Why is Plex Server grouping files into a single item

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

Server Version#:1.19.3.2843
I have added 4 FLAC music files to my library. Plex Server has created one item and included all the 4 files in it. This has only recently started to happen. I would like to get back to one file one item. How do I configure the server for this?

2

What is an “item”?
An album? An artist? A song?

3

Thanks for the question, because you having me thinking now. An item for me is a selectable tile in Plex. The 4 tracks have nothing in common, except the folder that they are in, so I am not sure why Server would combine them into an album, if that’s what it has done.

4

Plex doesn’t do single music tracks.
Each track belongs into an album.
Each Album belongs into an AlbumArtist.

All tracks stored within the same (album)folder belong into the same album.
All album folders stored within the same artist folder belong to the same AlbumArtist.

So, for proper function of Plex, you need to organize your music into a folder structure like this:

Music / AlbumArtist / AlbumTitle / Tracks
(“AlbumTitle” can also be a Single or EP release.)

If you enable ‘Prefer local metadata’, all your tracks must have complete and correct embedded meta tags.
Here is an example how this works:

mp3tag_multidisc_album
mp3tag_multidisc_album1717×741 53.6 KB

If your music is currently not following the above organizational structure, you can use software like Musicbrainz Picard to whack it into shape. https://picard.musicbrainz.org/

5

Thank you. Extremely helpful. I appreciate your quick response. I’m all set.