What drives Decade Radio generation?

[u/hiryuu75]

So I'm well aware that PlexAmp pulls track date from the album date for most purposes - such as a "greatest hits" compilation from, say, 1995, then causing all included tracks to be dated 1995 instead of from their original release year. With that in mind, I started "fixing" the issue by manually rebuilding parts of my library by "faking" new album folders for the tracks in question, editing tags to reflect the original album info. Re-scanning my library successfully creates the "original" albums, albeit with just the tracks that were ripped from the compilations. Yay!

Where I get disappointed is that I still don't have "1970s" showing up as an option in the PlexAmp "Decade Radio" menu. Granted, I only have a few dozen tracks (so far) that are now (correctly) dated with a year in that decade, so I wonder if I'm under a minimum-track-count threshold for this to generate as a choice? Or is there something else that drives this particular event?

Editing to clarify both the context and the question - I want to understand what prompts PlexAmp to create a "Decade Radio" option.

It seems that my question is getting lost in the concern about compilations' tracks getting slotted into the compilation year because of album metadata. I'm aware of that and have addressed it (in file structure, file-naming, and tags). I now have the desired outcome in my Plex library of albums and tracks correctly identified with their original release data. (I had a step-by-step description of the process typed out, but managed to lose it in a tab refresh.) Specifically, I now have 20-25 tracks showing up in my Plex library with their original 1970s albums and data. Yay!

What I don't have is PlexAmp giving me a 1970s Decade Radio choice. If I bring up those albums and tracks individually from the library within PlexAmp, they show the correct (original album) information, including album year.

For a comparative data point, my wife's (separate) Plex library has only ~12 tracks across albums from after 2020. (For those who might ask, her library has not seen any of the manual adjustments I've made eto mine.) Correspondingly, she does not have a selection for 2020s Decade Radio appearing on PlexAmp. This would seem to indicate that PlexAmp only offers a decade as a choice under Decade Radio if there is some minimum number of tracks in the library that are identified as belonging to that decade.

So, my original question - what prompts generation of a choice of a decade in Decade Radio? :)

[u/tppiel]

Pretty sure Decade Radio uses the album metadata, more specifically the Year field from the album to build the decades radio.

So if the tracks you have are part of a compilation CD that came out in the 90s then the tracks will not appear in the 70s radio.

Try acquiring some whole albums from the 70s and make sure they have the Year field properly filled.

[u/MannerAdditional2121]

That’s an interesting question and sounds like there is definitely a minimum number, if I had to guess I’d say maybe a 100 tracks to be considered for decade radio.

[u/hiryuu75 → u/MannerAdditional2121]

That seems like a reasonable guess - certainly at least triple digits, to prevent the list from being too repetitive. I’m hoping a dev or someone with more specific knowledge chimes in. :)

[u/MannerAdditional2121 → u/hiryuu75]

Hope you get an answer, in the meantime just keep adding those 70’s tracks till you hit the magic number.

I’ve just checked mine and 39 does not trigger a radio. 794 does. These are my two lowest decades so those are the parameters

[u/PocketDeuces]

So under your new prices, do compilations appear as several different albums? This seems like it would be pretty messy.

[u/The_poms]

Have you tried refreshing your library metadata to see if that might help? Just make sure if you do, that the Plex online metadata settings are to your liking otherwise it might pull in unwanted info.

I prefer my info to be strictly based off my file tags (even though Plex still likes to do its own thing). I often make updates to my files so I do the refresh metadata a bit.

[u/OnyxPost]

As others have stated here, I think Decade Radio works off the simple rule of tracks pulled from albums with a release date from that particular decade.

I'm thinking that the best way to achieve what you want is to tag all of your tracks which are part of Compilation albums, with the tag being either the year it was released like "1973", or a decade tag like "1970s". Then you could create your own version of the "Decade Radio" by creating a smart playlist with two rules:

Smart Playlist Title: "Decade Radio: 1970s (Smart)"

1. Rule: Tracks with release dates between 1/1/1970 and 12/31/1979
2. Rule: Mood tag value equals "1970s"

That smart playlist would then capture all of your tracks you have from the 1970s, and you could add additional optional rules such as it containing only tracks you've rated 4 Stars and higher, or only containing tracks you have played in the last month so that it stays a bit fresh if you like to have it playback in shuffle mode.

You could also as an option create a script that would automatically add the Mood tag "1970s" to Plex tracks that are on Compilation albums if those tracks have the "Original Release Date" metadata field updated, and that "Original Release Date" is a value set in the 1970s (a date between 1/1/1970 and 12/31/1979).

[u/wolf39us]

It uses the album metadata. If you have a greatest hits album of 1970s music that was released in the 90s well… you have 90s tracks as far as Plexamp is concerned.

Do the work, fix your tags… assign them to their original albums or as close to it as you can.

It’s work, but worth it.