both show “1/10” and 1/2." While the ID3 specification allows this, Plex can’t handle it. Remove the “/x” from both tags in all files.

I put the composer’s name in the Composer tag too, even though Plex will not use it at present. We’re all hoping that will change, but until it does, this is what I’ve done:

• Album Artist is the composer
• Artist (track artist) is the orchestra, conductor, and/or soloist

Here’s an example from my library:

The tags:

How Plex shows it:

[Jwmcc]

Thank you very much. Very helpful advice. I’ll try that later, I hope this evening

[Jwmcc]

I’ve edited all the individual tracks in kid3, to do as you suggested: remove [Disk x] in the Album field, the trailing /10 or /16 from the track number, and the trailing /2 from the disk number.

I left the Artist field unchanged. kid3 shows no field for Album Artist.

i then rescanned the Music library, after checking that Prefer local metadata is still checked.

Nothing changed - still eleven separate Albums.

I can’t now find where in Plex to add or edit the Album Artist! The field doesn’t show when I pick the Albums one at a time and click on the Edit (pencil) bottom left:

.
Nor does it show in Artist view: the Edit dialogue looks just the same as above.

And it isn’t accessible from editing in the individual album view, using either pencil on this screen:

I’m probably being dense, but at the moment I feel stumped. Where does one access the Album Artist field? I have seen it from time to time in the past, but I’m not now seeing it on any album, in either Artist or Album view.

PS. AHA!
If I go to the individual track in Plex in each album, and click the pencil/Edit icon far right, then I finally find an Album Artist field. Let’s edit that…

… and at long last, after a couple of missed tracks and a second go around, I FINALLY have all 26 tracks showing under one album. While in that edit dialogue, I see that most of the tracks still show Britten Rarities [Disk x] where x is 1 or 2, Deleting that bit consolidates the last few tracks into one full 2CD album.

Without your help I couldn’t have done it, but what a palaver! Why did Plex make it so difficult? Does it just not ‘play nicely’ with iTunes-ripped CDs in general, or was my 2CD set unusual in some way?

Not even counting all the wasted efforts, it’s taken me well over an hour to do these edits, some in kid3, most in Plex.

PPS. When I edit the individual track in Plex, to access the Album Artist field, is that saved only in the Plex database, or written to the mp3 file? As I noted earlier, kid3 doesn’t show any Album Artist field, so I suspect it’s only written to the database.

[beckfield]

I’m not familiar with Kid3, but I’d be really surprised if it doesn’t support the Album Artist tag – you may just need to look for it.

Though you were able to edit things in Plex until it worked, I still recommend figuring out how to edit the tags in your files, for the reasons I mentioned in my last post.

In Plex, when you’re editing the Album, the “Artist” field is the Album Artist. As you found, when you’re editing a track, you see both the “Album Artist” and, down below, “Artist,” which would be the track artist. I can see why they didn’t label it “Album Artist” in the Album Edit dialog, but it’s probably a shorthand they could do without.

Plex didn’t intentionally make it difficult – I think they just need to more completely support the tags (as I’ve railed on about in this feature request). In addition to that, they could make the scanner more flexible by being prepared for “discnumber=1/2” or “tracknumber=4/12.” Those are valid tags per the specifications, and I think that’s how iTunes writes those tags. I know that’s how MusicBrainz Picard writes them. Plex needs the Album Artist tag to be populated – maybe iTunes doesn’t write them by default.

But with all that, I have found that Plex is pretty rock-solid at using embedded tags, if you have them exactly how Plex needs them. I think that’s true of any program – they need at least some reliable clues to identify albums and tracks, after all. You just have to follow the learning curve.

Anyway, I’m glad you got there, and I’m glad I could help. I really would recommend figuring out how to write the Album Artist tag in Kid3, though. You’ll be much better off if the info is directly in the files.

(You might take a look at Puddletag as an alternative to Kid3. I like it very much. That’s another learning curve, though ).

[Jwmcc]

@beckfield

I still recommend figuring out how to edit the tags in your files, for the reasons I mentioned in my last post.

That sounds very sensible.

I’ve just used the default settings in kid3. There seems to be a feature to Add something - a Tag, I think. Too late tonight (midnight here in UK) to pursue further, though. Album Artist isn’t included by default (see earlier post #5 for all the fields kid3 shows).

I’ve now discovered another problem altogether, for which I’ve started a new topic. Chrome on my i Mac will not play any music if I try to Cast it to any Chromecast device. Plays fine on the iMac itself, but the track position won’t budge from 00: when I switch to a Cast device.

[beckfield]

Good luck. I won’t be able to help with that. Never used Cast. Or ChromeCast. Or iMac…

[Jwmcc]

Thanks for your help on this subject, though. Much appreciated.