The new premium music is a step in the right direction but unfortunately just a step. One of the problems is that the genre is only stored at the album level even though the individual tracks all had genre fields.
When I import an album where the tracks contain different genres only one of them ends up getting associated with the album. One might argue that all of them should get set for the album but this isn't right either in my opinion. For example, I have an album (Rhapsodies In Black) that mixes jazz with spoken word tracks. Using the new (and much needed) option to respect the item tags causes this album to be marked with a genre of 'spoken word' even though that only applies to about 1/3 of the tracks.
In my ideal world, the track would have one or more genres and the album would have a set of virtual (not user editable) genres that are the combination of all the tags in the tracks. Then if I filter on albums by genre and play I get only the tracks from the album that match.
The current system requires me to go back and attempt to fix the tagging on the albums where this happened and even if I do it creates a situation where the tags will be misapplied. Even though itunes hobbles us with only a single genre per track it at least has the field at the track level and not for an album.
I like this idea. While we are here, multiple genre ability for each track would be useful too. Is "Baby I'm Burning" by Dolly Parton classified as Country, or Disco? I'd say it's both.
I like this idea. While we are here, multiple genre ability for each track would be useful too. Is "Baby I'm Burning" by Dolly Parton classified as Country, or Disco? I'd say it's both.
For sure! Multiple genres per track are definitely needed.
Awe man I didn’t found out until over a week into painstakingly organizing my library for Plex before I ran into this I need genres on tracks - for EDM it’s all but required.
I think that Plex does now recognise that a track can have multiple genres. However, there is another issue; Plex only displays Genres at the level of an Album. The problem is that the ID3v2 Genre tag is at the track level.
It seems as though Plex just chooses one track to represent the genres for the album. For albums that contain tracks spanning multiple genres, this is a problem.
There’s been discussion about this elsewhere in the forums, e.g. here.
Having multiple genres is also very helpful for movie soundtracks where there is a mix of artists from different genres on the album in addition to the movie score.
Sorry, my comment here isn’t going to help anybody because I’m mostly venting, but seriously… WTF?
I’ve not seen a single media player in the last 15 years get this wrong and the one that does is Plex… the player that is otherwise so promising! Nooooo…
I really couldn’t care less about filtering albums by genre. Filtering albums by some of my genres results in close to a hundred (estimated) albums with but one, two or three tracks of the type I’m looking for. Then I can’t even tell which tracks those are as genre information is not shown (at least not with the Android app).
Filtering by genre is the main way I setup my listening sessions. IMHO what Plex offers here is simply broken. Sorry Plex team. I’m patient and forgiving when it comes to bugs and am willing to put in the effort to help troubleshoot, but this is such an obvious design flaw I don’t understand how it even gets built.
Anyway, I fully support the previous statements:
The genre filter should be on the track level
If a genre filter is also available on album level it may be nothing more than an aggregation of the genres of its contained tracks.
The universal standard for MP3/AAC files is that they are tagged at the track level, not the album level. Therefore, the functionality you all crave is already by default inherent in MP3 and AAC files, including the ability to tag tracks with multiple genres. However, for some reason, PLEX doesn’t adhere to this standard. Instead, PLEX tags music at the album level.
If you have a Premium music library, then PLEX largely relies on external agents to define the tags. If you have a Basic music library, it’s easy to force PLEX to use the tags that are already embedded in every track. However, you still can’t view those tags in PLEX at the track level and you can’t sort/filter your music library at the track level. That’s the functionality that’s missing in PLEX.
If you rip your own CDs, then the tags are populated as a part of the ripping process. If you buy your music online, then the tag fields come already populated. In either case, they may not be accurate, complete or to your satisfaction and you’ll need to edit them using a 3rd Party Program like MP3tag. IMHO tagging music is a far more subjective process than tagging feature films, which is why I’m not a fan of allowing PLEX to use external agents to tag my music collection.
Following is an example of a track that I tagged with multiple genres using MP3tag:
Once your files are tagged to your satisfaction, make sure your Music Library settings are set to force PLEX to scan, read and use the embedded tags in lieu of using an external agent:
Here’s how the corresponding album looks in the PLEX Music Library. Note that the genre tags at the album level are an aggregation of the genres contained in the individual tracks:
This is the single, most annoying complaint I have with PLEX. No genre filter for tracks. I have a lot of electronic music and one producer may have several genres on one album. Genre by album is almost useless. Which means trying to make a playlist by anything other than going through one track at a time is impossible. And with thousands of tracks… you get the picture.
I’m coming to the conclusion that pretty much nobody uses Plex for music. Unfortunately, I’m looking for a media player, not just a video player. I’ve left Plex for now, but I would return again as a subscriber if this gets fixed.
I use it primarily for music and photos. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s usable, and I continue to advocate for changes I’d like to see. But there’s nothing better out there.
i and all my family use it for music no problems using the search features and playlists…never use genre although do record the information and make sure it is stored in tags etc…definitely usable in my opinion for the majority of users but yes sure its not perfect yet…version 5 android app is a lot more useful as well for music.
I see there hasn’t been much support for this request, but it is critical for me. I’m stuck using the iTunes option vs. native Plex Music features. I love the Plex Premium Music features, but it’s pretty much useless to me without track level genre tagging.
I need genres on tracks - for EDM it’s all but required.
