Server Version#: 1.22.3.4523
Player Version#: 4.54.5
I’m a new user and trying to organize my music library in Plex. Plex is misinterpreting the Album Artist for many files. For example, I have 2 songs by The Shins, but Plex is assigning The Shins as Album Artist for 636 songs. I’ve tested against other music players/media managers, and they all correctly interpret the songs (as in crediting The Shins with just the 2 songs). I’ve messed around a lot with the Plex media scanners and agents, but nothing seems to correct it. Please help! Thank you!
I think the most common cause of this problem is if the files aren’t organized and/or named in such a way that Plex can interpret them properly. The first step is to make sure your files are organized as recommended in this guide.
Thank you for the quick response, beckfield. My folder file structure is pretty flat. I have folders for Artist Name but no subfolders (e.g., Album Name) under Artist Name. Within Artist Name are the songs, named as Artist Name - Song Title. Can Plex re-organize my library in the recommended structure? If not, can you recommend an app that will do this effectively? I appreciate your help!!
Yeah, flat folder structures present a real problem for Plex. Hopefully improvements are on the way.
Plex does not touch your files, either to organize them or to edit embedded tags. A lot of folks on the forum have recommended Filebot, but I have never used it.
Plex currently is a hybrid, it uses filenames/foldernames and tags and online matched (Musicbrainz) to figure out how to organise and name albums. Because of this, it often fails in unpredictable ways.
I had been using MediaMonkey to tag my files (because it was my default player), and now I’m using Jaikoz to tag and organize my songs into the folder structure that Plex needs. I’m discovering that no tool is perfect! It’s an arduous process. Once this is done, should I not have Plex ‘Refresh All Metadata?’ I know you said that Plex doesn’t edit tags, but is it possible Plex would assign incorrect metadata to a song that had correct metadata to begin with, such that in display it would show a different artist than the one embedded in the tag? Thanks again for your help!
Actually, it’s already specifically built into the settings to tell it to only use those tags. It just seems to bypass the direction to use it.
Right now it is currently mismatching album art even from files that I have explicitly matched and embedded the art from using Musicbrain Picard, which should in theory now be the exact same information anyway which makes it extra frustrating.
This same issue seems to be popping up in the forums now that I look constantly, and people regularly report proper tags and embedded art to the same result. In the end, I track that for using the online databases to pull info the folder structure makes sense to match the new folder structure, but if the server is explicitly told not to use that information for the presentation layer like names and art, the problem is not how people organize their library because Plex is clearly finding the file and just not using it’s tags.
I’ve been having this problem of incorrect album artist interpretation and it’s confusing! it is happening with my organized folder structure (album artist/album) Can confirm that each album is matching to the proper artist & album themselves at the album level, but it seems to be a glitch in how the main artist group is named that it’s group under. It seems like it might be filing albums under an incorrect album artist that was recently added to the database folder around the same time.
I run “fix match” to be sure it’s matching with the right album but it doesn’t update the header Album Artist group it’s categorized under when incorrectly labeled. And no changes to the artist display occur from re-scanning the library or refreshing all metadata.
Removing and re-adding the mis-matched albums from the folder does fix it if I am only adding albums from a single album artist folder at a time, almost like it’s getting tripped-up handing out artist name tags running a lot of matches with different album artists back to back.
I did some more ‘massaging’ of my music with Jaikoz. Plex now sees The Shins as Album Artist for 235 songs, which is better than 636. I’m wondering, though, if I try to correct the Album Artist entry for those songs in Plex, will Plex honor it as long as there are no other changes to those songs ID tags or other properties from other software. I don’t want to manually correct 235 entries if I think Plex will just revert back to the previous Album Artists whenever I do a Plex Server update or a Library Scan or a Refresh Metadata. Thoughts, anyone? Thanks!
If you change the tags within Plex, it will only be stored in Plex’s database. You could have to re-do the changes if the database is damaged, or if, for any reason, you remove the album from Plex and add it back again. There is no ‘lock’ icon on the Album Artist field in the Edit Track dialog, like you see on ‘Title’ or ‘Artist,’ so it probably won’t be protected if metadata is refreshed.
Editing the tags embedded in your music files is, in my opinion, the most secure way. If you are confident in the completeness and accuracy of your embedded tags, you might want to be sure Plex is fully configured to prefer embedded tags.
You might want to check out this guide if you go that route.
I have used MP3TAG for many years, the developer is very active and there is a Windows and Mac version even though the Mac version is paid. It also tags most common video formats.
Following the Plex music guide, mp3tag easily creates the right structure and moves files into them.
The Artist\The Album [Year]\Track # - Artists - Track Title
I have this same bug, which is annoying. The metadata is correct and the data was correct before. Had a overnight scan running up and it wonked all my artists to some random artist. Even using fix match won’t correct this issue. It shows correct data, but won’t fix whatever random artist the scanner decided to issue to the files.
Yes, folder structure is followed, yes, the tags are in there. Yes, it’s a reproducible bug, if I reset metadata it will assign another artist to multiple files.
Hi,
Same problem here.
New plex user, and I struggle to organize my music library.
I have some duplicated artists in my plex library (Ben Harper, Michael Jackson…) sometimes with different albums, sometimes with same one
I cannot make custom “Album artist” to work as with emby/jellyfin/kodi.
I don’t have a single “Various Artists” folder, because I don’t want my soundtracks, audio books, musicals, classical music,… albums to be all put in the same fake “Various Artists”
All files were tagged with mp3Tag, with “Album Artist” matching the folder name (Artist name, soundtracks, musicals, …)
Unfortunately, Plex don’t like this: it creates several “soundtracks” album artists, all with only one album and use “artist” for the “album artist” metadata.
In general, it’s hopeless to use Plex with any music library of nontrivial size or complexity because of its insistence on downloading lower-quality metadata from the internet and using it to scramble your library into an incoherent mess. I’ve struggled for years trying to get Plex to be a usable music player that strictly and exclusively reads only my embedded tags, and there simply is no way to get it to do it. Everything results in some generic tags being downloaded from the internet and splattered all over the place.
Sadly, I think I’ve come to the same conclusion. Nothing I do or try seems to change its behavior. I haven’t been a Plex user for very long. Is music just a lower priority for Plex? Strange that the developers can’t seem to fix something that has been poor for so long, especially since many other music apps don’t have this same issue.
put every album with the AlbumArtist “Soundtracks” underneath the artist folder Soundtracks, which is located inside the Music folder.
Only add the folder Music to your Plex library
Don’t put any album inside the Soundtracks folder which doesn’t have an Album Artist tagged at all or has a different AlbumArtist tagged than “Soundtracks”
because of the above, all tracks of an album must have identical content in their AlbumArtist meta tags
enable “Prefer Local Metadata” in the properties of your music library – before adding those soundtrack albums
Make sure that all your files have metatags for at least the following: Tracktitle, Artist, AlbumArtist, AlbumTitle, Tracknumber, Discnumber (only on multi-disc albums)
Never mix albums which have been tagged with different AlbumArtists inside the same “artist” folder!
Always provide an AlbumArtist metatag, particularly if you are deviating from the AlbumArtist which is on record at musicbrainz.org
The DiscNumber doesn’t belong into the AlbumTitle meta tag.
In other words: the structure of \Music\Artist Name\Album must be present at all times. And the folder organization must never be contradicted by the embedded meta tags.
Caveat: All of the above can still lead to chaos if you are trying to add classical composer’s works.
It would be trivial for Plex to use only tags, but it is a deliberate design choice to also infer metadata from the filename/folder structure. The developers don’t see the current situation as needing a fix, they are of the opinion that the users should conform to the Plex file naming & folder structure guidelines.
You can agree or disagree with that opinion, and at this point Plex is pretty much the only music library with that opinion, but that’s what it is, for more than 10 years now.
Blockquote
The developers don’t see the current situation as needing a fix
And this is the issue. The options are explicitly configurable to use local tag data only which means by that very definition it should not be looking at the other data at all. Yet, it still does, ignoring the AlbumArt “Local Files Only” selection specifically set by the user as one blatant example.
At that point, it’s not opinion but a direct contradiction of the menu settings which means it’s a bug that should be fixed.
If the developers want to go against basically every other library/player/server out there and what is clearly the wishes of a significant portion of their paying user community about tag sources, that’s a different issue that probably also needs to be discussed. But if that’s the stance, then quit pretending that the local files are even being used at all so we all stop asking why the settings are not working.
I assume the developers’ stance is that filenames and folder names are also local.
It’s annoying but it is what it is. I hope they overhaul the music metadata handling, there’s a large list of limitations and issues. But I also realize that none of these are easy fixes and if they do overhaul it, it will probably be a compatibility-breaking PMS 2.0 or something.
The other alternatives (Emby, Jellyfin, Navidrome, Airsonic) have their limitations as well, although not quite as hard to understand as Plex. I’m currently using Navidrome in parallel with Plex, it’s better in some ways (all tags-based, for one), but it also doesn’t have yet a) the really cool artist biographies/reviews nor b) a player as good as PlexAmp.
