I have MP3s of old radio shows, clips, etc. They are not “albums”, nor were they ever on “albums”.
I do not want my files arranged, matched, categorized, etc. There is no information for a lot of the files I have. Many are not commercially produced. I chose “prefer local metadata”, and it is still putting files under “various artist” headings when there is no “various artist” in the metadata.
I do not want Plex to categorize or collate these files for viewing. The file structure already does that. I simply want the file structure. I don’t need track information or graphics etc., because there is none. I don’t want track numbers because these are files, not CDs. I would honestly prefer it to not even to use metadata, the file names are enough. All I need is this:
That is what i want. You click a folder, it shows you folders inside the folders, or the files, etc. I don’t understand why this is so unreasonable. I get that most people have classifiable content they got from torrents, etc., and need all the bells and whistles, but we need to be able just to navigate media that isn’t commercially mass produced.
Plex is great for mass produced movies and tv and music that conforms to a CD type provenance. I have no complaints in that regard whatsoever.
Do I need to find a second option to run as a home portal for other things?
Yes, and it is serviceable if one is aware, but setting that doesn’t affect what other people see when they connect to my server, does it? They would have to know to choose folder view, otherwise it difficult to figure out what anything is or what goes with what.
I have a library called “Radio Shows”, with a folder called “Lux Radio Theatre”, with subfolders for season 1, season 2, etc. It just ignores the directory structure, omits “Lux Radio Theatre” entirely, and puts the individual seasons under “Radio Shows” with names like “various artists”.
I feel like I am trying to make it do something it wasn’t intended to do, but that in itself feels kind of silly since what I am asking it to do is the simplest thing imaginable. I think it might be best if I find another server option to accomplish this.
The problem seems to be that Plex assumes all mp3 files to be commercially produced, music industry format, categorized by artist-album-track. There are many kinds of MP3 files that don’t adhere to this format. I mean come on, the “CD” is a dead format, and I think “Album” isn’t far behind it.
There needs to be an option to completely ignore the metadata and just present things in terms of the filesystem. Otherwise we are forced to go in and make tags that will present a file in terms of artist-album-track, when there is no artist, album, or track number. I don’t have the time or inclination to do that, since the features that require the tags aren’t features I need anyway.
As an experiment I copied a folder, removed the tags from the files completely, and made a new library from it.
In folder view, instead of showing the file names, it now says “various artists”. I see no way to make it just simply show the filenames. I think this is probably not the product I am looking for. I will continue using it for commercially produced movies, music, and tv, but for personal files it is basically unusable without countless hours of tag finagling.
