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I have a bunch of Artists that aren’t in Allmusic (example is Dan Vasc). He is in MusicBrainz, but obviously we can’t edit artist info or put in a profile picture.
What is the strategy for filling in these gaps? I understand for individual song listings that aren’t in MB, we are to add them and help out the community - this is a win/win after the work is done.
But for artists with no picture or Bio, how can we help get the bio and image populated? There is no documentation on where PMS pulls this artist bio and picture from, and how we can help the community out.
The way it was explained to me (a couple years ago):
Roughly like this:
musicbrainz is the center of the universe
musicbrainz links with AllMusic via
a) exact matching if MB has a link to artist/album
b) “fuzzy” matching if not
musicbrainz links with last.fm directly for popular track data
musicbrainz links with fanart.tv for graphics
It may have changed somewhat in that time, but I don’t think it’s too far off.
So Plex sends a query to MusicBrainz.
MusicBrainz gets artist biographies from AllMusic, but I think it falls back to Last.FM if AllMusic doesn’t have it.
It gets popular track info from Last.FM. I don’t know if it will get artist images there. Per #4, fanart.tv seems to be the most likely place.
But that doesn’t happen automatically. If the MB Artist/Album entry doesn’t have an external link to AllMusic (for bio), Last.FM (for pop. tracks), and fanart.TV (for graphics), then those things don’t happen.
As for what you can do:
Become an editor at MusicBrainz
Make sure Artist and Album entries on MB have external links to the matching entry on AllMusic, Last.FM, Fanart.tv, if they exist.
To confirm what @beckfield wrote above - I am now an editing fool with MusicBrainz to get all these new (mostly youtube and unsigned artists) artists I have found in the pandemic in MB.
If I am to link to AllMusic, and if not there: Last.FM, Fanart.tv from the MB entry, that should in a roundabout way populate the bio and cover art via Last.FM, Fanart (both are user editable)?
I don’t mind putting in the work if it helps others, just making sure this is the correct strategy.
Edit: Final question - what happens if there are multiple artists with the same name in last.fm? Is Plex able to distinguish the correct artist bio?
It’s more a matter of if you can distinguish the correct artist.
If AllMusic has two artists with the same name, the URLs to their AllMusic pages still have to be different. The URL for John Williams the composer is: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-williams-mn0000232480,
while John Williams the classical guitarist is: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-williams-mn0000815705.
So when you edit an artist in MB and add a link to the corresponding AllMusic or Last.FM record, if you add the correct link, Plex will get the right info.
Keep in mind that it may take a few days before Plex gets new info that has been added to MB or the other sites. They only sync up every few days, I think, and if your changes on MB are open for voting, I don’t think Plex will get that info until some time after voting closes.
Bear in mind as well that plex takes about a month to recognise a last.fm link added to a pre-existing musicbrainz artist.
But if you add a new musicbrainz artist entry at the same time with a last.fm link, it’s about 3 or 4 days.
Worked this out after many months of back and forth with plex and experimentation.
My usual process is I will go through artists with no match on plex and add them to both musicbrainz with a last.fm link and then retry after 3 days.
If I have a matched artist with no image or bio, I will track them down in musicbrainz and add the last.fm link, and update their last.fm bio with some info and an image if its missing. Then I’ll just keep refreshing every few days until they come in
Agree with this. If something isn’t right… Fix it, most times it’s pretty easy and if we all collectively work to get it right the quality of meta data will improve. I worked through my own collection for about a month editing each entry I could with links in musicbrainz. Was worth it. The moderators will guide you if your show enough interest.
No joke. I discovered this while trying to find an example for my previous post. Last.FM can’t tell the difference between the two “John Williams” artists I mentioned. The URL for the guitarist uses his full name, John Christopher Williams, but it still takes you to the composer.
