Guys
Sorry for the vague title, not too easy to capture my issue in an abbreviated form.
Hopefully I can make the issue clear below.
I have been ripping my CD collection to FLAC using EAC. When I insert the CD, I select the best match of data available (if there’s more than one version on the list) and then manually edit the file name and artist details to my preferred format (ie. capitalize the first character of each word in song title, change words like “Featuring” to “feat.” in the artist tags). After ripping the CD, I then use MP3Tag to add further metadata (usually the album art, album artist and perform a double check of the tags already created in EAC).
When I add a compilation album to my library (ie. a CD with more than one artist) I have been tagging the “Album Artist” as something other than “Various” or “Various Artists”. For example, I have many compilations from Ministry Of Sound and Euphoria, I have tagged the Album Artist as Ministry of Sound and Euphoria.
Lets use the following CD as an example:
Album Name - Chilled Euphoria (CD 1)
Album Artist - Euphoria
Tracklist:
1 Drifting Away - Faithless
2 Touched by God (Katcha’s quiet storm mix) - Katcha
3 Moments Of Ambience - Odessi
4 Cafe del mar (Michael Woods remix) - Energy 52
5 Smokebelch II (Beatless mix) - Sabers of Paradise
6 Everytime (Man called Adam’s balearic mix) - Lustral
7 From Russia with love (Alaska remix) - Matt Darey Pres Dsp
8 Music for airports (Ambient 1) - Brian Eno
9 Jillanity (Album version) - L.S.G.
10 Talking with myself '98 (Canny remix) - Electribe 101
11 Invisible (Courtyard mix) - Tilt
12 Bedrock (3.2 bedrock ambient mix) - Humate
13 Saltwater (Thrillseekers remix) - Chicane
14 Why does my heart feel so bad - Moby
So, before I rip to FLAC using EAC, I alter a few tags to my preference (eg. change “4 Cafe del mar (Michael Woods remix)” to “Café Del Mar (Michael Woods Remix)”), I then rip the CD. After this, I bulk edit the missing metadata in MP3Tag (set Album Artist to “Euphoria” and assign Album Art to all tracks). I double check all tags are as required.
Now, in Plex, if I view by Artist, I have a folder for “Euphoria” which lists all 30ish CDs I have ripped. But I have also found an Artist folder for Faithless. I have not ripped and Faithless albums yet and there is only the one track in there, “Drifting Away” from this Euphoria Album. If I look through the library on Plex, it hasn’t created an artist folder for Katcha, Odessi, Energy 52 and so on, only one for Faithless. I have re-checked the metadata in MP3Tag and see no explanation for this as all FLAC files have been tagged in the same way, at the same time.
If anyone has read this far and can understand my explanation, well done. Next question is, what on earth do I do to sort this out?
Many thanks in advance.
Trumpy81
Thanks for the reply. I am trying to avoid putting all my compilations into a “Various Artists” folder and so have given all of my Euphoria albums and Album Artist of “Euphoria”.
I checked all of my tags and they are correct.
What I cant understand is the two questions below:
Why has Plex created a folder for Faithless when there are no Album Artist tags in my entire library set as “Faithless”?
If plex is creating a folder for Faithless, why is it not doing exactly the same for all of the other artists in the same CD?
Again, thank you for your assistance on this.
It is OK to use your own ‘made up’ AlbumArtist.
Though in many cases you won’t get proper artist photos of course.
Make sure that all tracks that shall appear together in an album:
- are stored together in the same folder on disk
- have identical values set for ‘AlbumArtist’ and ‘AlbumTitle’
- if you embed disc numbers and track numbers, make sure they all use the same convention (i.e.
1 vs 1/1)
Your example above contains a mistake many people make:
Album Name - Chilled Euphoria (CD 1)
If this is a multi-disc album, the disc number must not be part of the ‘AlbumTitle’. There is a proper metatag just for disc numbers. Make use of it.
After you changed the embedded tags, perform a Plex Dance ‘light’, (omitting step 4)
I recommend to use a subfolder approach for multi-disc releases. to store on disk
I personally am always populating the ‘AlbumArtist’ tag in my files. Even with sampler albums (‘Various Artists’).
True ‘single’ tracks (which don’t appear on any named release) don’t get an AlbumTitle tag.
Those will be collected by Plex into a ‘virtual’ album called ‘[Unknown Album]’
see also https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1093611/#Comment_1093611
OttoKerner
Thanks for the advice on this. Please let me address your points in order:
"Though in many cases you won’t get proper artist photos of course." - I have my own album art and artist photos that I want Plex to use, rather than take from LastFM. Because of this, I am not worried about declaring the exact AlbumArtist, if that makes sense. On the most part, I declare the artist correctly, it’s when I rip “sample/compilation” albums that I am declaring something other than “Various Artists” and usually declaring it as the record label.
**"Make sure that all tracks that shall appear together in an album:
- are stored together in the same folder on disk
- have identical values set for ‘AlbumArtist’ and ‘AlbumTitle’
- if you embed disc numbers and track numbers, make sure they all use the same convention (i.e.
1 vs 1/1)"**
All tracks from each CD are stored together on the same folder
All have identical values for AlbumArtist and AlbumTitle
All tags for CDNumber and NumberOfCDs are correct (ie. if ripping from a 3 CD album, I am declaring this in EAC as CDNumber 1,2 or 3 from NumberOfCDs 3
"Your example above contains a mistake many people make:
Album Name - Chilled Euphoria (CD 1)
If this is a multi-disc album, the disc number must NOT be part of the ‘AlbumTitle’. There is a proper metatag just for disc numbers. Make use of it."
Same as above comment. I am declaring both the CDNumber and NumberOfCDs in EAC and checking this in MP3Tag and so I can’t see how the AlbumTitle can cause a problem. I understand that Plex will not use “(CD x)” in AlbumTitle to differentiate and uses the values in CDNumber for this function.
"After you changed the embedded tags, perform a [Plex Dance]"
1.move all files for the show out of ‘sight’ of plex - By this, do you mean to change the directory path Plex uses to find media (in my case Z: drive which is mapped to my NAS Music folder) or do you mean to remove all media from Z: to another location not searched by Plex?
2.update library (not ‘Refresh all’)
3.empty trash
4.double check naming schema and move files back
5.update library
"I recommend to use a subfolder approach for multi-disc releases. to store on disk
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1050849/#Comment_1050849"
This is a good suggestion and is something I have considered indeed. Are there any issues that arise from this method?
"I personally am always populating the ‘AlbumArtist’ tag in my files. Even with sampler albums (‘Various Artists’).
True ‘single’ tracks (which don’t appear on any named release) don’t get an AlbumTitle tag.
Those will be collected by Plex into a ‘virtual’ album called ‘[Unknown Album]’"
I have always added the AlbumTitle tag to all of my media. By “Single” do you mean, for example, a CD single which would have 3 or so tracks by the same artist or just a track on it’s own? I would still populate the AlbumTitle tag as either the track name or single name on these, unless there is problems caused by this.
So good of you to take the time to respond to me on this and thank you again.
@derek_j_spence@hotmail.com said:
“Your example above contains a mistake many people make:
Album Name - Chilled Euphoria (CD 1)
If this is a multi-disc album, the disc number must NOT be part of the ‘AlbumTitle’. There is a proper metatag just for disc numbers. Make use of it.”
Same as above comment. I am declaring both the CDNumber and NumberOfCDs in EAC and checking this in MP3Tag and so I can’t see how the AlbumTitle can cause a problem. I understand that Plex will not use “(CD x)” in AlbumTitle to differentiate and uses the values in CDNumber for this function.
The AlbumTitle will cause a problem, if that is what you are embedding in the Albumtitle meta tag.
Let’s say you have a double album.
You embed Chilled Euphoria (CD 1) into all tracks of disc 1.
and Chilled Euphoria (CD 2) into all tracks of disc 2.
Result: Plex will make 2 albums, one named “Chilled Euphoria (CD 1)” and the other “Chilled Euphoria (CD 2)”, instead of one album named “Chilled Euphoria” with 2 discs in it.
Using
Chilled Euphoria (CD 1)
and
Chilled Euphoria (CD 2)
as folder names on disk however, is tolerated by Plex (as long as the embedded metadata are in order).
“After you changed the embedded tags, perform a [Plex Dance]”
1.move all files for the show out of ‘sight’ of plex - By this, do you mean to change the directory path Plex uses to find media (in my case Z: drive which is mapped to my NAS Music folder) or do you mean to remove all media from Z: to another location not searched by Plex?
I mean moving the files themselves (or better, the whole folder of this particular album).
Do not touch the library configuration.
“I recommend to use a subfolder approach for multi-disc releases. to store on disk
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1050849/#Comment_1050849”
This is a good suggestion and is something I have considered indeed. Are there any issues that arise from this method?
“side car” AlbumArt needs to reside in the subfolder for disc 1. That’s it.
True ‘single’ tracks (which don’t appear on any named release) don’t get an AlbumTitle tag.
Those will be collected by Plex into a ‘virtual’ album called ‘[Unknown Album]’"**
I have always added the AlbumTitle tag to all of my media. By “Single” do you mean, for example, a CD single which would have 3 or so tracks by the same artist or just a track on it’s own? I would still populate the AlbumTitle tag as either the track name or single name on these, unless there is problems caused by this.
I am doing the same when I have the complete ‘single’ release from the artist with all its different ‘mixes’ and B-sides etc.
I treat and tag them just like albums (often I include (CDS), or (EP) or (maxi) in their “album” title).
But sometimes you happen to have just one single mp3 file of a song. And sometimes there are even several of these ‘lone’ tracks for a given artist.
For most of these I am simply too lazy to determine the album or single where they appeared on. This is what I was referring to. 
