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.
