WIndows Music Files Metadata And How It relates To Plex Fields in Compilation/Multi Artist Albums

[69clkxhw69]

Hi

I know that Plex is awful at handling Compilation/Multi Artist music CDs. I guess it is NEVER going to be fixed so it handles compilation albums and multi artists like other media servers where you can have the real artist name so it shows up as the artists rather than “various artists” in Artist view

I have read the recommendation about creating a literal artist folder called “Various Artists” and the recommended folder structure underneath it

However my question is how the meta data in an MP3 file in WIndows for example maps onto the various field that Plex assigns to it during its import into Plex.

The meta data in my WIndows MP3 files are “driven” by the media server I used before Plex

Title (track title), e.g. Little By Little
Contibuting Artist Oasis
Album (album title) Best Of Acoustic
ALbum Artist Blank

(track number) 7

The metadata item about this being part of a set has 1/2 (so CD 1 of 2) and the “part of a compilation” is set to Yes (even though Plex will ignore it)

The recommendation from Plex is that the metadata should be

• The “Album Artist” for each track should be the literal Various Artists
• The “Artist” for each track is whichever artist performed that track

Can anyone please clarify if the plex-recommended field they refer to in the instructions as “Album Artist” maps directly onto the MP3 file metadata that WIndows calls “Contributing Artists” or Album Artist?

Likewise does the plex-recommended field they refer to in the instructions as “Artist” maps directly onto the MP3 file metadata that WIndows calls "Album Artist?

I appreciate that its probably a dumb question but I am not very technical and having come from a media server that handled “comilations” without any problem and relied on Windows to do the heavy lifting of mapping going to Plex that requires me to refile everything and also check my 24,500 tracks’ metadata I dont want to do too much work only to find I map then wrong things

Many thanksompilations

[beckfield]

The ID3 specification, which is the standard for MP3 metadata, does not define a tag called “AlbumArtist,” which was a huge oversight. Way back when WinAmp was the premier music playing app, they decided to use the TPE2 tag, which ID3 defined as “Band/orchestra/accompaniment,” as AlbumArtist, and pretty much everybody has followed suit ever since, including Plex.

So for Plex and most other apps, “Album Artist” maps to TPE2, while “Artist,” which is the artist for an individual track, is TPE1 (defined as “Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)”). I don’t know if what you called “Contributing Artist” is the same as what ID3 calls “Artist.” I suspect it is, but “Contributing Artist” is not a phrase used in the ID3 specification, so I’m not certain.

For Plex, leaving “Album Artist” blank is likely to cause problems eventually. There are several threads in these forums that were solved by populating “Album Artist” correctly.

As for disc numbers, Plex used to not like “1/2,” but I’m told that’s not the case anymore. Personally, I think the “/2” is redundant. If each disc has the correct disc number by itself, Plex will figure out how many discs there are in the set. But it shouldn’t be a problem either way, as long as you are consistent within any album.

This How-To has a little more detail about how Plex uses tags. You may find it helpful:
[HowTo] Configure Plex to use embedded metadata (music)

When an album is tagged with “AlbumArtist” = “Various Artists” and each track has “Artist” = [individual track artist], Plex will display it like this:

[beckfield]

All that may be more than you were looking for, so let me add this.

Most folks around here agree that MP3Tag is the best free music tagging application for Windows. If you’re familiar with simple spreadsheets, you shouldn’t have too much trouble figuring it out.

If you take a look at some of your albums in MP3Tag, or any tagging app, you should see right away if the track artist is “Oasis” (using your example) or not. If it is, Plex should be fine with it.

[69clkxhw69]

Hi

Thanks for the reply

I am really struggling to understand how the exact same PMS can import the exact same compilation albums into two different libraries

Library 1

It a music library.

Has about 14k tracks in it.

Have been using it for a long time now.

Examples of the structure of a couple of my compilation albums

So the highlighted one ….

Heres what the files look like with their metadata

I scan this album into Music Library

I get this – One entry for each track imported instead of a single entry

So from this and looking at your answer PMS has decided, due to missing/incorrect names/metatdata or metadata in the wrong headings in the file.

BUT …

I copy a few folders of various artist compilation albums to another part of the file system. I don’t change structure, or titles, or folder names or anything
I create a second music library and point it to the copies of my compilation albums
PMS scans it in as I would expect it to, like this

And opening the album

SO its like you suggest it should be

EXCEPT

I don’t understand why PMS when it scans these files into the old music library splits them out like it does, yet a new library in the same PMS server it scans them “correctly” given it is using the same source files, structure, names, metadata etc (other than they are copies with a different pathname

Other “anomalies” ….
In my original music library, some compilation albums get “split out into tracks” and some do not. I cant work out why.

I have even deleted the albums that are split out from the database, and deleted them from the disk, re-copied the files back to where they were, scanned them again and it does exactly the same thing.

Is there something I should to clear deleted stuff before re-scanning the files (i.e. is it “remembering” that these were scanned in previously and reverted back to a cached copy or something?

Or have I just been “lucky” in my new library where PMS has renamned things to “Various Artists” and if I were to load more and more into that library eventually it’d get confused like my original library?

Also, if I read the Plex recommended “how to structure your media” stuff, at https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/, it says you should explicitly create a literal artist called “Various Artists” – and even though I didn’t do that my second test music library seems to have created the label “Various Artist” itself. I didn’t put that term anywhere in any of the file names or metadata, not edited anything once the album appears in PMS.

But you then seem to lose the ability to search and find individual artists, what tracks they are on and on what album. Is there a workaround for this??

Many thanks for ylour help

[beckfield]

Yes, Plex will, in the right conditions, create a “Various Artist” artist when it is able to. Maybe it found less ambiguous information in the smaller library and, as you suggested, you got lucky.

I gave up (never started, really) trying to figure out why Plex does what it does when my tags were incomplete. Maybe the scanner found different clues in each situation and, trying to make the best guess it could, came up with a different result. I just took it as motivation to get my tags in good order.

Artists that only appear on VA albums will not get their own Artist Detail page in Plex. This is a long-standing feature request. But searching for an individual artist on a VA album does work.
Here’s an example. In my library, this artist only appears on a single track on a VA box set:

As noted in the How-To article I linked to earlier (and the Help articles also emphasize), if you’re going to use the “Prefer local metadata” option, your tags need to be very accurate. The How-To also lists the specific tags Plex needs at a bare minimum (look for “Necessary Tags”).

I’ve found Plex to be very reliable as long as they are. When Plex does something odd with an album, 99% of the time it’s because of an error in my tags.

[beckfield]

I just noticed in your screenshots that the folder names of your compilation albums start with “Compilation_”. This does not comply with the guidelines.

I also notice that the “Disc” tag is empty in your multi-disc example. This will cause Plex to produce unpredictable results like you’ve been seeing.

[69clkxhw69]

Thank you again for your help

My album names and structures to a large part were created by iTunes which I still use on a laptop at home but not when travelling, hence my desire to get Plex working (but ideally with exactly the same files and structures as iTune so I am not having to maintain two lots of music files, one for iTunes and one for Plex. Plex also offers better support travellers as I can self host it and access remotely as opposed to having to pay Apple a load of money each month to house all my media. Plex also supports a wider range of media that I have

I have noticed one thing about all the “1 track per album” thing. If I select all of the ones I want to group and then hit the merge button, it does put them all together but seems to default the album artist on the overall compilation to one of the artists, but then if I go and edit the Artist for the whole album from whatever value the merge has put in there, it will let me but then changes it back.

DO you happen to know if you switch the “use local information” of on a library if it’ll rescan everything? I suspect it will (it should do)

THanks again for your help

[Ryuzaki_2]

My two cents here. Yes it will scan if it notices a change or it will scan on the scheduled time you have set. You can force a scan on the library anytime you want.

Go to any library and click on the three dots. Then select scan library files. This will scan the whole library.

I would recommend that you do not set plex to prefer local metadata.

As for your other question

@69clkxhw69

Can anyone please clarify if the plex-recommended field they refer to in the instructions as “Album Artist” maps directly onto the MP3 file metadata that WIndows calls “Contributing Artists” or Album Artist?

No Contributing artist does not map to either of those, it is a different tag. In your metadata picture you show Album Artist as Chic on one track named good times, and you also show that same name Chic as the Contributing Artist, and all the other tracks only have contributing artist. If you insert “Various Artists” into the Album Artist tag for every single song, that will put all the tracks under the various artists.

@69clkxhw69

Likewise does the plex-recommended field they refer to in the instructions as “Artist” maps directly onto the MP3 file metadata that WIndows calls "Album Artist?

No it does not map. That is the Artist tag.

To make the files play nice with Plex you can approach this in two ways.

1. You can use iTunes or mp3tag to go through each file and put “Various Artists” in the Album Artist tag, and put all your contributing artists into the Artists tag.

2. Or you can leave the files as they are and put the music in the folder structure that Plex needs to see.

I know you mentioned you were using iTunes and would like to keep using. Whatever you do, keep in mind that if you are actively using iTunes, or another app at the same time as Plex, that is set to “manage your library” or “organize your library” any manual changes you make to Plex or the files, could get undone by another application especially if that other application moves things around from folder to folder. So if you are using iTunes make sure to check in preferences > advanced

If keep itunes media organized is ticked, then itunes will actively move things around as you add to your library or change things. If so then itunes will be your home base of sorts where you can manage your library and tag things and then let Plex do its thing. You can very easily use iTunes to “retag” your files and that should help Plex match up.

For example I have one compilation in my test library called summer hit mix. And it does not sort properly in my Plex Library. I can easily add the Album Artist Various Artist by going to the album three dots and selecting Album Info

Then put Various Artists in the Album Artist slot

A green check will show up hit OK.

To Check your individual artist which should be good if you let itunes manage. go to a track and to the three dots to the right, and select song info

The song artist should be here. So in your case you could copy the contributing artist tag into the artist tag if it is not there. Hit ok.

Plex should notice the change and auto scan. Just to be sure Plex caught the change. Go to the three dots, and scan library and then once that is done, Go to the three dots and tell Plex to Refresh Metadata. Be warned this rescan will rescan the entire library and pull metadata so things might move around.

That will help a little, but if you are going for perfection, you may need to plex dance. So after you make the changes do a plex dance it should then rack and stack things properly.

This is the tough part when you are moving from one to the other. I did the same thing as you for a while. I kept itunes for the family and then plex for travel. But over the last 2 years I have moved completely off of iTunes and only use Plex for music now. Be brave. and Good luck.

[69clkxhw69]

Many thanks for your response

helps me realise that unfortunately I didnt set my metadata up correctly a long time ago and so will have to do a bunch of work

Regards

[certuna]

Plex has these limitations:

• (Performing) Artist (TPE1): the tag can hold multiple artists, but Plex only reads the first value
• Album Artist (TPE2): the tag can hold multiple artists, but Plex only reads the first value
• other artist fields like Composer (TCOM), Conductor (TPE3), Remixer (TPE4), Producer (TIPL), etc: Plex does not read/use them at all
• Compilation (TCMP): Plex does not read it, so compilations need to have the (English!) phrase “Various Artists”

This makes it tricky when using Plex in combination with other applications/servers that do support these fields: you either accept that a lot of info is “lost” in Plex, or you find a way to insert the info you want in the fields that Plex does read, for example the Song/Album Title field.

So you’d re-tag
Alice , Bob - Sing A Song Together
to
Alice - Sing A Song Together (with Bob)

Similarly, you can move the Composer to the Album Artist field, and the Conductor to the Album Title, so a correctly tagged album Symphony No. 4 with:

Artist (TPE1) = Berliner Philharmoniker
Conductor (TPE3) = Herbert von Karajan
Composer (TCOM) = Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

would have to be retagged something like this:

Album Artist = Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky → this is the artist where the album will be listed under in Plex
Artist = Berliner Philharmoniker → this appears visually as the “song artist”
Album Title = Symphony No. 4 (conducted by Herbert von Karajan) → at least this makes the album show up if you search for “karajan”

It’s annoying, but that’s unfortunately how it is. Hopefully Plex will support multi-valued artist fields somewhere in the future, but I’m not holding my breath for it, it’s been 10+ years like this already.

Other software:

• iTunes/Apple Music: supports Composer and Compilation, but not multiple artists nor Conductor/Remixer/Producer/etc
• Navidrome: supports Compilation, but not multiple artists nor Composer/Conductor/Remixer/Producer/etc
• Jellyfin & Emby: support multiple artists and Composer but not Compilation nor Conductor/Remixer/Producer/etc
• Kodi, MusicBee and foobar2000: support multiple artists, Compilation, and Composer/Conductor/Remixer/Producer/etc