So CLOSE - various aritists albums, album names

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

Context: new to using plex hands-on, just got my first pass subscription two days ago.

Been messing around for two days now with metadata tags and file naming/structures. I have a few albums with various artists, and that is the difficult part. After reading many forum posts and experimenting around myself, everything is and will be exactly how I want it (after a few small tweaks to some song/artist names)… EXCEPT for the Album names in plex. They are labeled “[Unknown Album]”. I would rather the metadata and/or file structure be what names the albums rather than going in the UI of plex, and editing each “album” and “sort album”. If that is what it comes down to, so be it, but if there’s a way to avoid it that would be wonderful. Any suggestions are helpful, and here is the important bits I have set right now:

Folder structure (Windows):

.\Music
     \Various Artists - Monstercat Instinct Vol. 1
          \01 - Tristam - Questions.wav
          \02 - Lookas & Krewella - Alarm.wav
          \etc...
     \Various Artists - Monstercat Instinct Vol. 2
          \01 - Vicetone feat. Meron Ryan - Walk Thru Fire.wav
          \02 - Half an Orange feat. Blonde Maze - Old Friends.wav
          \etc...

Metadata tags in mp3tag:

Capture
Capture.PNG1583×175 18.6 KB

I have “prefer local metadata” box checked. Also I have “local media assets” for artist and album agents set above everything, including last.fm.

Again, I’m new to all this, so excuse any lack of proper terminology, and if i’m missing somethin lemme know.

Thanks in advance.

Server Version#: 1.18.0.1846

2

I guess I should also add what I see in Plex :upside_down_face::

Capture2

3
  1. Don’t use WAV files. They don’t contain any metadata which Plex can read. I recommend conversion to FLAC for lossless quality.
  2. Use a folder structure of
    Music > Album Artist > Album Title > Tracks

Which means for you:

.\Music
     \Various Artists
         \ Monstercat Instinct Vol. 1
             \01 - Tristam - Questions.flac
             \02 - Lookas & Krewella - Alarm.flac
             \etc...
        \ Monstercat Instinct Vol. 2
             \01 - Vicetone feat. Meron Ryan - Walk Thru Fire.flac
             \02 - Half an Orange feat. Blonde Maze - Old Friends.flac
             \etc...

Tags are looking good so far. (Except that Plex doesn’t read tags from WAV files.)
Don’t forget to populate the ‘disc number’ tag, if you have 2-disc or multi-disc albums.

Don’t bother embedding redundant album art into every single track.
Just put a folder.jpg or cover.jpg with good resolution/quality into the folder.
(for a multi-disc album, use the subfolder for disc 1)

1 Like
4

Thanks for the response Otto. I will convert everything here later tonight to FLAC and adjust the folder structure. I can’t believe plex cant read metadata in wav files… I swear my changes were making a difference. Must’ve been a big placebo!
Also, I unintentionally did the cover art correctly, a cover.jpg image was with each folder of songs.

Thanks again. I will update later.

5

There are no metadata in the official specification of the WAV format. These were only “bolted on” much, much later by some software solutions for the broadcast industry. So they never found much wide-spread support.

6

Good to know.

Good news, everything is now displaying correctly!
Changing to FLAC definitely helped.

Thanks for your help!

7

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