Please only reply to this thread with corrections or questions about the information in this How-To article itself. If you want to report a bug or ask a question about Plex and metadata, please post it in the appropriate forum, where it will have the best chance of being seen.

This guide applies to libraries using the "Plex Music" agent only.

Plex essentially has two ways to identify your albums:

1. Folder/filename structure – If your files don’t have embedded metadata, or it isn’t accurate, or the “Prefer local metadata” option is disabled, the folder/filename structure of your music files must conform to Plex’s guidelines in order for Plex to accurately categorize your music.

2. Embedded metadata – for this to work, your embedded tags must be accurate (with some caveats, listed in the “Potential issues with embedded tags” section below). Explaining this option is the purpose of this How-To. Although it is still recommended to adhere to the folder/filename structure mentioned above, if your embedded tags are very accurate, Plex will be much less reliant on it.

Library Settings

Local Metadata

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Genre

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Artwork

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If the Album Art option is set to ‘Plex Music Only,’ Plex will ignore local artwork, and only retrieve album covers from online sources.

If the option is set to ‘Local Files Only’ or ‘Both Plex Music and Local Files,’ Plex will search for the art in this order, using the first one it finds:

1. Local artwork files (folder.jpg, etc.)
2. Images embedded in the music files
3. Online sources (if ‘Both Plex Music and Local Files’ is selected)

If your music is arranged in the preferred Artist/album structure, the album cover must be in the same folder as the music tracks (for multi-disc albums, it must be in the disc 1 folder).

The Artist image must be in the Artist folder.

If your artwork is embedded in the media files, make sure it is marked as type “Cover Front.”

This post has proposed text for a Help page regarding artwork. It is not finalized or approved by Plex, so use caution, and please let the author know if you find anything incorrect or unclear:
Artist/Album/Background image files article proposal

Potential issues with embedded tags

Necessary Tags

• Album Title (The Album Title and Album Artist tags must be identical in all files within an album)
• Album Artist see below
• Track Title
• Artist (artist of each individual track) see below
• Track Number
• Disc Number (optional for single-disc albums. Essential for multi-disc albums)

Plex will also read and store these tags:

• Recording/Release date or Year
• Album sort order
• Album Artist sort order
• Genre
• embedded album cover

Album Title, Album Artist, and Artist Tags

• The Album Title tags must be identical in all files within an album.
• The Album Artist tags must be identical in all files within an album.
• If the album is a compilation of tracks from several artists, the Album Artist tag should be set to “Various Artists.”
• Album Artist should never be empty.

Multi-disc Albums

In the case of multi-CD sets, It is important that the disc number is correct in each file. Although the ID3 spec allows for it, using something like “1 of 10” or “1/10” in the discnumber or Track field causes problems for Plex (note: YMMV on the “x/y” numbering issue. Some have reported no problems when using this format, so just be aware of it. At the very least, whichever format you choose to use, be consistent within the album):

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One (hopefully temporary) note: With the recent overhaul of the Plex Music scanner, even though it provides better support for embedded tags, it also has become pickier about your folder structure. So it is very important that your folder and file naming conforms to Plex’s guidelines.

Addendum: Beginning with Plex Media Server 1.23.3.4692, Plex is no longer so dependent on the file/folder naming, if embedded tags are accurate.

Classical Music

Plex does not currently support the “Composer” embedded tag. For classical music, I have found it best to use the composer’s name as the Album Artist, and set the Track Artist to be the actual performers of the music (orchestra, conductor, soloists, etc.). Hopefully Plex will eventually correct this deficiency.

Wrapping it Up

If you haven’t maintained your embedded tags, this may take a lot of up-front work, if you have a large library. Once done, it is much easier to just make sure the tags are right when you add new albums.

I am new and have been test driving Plex for a couple of weeks. Before upgrading, I wanted to be sure it will do what I want and this is the first thread that seems close. I have three separate issues, so if I should move part around to another thread, I am happy to do so.

1. I need to be able to create custom tags for my music as most of it is classical. For example, I want composer (that I saw in the image earlier in this thread), I also want orchestra, soloist(s), performance venue, and probably a couple others... this gives you the idea.

   I can not tell from the screenshot of Easy Tag, if there are features more management of the tags, like create, modify, delete, list, etc.

   Perhaps what I am looking for is an idiots guide to tag creation and management in Plex The question is am I on the right track to get Plex to do what I want?

2. I have a very small library so moving names/files around is still easy but the results, following the suggested folder structure still don't seem right to me and in different views I get different results. I have moved the server connection to so there is no double NAT and tried some other things, it is still not very good. I think in the end, especially for classical music. I will have to do my own work. The question here is, even for rock it does not seem right, even when following the file structure. The image below shows a Doors Album in the "Home" Page, but when looking at the Local Music - what I called this test it shows without artwork as you see in the second image. The file structure is correct (for this album)

   The question here is would any of this be improved with the subscription membership?

3. I have not tired it yet, but with much of the material I download, there are PDFs about the music included as part of the purchase, I assume I can link to these as well -- I saw people could link to the artwork if desired?

A quick follow up to my last note. I just spent the last couple hours putting all the bits and pieces I needed on my may for easytag and have stopped at gtk+ there is a version problem/requirement I have not been able to get around. There just has to be a better way.

I can’t help much with troubleshooting EasyTag. You would be better off at their website. I would certainly encourage you to get all those tags you mentioned (composer, orchestra, etc.) in order, but don’t expect Plex to use them. We have been asking for more complete support for those tags, especially for classical music, but Plex isn’t there yet. I am hopeful.

Plex does not have tag editing features, meaning that it won’t edit the tags embedded in your media files. The tagging features that you see in Plex are stored in Plex’s own database. You would be better off maintaining the tags with EasyTag or another editor.

The image of the album with no artwork makes me think you are viewing your library in “By Folder” view. That view does not support album artwork. If this is the case, you probably see a toolbar something like this:

If so, click on the “By Folder” item and select a different option. You should see artwork then. If you are configured to use embedded tags as described in the original post in this thread, and your ID3 tags are in good order, the folder structure is not as important (though still recommended). A Plex Pass subscription would not alter this behavior.

To my knowledge, you will not be able to link to or view the .pdf files that come with downloaded music. The artwork that Plex can link to refers to the CD cover image, artist portrait, etc., generally in .jpg or .png format.

These questions would have been better placed in a new thread. It’s fine here, but it likely would not have been seen by anyone but me, unless others are following this thread. I started this thread to serve as a How-to article, and I frequently refer people to it when they need to know how to configure Plex to use embedded tags, rather than re-posting it all over the place.

Thanks very much for the reply and the information. I understand that Plex won’t solve the tag problem. I have done more research and have read the ID3v2 and related specs. Most of what I need is there and I have found some tools at are a bit more plug an play in the experimenting I have done (Jaikoz and SongKong) that are good and follow the ID3 spec. The configuration information you posted will be helpful since the tools Jaikoz/SongKong will modify the tags in the DSF files and I would not want Plex to override them.

All that said, if Plex won’t support use of the Tags, the work to fix them up is of little use. I was going to explore Roon which might be better but the DAC i use does not support a Roon endpoint.

/jon

I tried using the tutorial in the OP, but for me this didn’t work.

A few weeks ago I started using Plex for my music collection only. My collection was already properly tagged before I started a library. All files from the same artist had the same “Artist”-tag (although in some cases “Album artist” is empty and in other cases it’s a copy of “Artist”). All files had correct album-tags. All files had genre-tags that I applied myself, because I use my own categorization.

When I created the music-library, I just left everything at default, because I didn’t really know how it all worked. I was pretty happy with the first result, but after using it for a couple of weeks, I noticed lots of annoying things with tags. On the filter, there were other genre-tags than the ones that I applied. Some artists had a different spelling than the name I gave them. Same with some albums, especially annoying with album which strangely enough contained weird characters, so the alphabetical order is messed up. For example. Amputechture by The Mars Volta is called #Amputechture# and the album O by Damien Rice is called **O. Those are not the tags I gave to those files.

So for the last few days, I started messing around with the settings, reordering the agents etc…without any success. Today I followed the advice above and refreshed the library again. The only thing that changed is that the ghost-genre-tags have disappeared, because I unchecked the button to use genre-tags from LastFM. Apart from that, I still got the same. I have put Local Media Assets on top for all subsections of Artists and Albums. Unfortunately, Guns N’ Roses is still called gun’s n roses and Second Coming is still called +Second Coming, etc…

Any advice how to solve this? Is there a way to force Plex to use ONLY embedded tags? The only thing I want Plex to pull from the net is the art.

If I don’t succeed, I could manually change the flaws, but that would mean going through almost 2000 albums manually. And can I be sure those flaws won’t come back when I do another library-update later on?

Using Version 0.9.16.3 on a Synology NAS.

When you say you “…followed the advice above and refreshed the library again,” did you use the Refresh command in the UI? This is notoriously unreliable for updating tags once Plex has imported. Believe me, this is a long-running conversation.

Near the end of the OP, I mentioned, and linked to, a process called the Plex Dance. If you haven’t done that, it will probably fix the problems. Try it with a couple of problematic albums/artists first to see if it will fix your issues, before doing the whole library.

I used the refresh command in the UI indeed. Is there a different place to do so?

I’ll try the Plex dance. Thanks for your help!

No, there’s no other place to do so. The Refresh command simply doesn’t do what it’s supposed to in some cases. Good luck!

I just did the Plex dance for two albums, one with a wrong album title and one with a wrong artist name. Both came back fine! Ready to do the whole library now.

I just want to point out that the statement “In your ID3 tags, it’s important that the Artist, Album Artist (even if it’s blank), and Album title are identical in each file”, is incorrect.

There should not be any assumption or requirement that the track artist be the same for each file. I hope that statement was just a mistake. If so, please correct. Otherwise, please clarify.

@Spineless said:
I just want to point out that the statement “In your ID3 tags, it’s important that the Artist, Album Artist (even if it’s blank), and Album title are identical in each file”, is incorrect.

There should not be any assumption or requirement that the track artist be the same for each file. I hope that statement was just a mistake. If so, please correct. Otherwise, please clarify.

Yes, you’re right. Good catch. I’ll correct it. Thanks.

“In your ID3 tags, it’s important that the Album Artist (even if it’s blank) and Album title are identical in each file.”

I assume you meant “Album Artist” and “Artist”.

No, the Artist field may be different, as in the case of various artist albums. If Album Artist isn’t the same for every track in the album, or if Album Title isn’t the same in every track, Plex will incorrectly break an album up into multiple albums.

is there a correct way to nest multiple disc albums so that plex will load them as 1 album, sub separated by disc under that single album view?
so far I am using this format and it only seems to be selective on which ones it does correctly

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@beckfield said:
There are a couple of things to do to get Plex to use embedded tags from your media files before looking at online sources.

First, edit your Library and enabled the ‘Use embedded tags’ option. If using a Premium library, you may want to also set the Gracenote genre level to ‘None,’ as shown.

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Second, arrange your metadata agents in the correct order. Make sure the ‘Local media assets’ agent is at the top of the list for Artists and Albums (I would do this for all subsections, Personal Media Albums, Plex Premium Music, and Last.fm):

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Hello,
I have found that when sorting the metadata agents, the setting will not be saved. I have tried IE and FF, same behavior.
No matter what I do, the original sort order will be restored once I go to a different page (there’s no save button…)

I’m actually am trying to do the opposite (use Last.fm instead of Local Media Assets), but I am unable to set the metadata agents priority.

Does anyone know why this may be happening?

@jo666manson said:
is there a correct way to nest multiple disc albums so that plex will load them as 1 album, sub separated by disc under that single album view?
so far I am using this format and it only seems to be selective on which ones it does correctly

890×431 35.9 KB

https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1050849/#Comment_1050849

@“mbrunell 12345” said:
Hello,
I have found that when sorting the metadata agents, the setting will not be saved. I have tried IE and FF, same behavior.
No matter what I do, the original sort order will be restored once I go to a different page (there’s no save button…)

I’m actually am trying to do the opposite (use Last.fm instead of Local Media Assets), but I am unable to set the metadata agents priority.

Does anyone know why this may be happening?

Problems with the process should be opened in the appropriate forum, rather than in a reply to a HowTo thread. You’re more likely to have your issue seen by more people, and thus to get a helpful answer.

In this case, I would recommend either General Discussions or the appropriate forum under Plex Media Server.

You should also try to do a quick search before posting. Your question may have already been answered.

How can i get plex to use my local artist artwork?

i have tried using the following naming structure, but it does not work.

artist.jpg
artist-folder.jpg
artist-poster.jpg
artist-cover.jpg
folder.jpg
poster.jpg
cover.jpg
J. K. Rowling.jpg

My folder structure is

Audiobooks
----J. K. Rowling
--------Harry Potter
--------Artist-poster.jpg

Did you follow the steps outlined in the How-To? There’s more to it than just the right filenames.