How to Add Music

Did you ever wonder how to add music to a library in Plex? The good news is that the process is easy, and requires only a few steps. The other good news is that the process is very similar to adding movies or adding TV shows to a Plex server.

Use the following step-by-step guide for adding music to Plex.

How to add music to Plex

Before you can add any music to Plex, ensure you follow the Plex music naming conventions and folder structure. Once your music is organized properly, you can now add them to your Plex server.

You can use the following steps to manually add music to a Plex library:

1. Open a Web browser and navigate to your Plex server.
2. Log into your Plex server as an administrator.
3. Click the Settings - the wrench - link in the upper-right corner of the Plex server page.
4. From the menu on left, scroll down to the Manage section and click the Libraries option.

   

5. With the Libraries page displayed on the right, click the Add Library button. The Add Library window is displayed.
6. Select the Music library type.
7. Enter a name for your library. You can leave it as "Films" or change it to something you prefer. You can also change the language.
8. To continue, click the Next button.

   

9. To select the folder containing your music, click the Browse for Media Folder button.

   

10. Navigate and then select the folder containing the music. Click the Add button to add the folder to the library.

    

11. Click the Add Library button.

    

The music library has now been created on your Plex server. If you move your mouse over the library name, the Edit Library option will become visible. This option allows you to modify settings for your library.

You may find that once you added the library, Plex may not display the information about your music. This may also be the case if you add new music to your library.

If the information for your music isn't available in Plex, you will need to tell Plex to scan your library files. The next section explains how to have plex scan your library files.

Scan music library files

Once the music library is created, you can scan the music files for the library. Scanning the library will search the music folders and download the metadata for each of the episodes of the music.

The amount of time it takes to scan the library is dependent on the number of music you added to your Plex Media Server. Of course, the more music that needs to be scanned, the longer it will take to scan and download the metadata for the shows.

To scan the music library in Plex, do the following:

1. Log into your Plex server as an administrator.
2. Move your mouse cursor over the music library in the library list in the left menu. Click the three dots that appear, and then select Scan Library Files from the menu that appears.

   

At this point, Plex will scan the music files and download the metadata and other information for each of the music. If you organized the music properly, then there shouldn't be too many issues with downloading the correct data.

If you have included additional files or folders you don't want Plex to scan, you can easily have Plex ignore those files and folders.

The above steps outline how to add music to Plex. Once the music folders and files have been scanned by Plex, the music will be available for streaming.

If the data for all your music was not downloaded correctly, or if the music is not showing up, there are a few things you can try:

1. Check the naming conventions for your music to ensure they are what Plex expects.
2. Try reading and then scanning the library again.

Usually one of the above solutions should help with incorrect data for a music track.

How to automatically add music

If you manage a Plex server where you have automated creating the music files on your server then you may also want to automate the process of adding the music to Plex.

If you have a programming background, or know of software that can automatically copy music to the library's folder and send an API request to the Plex server, then you can automate adding a music track to your Plex server.

You can do this in the following way:

1. Get the ID for the Plex music library by calling the Get Libraries API command.
2. Create the process of adding the music files to the library folder.
3. After each media file is added to the folder, call the Scan a Single Library API command to automatically scan the library for new files.

How you go about accomplishing the above tasks is dependent on the tools you use and your technical skill. If you add music to your server on a regular basis then you may want to look at automating the process.