Server Version#: Version 1.43.2.10687
Player Version#: Plex Web Version 4.159.0
Plex Media Server Logs_2026-05-18_20-29-46.zip (6.5 MB)
I would like to click “Refresh all metadata” for my Music library, but the locked fields function does not appear to be properly working. I have an album for which I have locked the Album, Sort Album, and Originally Available fields. But if I refresh the metadata for that one album it overwrites it and combines those tracks with another album. The other album is a different version of the same album so I can understand the confusion, but why doesn’t the locked fields prevent this from happening?
If you want more than one version of an album, you certainly need to enable “prefer local metadata” in the properties of your music library.
Which in turn requires you to be very disciplined in organising, naming and tagging your media files.
If you want to have several versions of the same album, you need to
- check for embedded Musicbrainz IDs on the tracks or the album. If two albums are tagged with the same IDs, they will very likely get merged by Plex. When in doubt, remove all ID tags.
- ensure that the
AlbumTitle tag contains the same content for all tracks within a certain album version. And check that different album versions have different content in their AlbumTitle tags.
- always populate the
AlbumArtist meta tag
- store your music in folders like this: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/
Do NOT collect different versions of the same album into a common album title folder, even if you create then sub folders for each album version. No, treat each version as a wholly separate album – i.e. store the versions side-by-side, each in its own album subfolder, directly underneath the Artist folder.
Further rules are laid out in here: https://forums.plex.tv/t/albums-appearing-with-incorrect-artist-and-unable-to-change-it/937387/2
Well, would this be considered two versions of the same Smashing Pumpkins album:
Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness
and
Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness (30th Anniversary Edition)
The newer one has bonus tracks. They have different album art, release dates. Heck, even the album name is technically different. For the 30th anniversary edition I only have the bonus tracks on my server. I’ve locked the fields for that album. But if I refresh metadata it combines them into the original album. Is that expected behavior from Plex?
Edit: forgot to say, yes I’m following all of the Plex guidance for file management and the only ID tags were Amazon song ID comments in the 30th anniversary edition which would not be associated with the older version of the album.
Also, just to be clear, I’m using this album as a way of understanding the larger issue with Plex and locked fields. Because I can always fix one album, but I don’t want to have to fix many albums if Plex is just going to ignore the locked fields upon metadata refresh.
Ok, so looking at MusicBrainz, I can see that it has the information for both releases of this album I mentioned.
original
30th anniversary edition
My 30th anniversary edition is tagged and organized correctly as far as I can tell. So my two questions are:
- Why does Plex not recognize the locked fields upon metadata refresh?
- Is there any way to embed more metadata into the files to ensure Plex matches it to a particular release?
Musicbrainz Picard is embedding these MB IDs as meta tags.
Alternatively you should be able to paste them into the Title field when performing Fix Match on the album.
Thank you. Very helpful tip to search using the MBID in the album title field to ensure an exact match. But it is so strange what happens with this album. If I go to my 30th anniversary album it is currently unmatched, then if I click match and use the MBID of 37b2e3a2-5747-406c-9ed0-edb7eb0aad2a it finds the album and the full track list and correctly identifies which bonus track I own and don’t own. Then I click to select the match and Plex just dumps the files into my “original” version of the album (right in between disc 1 and 2)! So something is not right here.
Then your original version is probably also matched to the 30th anniversary MBID?
Good theory, but no. First, the two albums have two different release years. But I tried to “fix match” for the original using the MBID but nothing changed. Something interesting that I noticed, when I try to match the newer album using the MBID of the 30th anniversary version, while the track listing is correct, the release year is still 1995 and the artwork is still the original version. But on the MB website that is not what is shown (has correct year and artwork). So it’s not clear that Plex is pulling the data from MB.
I wonder if this MB concept of release groups has something to do with this specific issue. Both album versions are part of the same release group. Is is possible that Plex can only support one version from a release group and that is why it is overwriting the locked fields? If I can narrow down the issue to just those situations then I can possibly write down all of these special cases and deal with them individually after a “refresh all metadata” process.
I’ve been using the Picard app for a few days now. Here are my thoughts:
- While overall it is an impressive app that helps out a lot, it does not resolve the specific issue with the SP albums mentioned above. Even though I have used Picard to tag each of the SP albums into their proper separate releases (separate MBID), Plex still wants to combine them and there does not seem to be anything I can do about that. Luckily, that just seem to be an issue with just this album.
- So to the point my original post: my conclusion is there is a bug in Plex affecting this particular album and/or similar albums.
- Other albums are working well with them being properly matched upon metadata refresh.
- Even with a proper match I’m not seeing a lot of improvement in the missing mood metadata. But once I use Picard on all of my unmatched albums I may go back and use Picard to verify that the matched album actually is linked to AllMusic and if it is not then I will see if an alternative similar release is linked and switch it to that.
- Right now I have 2548 tracks with no moods attached or roughly 44% of my library, which I think it pretty bad. Only 357 of those tracks are unmatched which means most are matched but have no moods which is why we need better metadata sources!
I forgot to ask: do you have “Prefer local metadata” enabled in the properties of the music library? It is a hard requirement to have multiple versions of albums.
No, I do not have that enabled. However, I do not think it is a requirement. I have several albums that belong in the same release group that do not seem to have this issue. For example: Adore and Adore (Super Deluxe) are both in my library with no issue.
I might have found some success with the other 30th anniversary album. I locked the release date field and when I initiated a “Refresh all metadata” command in Plex it did not combine them.
