I added a folder with songs to my library, but when I do this, all my MP3’s metadata is completely ignored:
The cover artwork, which is different for all MP3, because they are singles, is now the same on all songs. Plex picked a random artwork from one of the songs and applied it to all songs. On top of that, I can’t seem to find a way to manually change the artwork (which I shouldn’t have to anyway, because the metadata already includes it), but still, it seems to be impossible to edit this.
The album and album artist, etc, seems to be random as well, picked from one of the songs and now I have to change that manually.
Can someone enlighten me on this issue?
I’m loving Plex so far, but this kind of issue seems to be completely random and if all the music I import in the future gets messed up like this, it defeats the purpose of even having metadata.
You can see that all songs have different artwork:
I actually found this page about it and was changing all my libraries to that preference, so now all of them are set to “Prefer Local Metatags”.
I also checked the link you shared. I guess I need to understand the workflow, even though I wish it was simpler, just like Music app on Mac works.
But let me see if I understand: if I have different singles from the same artist, it’s better to create a folder with the artist name and then inside that folder, each songs goes inside its own folder with the album name?
Precisely. And the folder which holds all the “artist” folders is added to the Plex library.
IIRC, this is exactly the same structure which iTunes created – if you let it.
(with the exception of compilations, which are handled very different in Plex)
Ok. So I will have to change my library now to make sure that everything is using that format. So for example when I have multiple albums by the same artist and knowing that the folder on my computer with all my music is called “Plex Library”, I will get something like this:
When I drag and drop a song to Music app, regardless of its location, it always keeps the metadata. Even if a folder contains different singles from different artists. Maybe that happens that way, because I always picked that option not to copy my music to the app’s library?
Anyway, thank you so much for your help. Very helpful. Good to know about it before I imported all my music. Now I can format everything the same way.
@OttoKerner sorry, now that I’m organizing all folders, I have this question:
I have a compilation with 3 bands. Would I have 3 folders for each band and then inside a folder with the compilation name, then I would create a playlist where I put them all together?
This is my original folder. The red rectangle is the name of the compilation. The yellow rectangles are the 3 bands:
So I would get something like this:
and then I create a playlist where I put them all together, right?
This is the crucial restriction in Plex:
There can be only one AlbumArtist per one album.
If there are 3 artists involved in that album, you will have to decide that either
the album belongs to one particular artist of those three. Move the album folder into the appropriate Artist folder, change the embedded AlbumArtist meta tag accordingly.
turn the release into a sampler, which means putting it into the artist folder for the artist named “Various Artists” and setting the AlbumArtist tag accordingly.
Playlists have nothing to do with folder and file organization.
This seems to be more appropriate, at least for this example.
So I would have a folder “Various Artists” inside my “Plex Library” folder.
Then inside that folder, I will have a folder with the album’s name, in this case “Força de Intervenção”.
And inside, I will have all MP3 files where each group of songs will have the AlbumArtist set to “X-Acto”, “Alcoore”, “Human Beans”
So I end up with this:
Plex Library / Various Artists / Força de Intervenção / “all songs here”
Yes, I was just thinking about the playlist in case I needed to merge all songs, but if the above is what I understood from what you said, then it will be easy to create a playlist from that album folder
Nope. The Album Artist tag MUST be “Various Artists” for all of these tracks.
Every track in an album must have the same Album Artist, and any album that has more than one Artist listed should almost always be put under “Various Artists.”
I wouldn’t following that rule blindly.
There are many cases where using a different artist than Various Artists is a more sensible choice. It all depends on the album: how it was made, unmder which circumstances, and whether it is connected to one particular artist more strongly than to other artists involved.
Every track in an album must have the same 