Back again a year or so later; checking to see if some updates have happened for supporting certain requirement I have to switch:
1. Music in Surround Formats:
Typically, these are: ac3, wav (multi-channel), .dts (various formats including DTS HD-MA), .mka (Matroska audio format) and .mkv (but files with only an audio stream.)
2. Folder/File Organizational Structure:
I’ve written and tested a script to reorganize my music collect in the structure Plex likes to use:
/Music
/Artist Name (of the whole album)
/Album Title
01 - Song Title.ext
02 - Song Title.ext
It seems to work fine on tests, but I have not run it on an existing and active Music Library.
In early threads, I note that the request was to have all track names labeled like this:
TrackArtist - Song Title.ext
Is the Track Artist portion of the file name necessary in Plex? I find it redundant relative to folder structure that already includes this.
Can I add the Year to the front of the album name folder like this:
/Album Release Year - Album Title
If this is not necessary because Plex will organize album based on the year of metadata 0 or on-line services, that’s fine. But I’m curious how this works.
If you are relying on Plex to match your albums and retrieve metadata from online sources, the folder/filename structure is very important. If you have configured your Music library to “Prefer local metadata,” and your embedded tags are very accurate, the folder/filename structure is not as important, although it is still strongly recommended.
Adding the year is good for movies and TV, but I don’t think it does much, and may be problematic, for music libraries. I’ve never done it.
music/16Volt/16Volt - Dead on Arrivals (2017)/101 - 16Volt - Dead on Arrivals - The Lamb.mp3
Of course everything has tags, too.
I do make this simplification: the Album Artist tag has one artist so there is a definitive artist to sort by. I will put multiple artists in the track Artist tag, and in Genre, even though Plex cannot use the extra info.
I put the album year after the name because I found that when looking at a list of album folders, it was much much easier to find what I was looking for (or what was missing) when albums were in alpha order, not date order. Date order looks good when you are done organizing but it makes organizing harder.
I like having the album artist in the filename, even if redundant. I never need to look at filenames, but having disc, track, album artist, and title in the filename makes finding a file easy if needed. It would also let me rebuild essential track tags from filenames if I had a metadata catastrophe. (However, I don’t give Plex write access to any libraries because I am paranoid.)
> Adding the year is good for movies and TV, but I don’t think it does much, and may be problematic, for music libraries. I’ve never done it.
WMP/WMC will sort artist’s albums based on release date; so albums display in chronological order… and if you’ve ever organized +1000 LPs, it becomes pretty clear that using release date makes it easier to organize prolific artists like Miles Davis.
The reason why I want to put the year first - rather than last, as others here have indicated - is that the folder organization would organized by year when sorted alpha-numerically… otherwise the album names would take precedence.
@BanzaiInstitute: I would argue that if you have 50 albums for an artist, its WAY easier to spot the one you want in the 1950’s - then if they were all mixed-up and sorted by album name.
I guess I am trying to learn how the text in each folder name/structure is parsed - so that I know whether putting the year there, is shooting myself in the foot.
Multichannel FLAC is working great and is half the size of uncompressed wav (PCM).
FLAC is the only surround format that works on Plexamp, too. Amazing!
Before FLAC was supported, I converted surround albums to AC3 and to DTS. I would place those into .mka or .m4a containers, and it worked well in Plex for Mac. It was labor intensive.
OK - multiple suggestions to put the year name AFTER the album name. This means albums will never be sorted by release year. So Plex is unable to parse the album name with the year at the front?
Regarding surround formats - thanks for sharing what works for you - but I am asking whether what I currently use might work. Primarily these are DTS HDMA encoded wave files - sometimes with extensions of .dts.
@OttoKerner
Beyond solitaryreign’s completely justified comment, having an artist’s portfolio organized chronologically is FAR more relevant than for movies - unless you are looking at movies based on an actor or a director’s work.
IMHO: Someone really missed this for music albums.
So: I take it then, that there is no safe way to put the album year in a folder name, without Plex potentially messing things up?
And a few times you mentioned the goal is to sort by released date. That’s as good as any.
Why not just apply a smart filter by release date then?
Why try to manipulate folder names beyond the suggested standard?
Sorry if you’ve answered that. Maybe you love Folder View.
But filters are more powerful, dynamic, and can be chained together.
I have another question: There are many “albums” that consist of multiple CD’s. Right now they are more often organized in separate folders in the albumtitle - like CD1, CD2 etc.
How is this accomplished?
I have created a new Music Library folder for Plex - and put one album there. It happens to be 4 CD’s. After a scan, Plex shows nothing.
Scan using metadata is NOT enabled. Plex finally scanned and added two albums:
Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - showing Disc, 1, 2 and 4.
Elton John - Hammersmith Odeon December 22nd, 1973
The second album does not actually exist. It is disc 3 of the correct album. Does Plex make albums up? Does it revert to metadata when a folder structure does not find the correct album?
Is there on-line help that describes EXACTLY what PLEX does in scanning libraries? Otherwise, there will be so many cases or exceptions that it will be overwhelming to sort out.
I am also curious: does Plex throw all alums in one GUI display? Is there not an upper level Artist view - that one can drill down on to show artist albums?
