Blank/empty tags in Plex Music import

[UKenGB]

I’m trying to establish how the new Plex Music deals with empty tags when importing music. A track could have all the tags completed, but that means a lot of duplication of data. So I was wondering how Plex deals with empty tags.

Sort tags:

First of all, I believe that Plex (correctly) uses a Sort tag if it exists and the basic version of that tag if it does not. In which case, if the Sort version would actually be the same, there is no point in explicitly storing that same text string in both tags. As a simplistic example, the Sort version of the Album Artist tag ‘Cream’ would also be ‘Cream’. So if the Sort Album Artist tag is blank, would Plex simply use the Artist tag ‘Cream’ when sorting the list of artists? Whereas a track with Album Artist tag of ‘Eric Clapton’ and Sort Album Artist tag of ‘Clapton,Eric’ would be sorted under ‘Clapton,Eric’?

The above is exactly how iTunes functions and I believe it also to be true in Plex, but would appreciate confirmation.

(Album) Artist tags:

I understand Plex’s use of the ‘Various Artist’ string in the Album Artist tag to denote such albums, but how does it deal with an empty Album Artist tag?

iTunes will simply use the Artist tag instead for that track, but Plex (correctly) stores the Album Artist in an Album record, not each track record. So how would it handle a missing Album Artist? Does it in fact simply create a different Album record for each such track, so an album would be split up into multiple Albums?

I have no problem with this since in this case Plex is having to deal with incomplete information. I am just trying to better understand exactly how it does function. I am not needing nor wanting to leave any Album Artist tags empty.

Conversely, how does Plex handle an empty Artist tag? Will it use the Album Artist tag data as the Artist for each such track?

When tagging and viewing large spreadsheet like tables of track tag data, empty ‘cells’ are easy to spot, but those tags that simply contain the same as a different tag for that track are harder to spot. So for this reason and also general database considerations for saving space and normalising data, I would like to be able to leave the Artist tag blank when it would be the same as the (always present) Album Artist.

I know the above works in iTunes (when set to prefer Album Artist) and I think it should work in Plex, but can anyone confirm absolutely that this is how the new Plex Music scanner/agent works when importing, so if the Artist is blank, that track’s Artist is set in the database as the Album Artist from the imported track file tag?

Or does it perhaps leave the track record’s Artist field blank, but use the Album Artist data from the Album record when needing to display a track’s Artist?

Either of the above would accomplish essentially the same result, but again, just trying to better understand how Plex functions in these circumstances.

Hope some experts out there could advise.

[UKenGB]

Regarding Sorting, assuming the associated Sort field is empty, does Plex strip ‘A’, ‘An’ and ‘The’ from the beginning of a tag when sorting?

So ‘The Beatles’ would be sorted in an Artists list as ‘Beatles’?

This is how iTunes and most other similar apps operate. Does Plex?

[UKenGB]

Testing reveals that:-

The Beatles are sorted as ‘Beatles’ in the artist list. So I would assume ‘A’ and ‘An’ are similarly stripped and used as the Sort tag if it doesn’t already exist. If it does already exist, that is used in preference.

In general, leave the Sort tag empty if it would be the same as the normal version of that tag. So Artist ‘Eric CLAPTON’ has a Sort Artist tag of ‘CLAPTON•Eric’, whereas for ‘The Beatles’, the Sort Artist tag can be left empty. I use that upper case format as I find it visually helpful and also I have a script to create a suitable Sort Artist tag by splitting the initial Capitalised part of the string from the UPPER CASE part that follows and swaps them so everything sorts on the UPPER CASE part of the Artist tag. My script also does other stuff that means I get a standardised string to use for sorting which of course works for iTunes and Plex.

Plex imports the Album Artist tag for its Album record. Although it will probably use the Artist tag if Album Artist is empty, by ensuring the Album Artist exists and is correct will ensure Plex creates a correct Album record which will be sorted by the Sort Album tag, unless e.g. the user sorts albums by date. This latter case is problematic as Plex has to determine a suitable date to use, either by looking at the the Year of each track, or from data gleaned from its Internet searches. Also, just using the Year means it cannot then distinguish between 2 albums released in the same year, which may then not appear in the correct order.

To avoid this problem and since I only ever want to see an artist’s albums listed chronologically, I create the SortAlbum tag as ‘YYYY.MM·Album Tag’ for all NON Various Artist albums. This means any normal (alpha) sort of albums puts them in correct chronological order which is correct for viewing one artist’s albums, but maybe not so good for viewing a list of multiple artists’ albums. However, I NEVER do that so I don’t care.

I leave the Artist tag (and hence Sort Artist) empty if it would be the same as the Album Artist (which I ensure exists and is correct). This means when viewing tracks in Plex, the Artist is only shown if different from the Album Artist. So e.g. all the Beatles tracks have no Artist displayed, whereas for any ‘Various Artist’ albums, each track will show its associated Artist. This makes sense to me and is how I want to see it. If you want to see the Artist for every track, even when the same as the Album Artist, make sure the Artist tag contains the same string as the AlbumArtist tag. As far as I have been able to determine, that means Plex will then display it.

One thing about using ‘Various Artists’ (or ‘VARIOUS ARTISTS’ as I do) as the AlbumArtist tag for multiple artist compilations. It is important to use that as Plex (and MusicBrainz) uses that (case insensitive) string to mean ‘do not try to match to a real artist’. Any other string will mean during import, Plex will try to match and you’ll end up with some spurious artist being assigned. Don’t criticise Plex for this. It HAS to be able to distinguish between a real artist that should be matched and this ‘virtual’ artist for which there should be NO attempt at matching. Plex cannot read your mind. So you have to use some specific identifier to tell it “don’t match”. For now, Plex uses ‘Various Artists’ as I think that’s what MusicBrainz uses and there’s no way around that. An empty tag just means Plex will try to fill it with the track Artist which is normally the correct behaviour. It HAS to be able to recognise a multiple artist compilation in order to correctly deal with it and currently that means using ‘Various Artists’ as the AlbumArtist. Try using anything else will cause you grief, so don’t waste your time.

My suggestion to Plex would be to allow the user to enter multiple strings in Settings that would be used in the same manner as it currently uses ‘Various Artists’. So every user has the option to e.g. use a string in their preferred language. Or something else entirely. I quite like the idea of using emoji(s) for this purpose and it would be relatively trivial to implement and should then satisfy everyone. Maybe one day.

As is perhaps obvious, I use iTunes/Music to manage my media library. Unfortunately iTunes is now proving incapable of reliably writing tags to the files (really, it has become useless in this regard) so I use Yate that integrates well with iTunes. I then sync my media to my local (Plex) server (another Mac) with scripts that use rsync and then create (and maintain) the Plex folders/directories that contain only symlinks to the actual media files that remain within the iTunes folder structure. This ensures iTunes is still happy (should I need to run it on the server and in any case makes syncing simpler) and Plex is perfectly happy working with just symlinks.

Actually, that is not all completely accurate as I have Plex record (TV etc) to folders that are used directly in its libraries, no symlinking. This is transparent in Plex, and these remain outside the iTunes universe.

So that’s where I am with regard to integrating Plex with iTunes. I’m pretty sure it’s accurate, but if not, let me know.