Unable to un-merge original album and remastered version

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

I have an album (Fish “Internal Exile”) where I have the original release from 1991 and the remastered version from 2024. The original is a single disc, the remastered version is a 4 disc set (5 if you include the Bluray). The files are stored in 2 separate folders and have been separately tagged using MusicBrainz - the album title for the remastered version is “Internal Exile (2024 remix)”.

However, Plex insists on combining them into a single album, with the track numbers for disc 1 duplicated. If I try and use the Match functionality it finds the 2024 album, but maps both versions to this (Disc 1 track numbers duplicated again).

As far as I can tell I’ve done everything right - the 2 albums are distinct at the metadata level and are in separate folders. How can I persuade Plex that they are different?

I saw a (now closed) post from 2015 about a similar issue - surely something has been fixed by now?!

2

Verify that the embedded Musicbrainz ID tag has different content for each version of the album.
Have you tried the Split action on the album?
How is the folder structure of your music collection? It should be

/Music
   /AlbumArtist
      /Albumtitle

Do not omit the Albumartist folder level.
Do not group different versions of the same album into the same folder (even if you use then subfolders inside).

3

Thanks for the response.

The MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID tags are different:
Internal Exile: 78a728ea-e67a-4f68-be39-0a2ed62b8958
Internal Exile (2024 Remix): 13bdde39-9e66-4933-9967-48456f7668aa

My folder structure is:

/Music
   /Fish
      /Internal Exile
      /Internal Exile (2024 Remix)

Can you spot anything I’m doing wrong?

4

No, thins is all just like it’s supposed to be.
Did you add both versions of the album during the same library scan? Or was one of the versions already present?

Have you tried to “Split” the album?

Is this checkbox in the library properties ticked or not: “prefer local meta tags”?

5

I think both versions were added at the same scan.

I can’t find any Split option - where would this be?

The “Prefer local meta tags” is un-ticked. I’ve tried ticking it and Refreshing, but nothing seems to have changed.

Thanks for your help, this is most confusing.

6

Could you show me a view of all the meta tags and file name, similar to this:

grafik
grafik1299×385 115 KB

If an album is merged from 2 different folders, Split should appear in the context menu:

grafik
grafik1484×696 72.6 KB

(as you can see, I have even 3 different versions of that album.)
But I had “prefer local metatags” already ticked when I scanned these albums in. Which might make a difference.
Tick it again, then perform a Plex Dance light with all albums. Then add them one by one.

7

Thanks - the Plex Dance did the trick! I’ll need to remember that for the future. Many thanks for your help.

Now, if we could just get the option to display the Release Year rather than the Original Release Year for re-issues…

8

Look at my screen shot again. At least one of the versions shows its own release date. (The other one I have set intentionally to the original release date, as I’m still debating which of them I’ll keep permanently.)
If you have “Prefer local metadata” enabled, Plex will use the date in the meta tags of each separate version.

9

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