I am re-doing my music files on my server after a long time (I only use Plex for music). All my files are in subdirectories like Plex likes them, and they all have proper tags in them. However, when Plex does its lookups, it goes nuts with many of them, making several “albums” for one correctly tagged compilation, insisting that an MP3 which is not tagged as such anywhere is “Various Artists”, and so on.
The only thing that made it stop was when I turned of all the lookups to prioritize local info and only use personal media. Now, of course, it won’t supply any images for anything.
Is there some happy medium between letting Plex have its rude way with stuff I’ve tagged correctly and having artwork? Is there a way to tell it to ONLY look up images and not try and re-sort anything?
Here’s the thing: I don’t have cover/band art in the directories. That’s more work than I want to do. I want Plex to look it up. But I don’t want Plex to ALSO decide on that lookup that these three songs on the album are for some reason different and need their own separate listing, and this song needs to be renamed, and this actually came from a different album, and so on.
Most important things I learned when tagging the files :
Album Artist as the band name
Artist as the singer (or band)
Composer does not matter at all
Album has to be the exact same for all the songs of an album
Disc Number is a neat way (except for the obvious when there are several CD) to add bonus cd and so on to a main album so tag the bonus cd songs as 2 and the other ones as 1 and you get them all under the same album.
Add the cover to mp3 files
Getting a music library to work seamlessly requires a lot of pre-work.
“Plex Music Only” should force Plex to only look online (for album art only. I don’t think this affects Artist posters). “Both Plex Music and Local Files” would prefer local files, if found, but go online if it finds nothing local.
If Plex wasn’t configured to ‘prefer local metadata,’ there are several things at play. The folder/filename structure is important, but it’s also important that the online databases (MusicBrainz, primarily) have accurate information.
Right now in one of my Subfolders (Music Uncharted) here are the settings:
Scanner: Plex Music Scanner
Agent: Personal Media Artists
Visibility: Include in home screen and global search
Album sorting: Library default
Prefer local metadata: checked
Store track progress: unchecked
Include related content from shared libraries: unchecked
Artist Bios: unchecked
Album Reviews and Critic Ratings: unchecked
Popular Tracks: unchecked
Concerts: unchecked
Genres: None
Album Art: Both Plex Music and Local Files
in this directory are bands such as Avenged Sevenfold, Danzig, The Fratellis, Queens of the Stone Age…none have band art
Incidentally, while I’m here, what are people using for Tag Management? I like TagScanner, but it doesn’t like that my files are on a NAS and won’t update them there. I have to move them and then update them.
Can we see a screenshot of the tags for an album that Plex isn’t handling correctly?
As for Artist artwork, since it’s coming from online sources, it might be helpful to know just how Plex looks for it. I posted the message below a few days ago to someone who was having similar issues:
You might check on MusicBrainz to see if the Artist record has a link to Fanart.tv , Last.FM, etc. If a link doesn’t exist, then MusicBrainz doesn’t know where to get artwork, which leaves Plex in the same boat.
Here’s showing how Plex arranged it. Christmas Cake has all the tracks except track 11, Christmas Time is Here, by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, which for some reason got its own folder.
OK after a test and some searching, I think I know part of the problem. I have my music organized like this:
Music/Subdirectory/Artist - Album/Track - Title
which is how Plex used to like it. Now, although some claim it no longer matters, it’s recommended to do this:
Music/Subdirectory/Artist/Album/Track - Title
I tagged all the Album Artist fields in the Christmas group with the name of the compilation, or the name of the artist in the case of a solo album, and redid the directory as
Music/Subdirectory/AlbumArtist/Album/Track - Title
and now it seems to be loading properly.
I’m hoping that solving this issue will address the issue I came in for. If Plex can better preserve the organization of the files, it doesn’t matter as much if I let it peek outside itself to get some information.
welp, so much for that idea. after seeing it successfully handle compilations and single artist sets in the Christmas subdirectory, I did the exact same thing in a directory that only contains compilations and movie soundtracks (which are also compilations.) Here are the results:
That’s all the compilations being attributed to “A Classic Christmas, Too” despite none of them being tagged with that and having complete artist/album artist/album tags on them. Oh, and also a band called “Virgin” which is supposed to be the soundtrack to “The Virgin Suicides”.
So I think I’m going back to not letting Plex look anything up, since it seems to do so stupidly, and foregoing album/band art. Supposedly it’s less picky about file formatting now but it sure seems to be a lot worse at reading and maintaining tags.
Only the newest scanner, Plex Music, has the updates that make it less dependent on folder/filenames. Those track directories in your screenshot don’t look anything like what Plex suggests, so I think that’s where the problem is coming from. The older Plex Music Scanner scanner still depends on the structure below, even if the tags are complete and accurate (believe me, I had long discussions with them on that):
Music
AlbumArtist
AlbumTitle
01 - tracktitle.ext
02 - tracktitle.ext
I think you can have success using the new scanner. You would have to set both Scanner and Agent to Plex Music, and follow all of the recommendations in the “configuring Plex for local metadata” article I linked earlier. I think, if all that is done, your folder/filename structure wouldn’t have to change - although I’ve never seen anyone try to have individual tracks from one album in their own subdirectories, so I can’t say for sure.
If you want to give it a try, you can create a new library alongside the existing one, to see what happens before committing to it.
Here are the results, showing The Matrix or, as we seem to call it around here, “A Classic Christmas Too”. (I absolutely am baffled as to why Plex is stuck on THAT title.)
One possible thing. Under Settings > Agents, for both Albums and Artists, the ONLY option I have is “Personal Media Albums” and “Personal Media Artists”. There are no other options to reorder.
I’m about ready to blow out the whole thing completely and just reinstall Plex from scratch, but at the moment SOME of my folders are working correctly and I don’t want to risk NONE of them.
If not, there’s something wrong. I’m afraid that’s going to require someone else’s help. But I imagine that could very well be the source of the problem.
Since you are on windows you should be able to just manually run the installer and it should give you an option to repair that will replace any missing components. (maybe antivirus or similar removed the file)
@davelartigue sorry for late reply. you should be able to install even the same version manually on Seagate as well. it should just replace the missing parts.
