Why does plex put two unrelated tracks from unrelated artists into the same album?

[jakk]

I have a music library setup to serve my podcasts, with each subscription in its own directory like this:

/Podcasts/
    /podcast-a
        episode-a.mp3
        episode-b.mp3
    /podcast-b
        episode-1.mp3
        episode-2.mp3
    /podcast-c
        # etc

I’ve had issues with plex’s meta data handling before, but this sorta takes the cake. I download new episodes of podcast-a and podcast-b into the correct directory, yet plex still puts those episodes under podcast-c. How is this happening? I’ve looked at the embedded id3 tags and they have the correct information, so plex should be putting the episodes into the correct albums, but it isn’t. I have a feeling that plex is treating podcast-c as a dumping ground, so to speak, but I’m not sure why that is. Further poking around reveals that the files from podcast-a and b are tagged by plex as being part of podcast-c. My meta-data manager program shows them tagged correctly.

The tags are id3 v2.4.0, which could be an issue? I’m not familiar with id3 tags and I don’t know the diff between 2.3.x and 2.4.x, but could it cause this issue?

[TeknoJunky]

do you have ‘prefer local metadata’ enabled in the music library > edit > advanced?

if not, then plex will try to match against musicbrainz, in which case podcasts is probably futile

also, AFAIK plex doesn’t read 2.4 tags, not many things do, even though it may be the ‘current’ standard, id3v2.3 are the ‘defacto’ standard.