Artist Top Track information

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

Hey! Does anyone know the criteria for how plex will download top track information for an artist? I seem to have inconsistencies within my library.

For instance, here is the track metadata for a track that appears as a top track for Five The Heirophant:

<Track guid="plex://track/5d07fdfc403c640290b556c6" key="/library/metadata/5d07fdfc403c640290b556c6" ratingCount="763" ratingKey="5d07fdfc403c640290b556c6" title="Queen Over Phlegethon" type="track" duration="513986" grandparentTitle="Five The Hierophant" grandparentType="artist" grandparentThumb="https://img.discogs.com/MwjK-0HRdnzyv_tugPinaHEe05o=/600x600/smart/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/A-4624576-1444067178-6766.jpeg.jpg" grandparentRatingKey="5d07bf73403c640290757c87" grandparentGuid="plex://artist/5d07bf73403c640290757c87" grandparentKey="/library/metadata/5d07bf73403c640290757c87" parentTitle="Over Phlegethon" parentType="album" parentThumb="https://ia800800.us.archive.org/32/items/mbid-c8dba41d-cf70-4e9b-8fe4-3ec0c2a0703f/mbid-c8dba41d-cf70-4e9b-8fe4-3ec0c2a0703f-17234562235.png" parentRatingKey="5d07cb2d403c640290db4334" parentGuid="plex://album/5d07cb2d403c640290db4334" parentKey="/library/metadata/5d07cb2d403c640290db4334" viewCount="0" viewOffset="0" index="1" parentIndex="1">
<Guid id="mbid://b7b4be00-abe4-4753-a3dc-223072248a9f"/>

Here is the metadata for a track for another band (Negative Thought Process) which doesn’t show any top track information:

<Track guid="plex://track/5d07fdfc403c640290b556c6" key="/library/metadata/5d07fdfc403c640290b556c6" ratingCount="763" ratingKey="5d07fdfc403c640290b556c6" title="Queen Over Phlegethon" type="track" duration="513986" grandparentTitle="Five The Hierophant" grandparentType="artist" grandparentThumb="https://img.discogs.com/MwjK-0HRdnzyv_tugPinaHEe05o=/600x600/smart/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/A-4624576-1444067178-6766.jpeg.jpg" grandparentRatingKey="5d07bf73403c640290757c87" grandparentGuid="plex://artist/5d07bf73403c640290757c87" grandparentKey="/library/metadata/5d07bf73403c640290757c87" parentTitle="Over Phlegethon" parentType="album" parentThumb="https://ia800800.us.archive.org/32/items/mbid-c8dba41d-cf70-4e9b-8fe4-3ec0c2a0703f/mbid-c8dba41d-cf70-4e9b-8fe4-3ec0c2a0703f-17234562235.png" parentRatingKey="5d07cb2d403c640290db4334" parentGuid="plex://album/5d07cb2d403c640290db4334" parentKey="/library/metadata/5d07cb2d403c640290db4334" viewCount="0" viewOffset="0" index="1" parentIndex="1">
<Guid id="mbid://b7b4be00-abe4-4753-a3dc-223072248a9f"/>

If you notice between the two XML snippets, the track that is from the missing popular artists item does not have a ratingCount (which, after probing about, generally correlates with a last.fm play count)

Negative Thought Process is in musicbrainz and has a working link to their last.fm page. That can be tested by finding/refreshing the artist and seeing it pull down last.fm biography data.

Does anyone know what other criteria needs to be met for this information to come down? It slightly breaks the artist radio function as it seems the artist radio will only shuffle tracks that are in the “Popular Tracks” metadata

2

It might have to do with the relatively few scrobbles the latter band has received.
Listeners
172

Scrobbles
1,648

Of which many have only happened recently. Only the new album has any scrobbles on last.fm and it was only released 2 weeks ago. It is possible that the Plex cloud doesn’t have this album or these scrobbles in it.
When did you Refresh Metadata on this artist?

3

I’ve refreshed today, but have also refreshed a couple of times over the last couple of days whilst testing.

I would agree with you re: scrobble count as that was my first inclination, but I do have artists in my library who have less overall scrobbles and still have this info

https://www.last.fm/music/Oriza - has less listeners and scrobbles (28 listeners and 189 scrobbles), but still populates that info:

image
image871×574 183 KB

4

I see. Though they had scrobbles registered for a lot longer time. I’d say wait another 2 weeks, then refresh again.

5

Just a quick note for anyone who stumbles on this in the future who is asking the same info, it takes about a month for this to populate

The prerequisite seems to be that musicbrainz MUST have an entry for the album with those tracks on, and have it matched in plex. Once they’re matched, it seems to take up to a month for that track rating info to be made available to plex. Not sure if this is something to do with data feeds between last.fm, plex or musicbrainz, but that does seem to be the time frame