Artist Artwork

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

Plex version: 1.16.5.1554
Web Client version: 3.108.2
Subscription: Lifetime Plex Pass

I am a new Plex user, so I apologize if this is a rudimentary question.

I use Plex exclusively for my music collection and my music is organized as follows:

Artist Last Name, Artist First Name -> Album Name -> Track # - Track Title

Most of my music includes album artwork, which Plex currently displays correctly. The issue I am experiencing is that when I navigate to Libraries -> Music -> Artists, there is no artist artwork for any artists (all I see are gray boxes with a microphone). Is Plex capable of obtaining and displaying artist artwork?

Following are my Agent and Library settings:

AGENTS
Artists -> Personal Media Artists

  1. Local Media Assets (Artists)
  2. Personal Media Artists

Artists -> Last.fm

  1. Local Media Assets (Artists)
  2. Last.fm
  3. Fanart.tv
  4. Home Theater Backdrops

Albums -> Personal Media Albums

  1. Local Media Assets (Artists)
  2. Personal Media Artists

Albums -> Last.fm

  1. Local Media Assets (Artists)
  2. Last.fm
  3. LyricFind
  4. Fanart.tv

MUSIC
Use embedded tags (enabled)
Agent (Last.fm)
Last.fm Settings (all disabled)

Thank you in advance for your help!

2

I haven’t moved on to music yet, but I did get started in it a bit.

I think if you prioritize Local Media Assets that it tries to use the metadata buried in your audio files. For that reason, there are a few apps that crunch through your files and offer to fix your metadata according to your rules. Musicbrainz is the most used one iirc.

Maybe it will just work if you put Last.FM first in the list?

4

I’m certainly not an expert, but I suspect the problem is the way your files and folders are named. Plex grabs artist images and info on my system, but the naming scheme is different: My library is configured exactly the same as yours, except I have a couple of the options enabled for Last FM (genres is disabled)

Artist Name (First_Name Last_Name) ->Album Name → Track# - Track Title
example:

Lenoard Cohen (folder for Artist)
… I’m Your Man (folder for Album)
… …01 - First We Take Manhattan.mp3
… …02 - Ain’t No Cure for Love.mp3

If your embedded metadata also uses the same “Last Name, First Name” for the Artist, you might have to use “Match” or “Fix Match” option at the Artist page in Plex so the extra info can be downloaded.

There’s supposed to be a new and improved method that Plex uses for music metadata coming soon, perhaps it will recognize your naming scheme better. :slightly_smiling_face:

5

Thank you, Nibbles, for your reply. All of music metadata is correct and does not need to be fixed.

All I am looking for is for artist artwork to display instead of the gray microphone. It is my understanding this artwork can be pulled from Last.FM or equivalent. Is that incorrect?

6

“A While Ago” - I pretty much stopped relying on Last-FM - for anything - opting instead to fix my meta tags with MP3Tag and embed a suitable poster.

That day was the last day I had any problem with Music - all just appearing exactly as expected… nearly instantly.

When you have a lot of guys like this in your stuff:

KingfishIngram
KingfishIngram888×563 113 KB

you eventually surrender and do something else - best decision I ever made.

7

Thank you, leelynds, for your reply.

As you suspected, I believe the issue is caused by my artist naming scheme (last_name, first_name). I was able to get an artist to pull metadata from Last.fm using these steps:

  1. When in artist view, open the menu (three dots) and click Fix Match…
  2. Plex will automatically try to find a match, but will fail with ‘No matches found.’
  3. In the Match window, click the Search Options link
  4. In the Title field, change the artist name from last_name, first_name to first_name last_name
  5. Click anywhere in the Match window so the Title field background turns gray
  6. Confirm the Agent is set to Last.fm
  7. Click Search
  8. Click the correct artist (first_name last_name)

The artist is then automatically updated with artwork and info and the artwork for each album is updated.

My music library contains over 2,000 artists, so completing the above steps for each artist would be very tedious and time consuming. Now I am wondering if there is a way to automate this process. Any thoughts and/or ideas would be much appreciated.

8

Sorry… I’ve just about about exhausted all of my limited know-how with the previous suggestion. :wink:

We can ask for suggestions from @OttoKerner — he’s pretty knowledgeable with music stuff, and helped me out a couple of times. Maybe a program like MP3Tag can do something like that. Or you can wait till the new music library implementation is rolled out, it might fix your stuff up without all of the work.

9

MusicBrainz Picard should enable you to do this at least semi-automatically.
But it is not the most intuitive software out there.
Watching an introductory video on Youtube is highly recommended.

There is also this, but it’s already missing some pictures

Depending on how your music is tagged internally, you should also be able to use mp3tag.
If you have the proper FirstName LastName in your artist meta tags, you can use this format string for mp3tag’s “Convert: Tag > Filename” feature:

E:\MP3\$if2(%albumartist%,%artist%)\$if2(%album%\,)$if2(Disc $meta(discnumber)\,)$if(%track%,$num(%track%,2). ,)%artist% - %title%

(replace the path at the beginning with a location on your computer)
I highly recommend to go album-by-album, to catch and revert any mistakes which might occur.

10

Musicbrainz Picard and MP3tag are the popular tag fixers that also rename files, using the internet and databases to do that. If Otto’s method becomes a chore, consider that you’re just trying to rename your files.

You might write a shell script or a python script for that.

Or you might use an app like Renamer that is very lightweight and built to do this sort of thing quickly on masses of files.

11

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