I wonder if anyone has ever had the same problem I am having and if there is a work around. I am creating a database to track all .mp3 “singles”. In other words, these are just songs that I have collected, and I don’t always have more than just the song name and artist. In the database there aren’t any ways to track the songs by artist and title, By artists you can only track the songs by album name which I don’t really have, and the other options don’t allow me the option to view artist alphabetically with their respective song. Could this be a feature request?
you would generally put them under album artist “Various” or something like that then use the track artist field. It will take fiddling with the data inside plex to get the result you want i’d say.
Add a single song, then edit it to see how it will appear.
However I’ve spent hours and hours configuring different variations of tags and directory structures with no success. It just doesn’t seem as if Plex is geared to displaying singles only by artist and song title. I know this could be done by configuring the Singles folder as I have for my Artists Albums (… /Artists/A … [etc…]/Artist Name/Album). It works fine like that but I don’t want to go through all of that for just singles.
Looks like this could be a new feature enhancement.
For the structure, you’ll need to associate the file to at least an artist, for soundtracks and compilations the artist would be “various artists.”
Ideally, you’ll also have an album associated. For those that don’t have albums like bootlegs, you may use “Nonalbum Track” or “Bootleg” as the album.
I’d recommend using MusicBrainz Picard to help with adding the ID3 tags and other metadata to your collection. Use a back up copy of your music to experiment with. Also you may use the save feature to move the file into an artist>album structure that also can add other meta data to the file name like track number - song title - artist, etc…
There are other tag tools, but MusicBrainz is a good place to start because it’s free. Figure out what you like, don’t like, what you need and don’t need. Remember use a back up copy of your music incase your experiments have unexpected results.
FWIW, when we started with the lockdowns, I took it as an opportunity to organize my music. I had stuff from my youth that was mislabeled, multiple dups and lower quality that I replaced. Now that it’s been cataloged correctly and put into PLEX, it’s a whole new experience. Custom mixes, lyrics, On this date XX years ago, sonically similar, and similar artists just add the 4th dimension to the whole music experience.
It maybe a pain, but will be worth it to tag and organize the music. You can still make custom playlists, smart playlists, and custom collections. And you can always find what you want with the search.
But, those options don’t work for me. I was trying to keep it simple by just focusing on artist and song title. I don’t want to go through all the hassle that I did with Artists, Compilations, Collections and Soundtracks. I used the naming conventions recommended by Plex.
“For those that don’t have albums like bootlegs, you may use “Nonalbum Track” or “Bootleg” as the album.”
I have blanked out the Album file tag on purpose because that didn’t work, as you probably know Plex defaults to the album whenever you see it refer to Title in the 2nd sort position. in you do add something in that tag, it takes that to be the album title. There actually doesn’t appear to be a simple solution if you just want a basic display.
Thanks again
/d
PS - I have been using Mp3tag for years and it works very well for my purpose. It’s free and you con contribute to the developer if you like.
PPS - All my singles come from various sites, such as NPR (a lot of these don’t have albums associated with the file) and a lot of artists on Facebook, that offer up albums and singles and allow you to download for free.
