# Cannot play music by mood
**URL:** https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611
**Category:** General Discussions
**Created:** [August 24, 2017, 7:49am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611 "2017-08-24T07:49:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@J\_o\_a\_c\_h\_i\_m](https://forums.plex.tv/u/J_o_a_c_h_i_m)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 7:49am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/1 "2017-08-24T07:49:57Z")
Hi,
I have scanned all my more than 20,000 music files, and done it also on a subset of 20 recent well known music files. All my files have metadata for genres, artiste, etc. embedded in it, and I have test using this metadata or not. In all cases I don’t have access to play my mood (I can see tour dates – tour in Brazil while I’m in Europe…). What should I do?
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 9:39am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/2 "2017-08-24T09:39:47Z")
Was your music library created before you got your Plex Pass or afterwards?
Is your music organised into a structure of
Artist / Album / Tracks
or do you have just one or several big folders full of single tracks?
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### Author:  [@J\_o\_a\_c\_h\_i\_m](https://forums.plex.tv/u/J_o_a_c_h_i_m)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 9:44am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/3 "2017-08-24T09:44:57Z")
First, my library was created before having the plex pass. i thought it could be the reason, so deleted it entirely, created a new library, and added my files into it, and selected on plex pass related features for the library.
My library is very well organized with regard to metadata. All my mp3 files have artist, album, album art, year, genre, comments, composer, …, … To make this organization more efficient, ALL my files are within a single folder. However, all the files are correctly recognized by plex.
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 9:52am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/4 "2017-08-24T09:52:25Z")
> @“J o a c h i m” said:
> First, my library was created before having the plex pass. i thought it could be the reason, so deleted it entirely, created a new library, and added my files into it, and selected on plex pass related features for the library.
>
> My library is very well organized with regard to metadata. All my mp3 files have artist, album, album art, year, genre, comments, composer, …, …
That is good to hear.
> To make this organization more efficient, ALL my files are within a single folder.
I seriously doubt that this makes it more efficient.
This may be the **root cause** of your trouble.
When you add files into your library, Gracenote tries to find a combination of files within the folder that amounts to a known album. Gracenote needs this information to determine the best metadata and to find more information about the album and the tracks - such as the ‘mood’ and the stuff that makes the Plex Mix work.
But since you have all your tracks from all albums in one big folder, the number of possible combinations is very, very high. So the search will most certainly abort at one time.
You didn’t notice this, since all your files supplied their own meta data, so Plex could ‘fall back’ onto them.
But your embedded meta data don’t include the Gracenote “Special Sauce” that makes ‘Moods’ and ‘Plex Mix’ work.
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### Author:  [@J\_o\_a\_c\_h\_i\_m](https://forums.plex.tv/u/J_o_a_c_h_i_m)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 9:55am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/5 "2017-08-24T09:55:53Z")
(more efficient because I don’t have tons of folders, subfolders, replicates, etc.)
I have too many files to change that organization now. Can’t gracenote just retrieve the correct info from my metadata and then do the mood thing, as it supposed to be track-based?
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### Author:  [@rossinior](https://forums.plex.tv/u/rossinior)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 10:13am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/6 "2017-08-24T10:13:30Z")
+1 for that.
Talking about mandatory file organization makes sense.
But for people, who have (otherwise well maintained) a collection of favorite tracks (not albums), it is senseless to re-organize their tracks in artist/album subfolders.
If Plex/Gracenote gets data for artist and album from the metadata or file names, then searching for companion album files in the same folder could be switched off if Plex would have an option for that accessible for the user.
While I agree, that in a perfect world, things work out just as the programmers thought, it is always cool to have the software become even more flexible when it turns out, that 20.000++ files that have nothing to do with each other can hardly ever be reoganized and stay maintainable outside the Plex universe.
Having 8000 folders for artists, 7600 subfolders for albums, each (mainly) containing a single file is not the best way to collect favorite tracks - even it would be best for Plex.
Maybe that nice Gracenote code can be optimized even further 😉
But, thank you @OttoKerner for explaining this. I did not know about this behavior.
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### Author:  [@J\_o\_a\_c\_h\_i\_m](https://forums.plex.tv/u/J_o_a_c_h_i_m)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 10:17am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/7 "2017-08-24T10:17:18Z")
+1
By the way, all my music library is pretty well organized in MediaMonkey, where I have tons of smart playlists equivalent (i guess) to what would make the mood/PlexMix function of Plex… but Plex cannot import playlists from anything else than itunes ☹
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 10:27am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/8 "2017-08-24T10:27:05Z")
> @“J o a c h i m” said:
> (more efficient because I don’t have tons of folders, subfolders, replicates, etc.)
This will also make music library updates very slow, since all the files need to be scanned. If you had subfolders, Plex’d only have to scan those folders where a change occured.
> I have too many files to change that organization now.
This can be automated.
> Can’t gracenote just retrieve the correct info from my metadata and then do the mood thing, as it supposed to be track-based?
I wish it could. But AFAIK this is out of Plex’s hands.
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### Author:  [@J\_o\_a\_c\_h\_i\_m](https://forums.plex.tv/u/J_o_a_c_h_i_m)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 10:28am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/9 "2017-08-24T10:28:43Z")
PS: especially that I think PLEX target two kind of audiences: (1) people with totally unorganized libraries, with files coming from a little bit of everywhere (which most probably won’t be organized as requested) and (2) serious music listeners with very large media libraries who wouldn’t reorganize their files to fit a software, but rather would look for the software that fits their need
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### Author:  [@J\_o\_a\_c\_h\_i\_m](https://forums.plex.tv/u/J_o_a_c_h_i_m)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 11:03am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/10 "2017-08-24T11:03:03Z")
wow wow wow. I’ve done a few trials with a subset of 4 non-complete albums (some have only one track out of a dozen) some are complete. When organized in sub-folders, I have access to plex mix. And I was looking for Moods, which I am much more interested in, and didn’t find it. looked on the forum where it was to be, and didn’t know that we had first to put the track view. And here they were my dears moods. Then, try by removing the folders architecture. As planned, no plex mix anymore, but you can’t imagine my surprise when i realized that I still have access to moods! Have to try by re-scanning my \>20,000 tracks now though to see if that still works…
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 11:06am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/11 "2017-08-24T11:06:52Z")
Tip: set your music library into the ‘Tracks’ view mode.
Then you should get ‘Moods’ as a possible Filter option. It will list all currently used moods in your library
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### Author:  [@J\_o\_a\_c\_h\_i\_m](https://forums.plex.tv/u/J_o_a_c_h_i_m)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 11:09am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/12 "2017-08-24T11:09:29Z")
yes, exactly. trying to rescan my large library now…
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 11:14am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/13 "2017-08-24T11:14:45Z")
> @“J o a c h i m” said:
> yes, exactly. trying to rescan my large library now…
I doubt it will work that way.
Maybe you will get moods for _some_ of your files.
But at one point it will abort the search due to a time out.
It is even mentioned in the documentation
[https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200265296-Adding-Music-Media-From-Folders](https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200265296-Adding-Music-Media-From-Folders)
> Tip!: When using a Premium music library, we strongly encourage you to continue organizing tracks into albums. Using a flat file list of tracks can result in the sonic fingerprinting erroring out.
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### Author:  [@Core-Lokt](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Core-Lokt)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 3:46pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/14 "2017-08-24T15:46:28Z")
I don’t have “Moods” as an option. I don’t have “Plex Mix” as an option, either. I feel pretty stupid asking for help so often, but so many things are missing. Maybe I’ve missed something along the way in setup?!
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### Author:  [@Core-Lokt](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Core-Lokt)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 3:49pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/15 "2017-08-24T15:49:35Z")
Tried to attach a screen capture, but not sure if it uploaded or if I have to host it elsewhere.
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 3:52pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/16 "2017-08-24T15:52:00Z")
> @Core-Lokt said:
> I don’t have “Moods” as an option. I don’t have “Plex Mix” as an option, either. I feel pretty stupid asking for help so often, but so many things are missing. Maybe I’ve missed something along the way in setup?!
Start at my first response above.
see also [https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/205744257-Getting-Started-with-Plex-Music](https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/205744257-Getting-Started-with-Plex-Music)
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### Author:  [@Core-Lokt](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Core-Lokt)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 9:58pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/17 "2017-08-24T21:58:47Z")
> @OttoKerner said:
>
> > @Core-Lokt said:
> > I don’t have “Moods” as an option. I don’t have “Plex Mix” as an option, either. I feel pretty stupid asking for help so often, but so many things are missing. Maybe I’ve missed something along the way in setup?!
>
> Start at my first response above.
> see also [https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/205744257-Getting-Started-with-Plex-Music](https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/205744257-Getting-Started-with-Plex-Music)
The library was created after the PP lifetime purchase in a fresh install after a full delete of Plex (including the huge folder in AppData\>Local. On my computer, the music is in genre folders (say, Jazz 1, Jazz 2, etc.) and separate tracks. Any information about the album or artist is embedded via MusicBrainz and mp3Tag, except a few older songs.
So, I have to completely re-arrange the folder and file format in order for Mood to work? I gather from an earlier comment that Gracenote/CDDB provides mood sorting? Are embedded mood tags read? Thanks for your help.
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 10:03pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/18 "2017-08-24T22:03:51Z")
> @Core-Lokt said:
> So, I have to completely re-arrange the folder and file format in order for Mood to work?
Yes, I am afraid so.
> I gather from an earlier comment that Gracenote/CDDB provides mood sorting? Are embedded mood tags read?
No.
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### Author:  [@Core-Lokt](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Core-Lokt)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2017, 11:13pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/19 "2017-08-24T23:13:15Z")
Thank you, sir.
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### Author:  [@J\_o\_a\_c\_h\_i\_m](https://forums.plex.tv/u/J_o_a_c_h_i_m)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2017, 7:17am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cannot-play-music-by-mood/203611/20 "2017-08-25T07:17:38Z")
Hi OttoKerner –
As the information here [https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/205744257-Getting-Started-with-Plex-Music](https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/205744257-Getting-Started-with-Plex-Music) is a bit evasive on how things really work and on how music should be organized (apart from the itunes example), I have the following questions:
1. I can automate with MediaMonkey to sort all my files into folders. My files are named - . I’m enclined to assign them all in folders respectively - , i.e. NOT using the exact itunes structure (I don’t want my files to be renamed in track number for example). Would this work? In the instructions above, it said that itunes structure is one of the option; I thus understand that this is not the only one.As a reminder
2. If yes to 1) how should I do with compilations. For now, all my files from a compilation have the name of the compilation as ? Would folders named - be fine? Or should I name them VA - ? I’d like the first option to be valid.
3. I don’t want Plex to change my metadata. I know it won’t change it in the files, but I rather that metadata be used by Plex. So if I click on “Use embedded tags” in the music library settings, would the Sonic/gracenote information needed still be collected but not attached visually to the files? (am I clear?)
4. If yes to 3), then would I be able to use Plex Mix AND Moods?
5. Have the number of genres selected in the library settings an impact on the Plex Mix / Moods stuff? I can choose between 15, 75, or 500.
6. If yes to 4), would that still works with tracks from compilations or only albums are counted for in PlexMix and Moods?
7. Finally, do you know if Plex Mix and Moods are available from Sonos after integration of Plex ?
Many thanks!
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