Plex incorrectly interpreting Album Artist

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
17

If you want this to work, you must:

  • tag every file with the AlbumArtist “Soundtracks”
  • 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.

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