I have been storing my music library in Plex for some time. I noticed that ~20% of my albums are returning “unmatched”. I understand I need to re-tag them with MusicBrainz Picard and then do the “plex dance” (remove path, empty trash, and re-add) in order to trigger a bulk match. I’ve been listening and rating these tracks and I am curious if I will lose ratings and if manually curated playlists will lose tracks? thanks!
I’ll answer my own question:
I chose two albums that had tracks in these categories:
-
matched w/ rating + in playlist
-
matched w/o rating + in playlist
-
unmatched w/ rating + in playlist
-
unmatched w/o rating + in playlist
The matched tracks retained their ratings after the plex-dance. Pretty sure this is because these are identified by a GUID (from musicbrainz?) and not the filepath/local metadata
The unmatched tracks lost their ratings after the plex-dance, presumably because plex only understands them in a local context
The test playlist was empty, which is disappointing. Since the tracks were re-added with the exact same path as before the plex-dance, I thought there might be a chance they’d re-appear but it seems there’s a destructive step to playlists when a track is removed from the library, as in the items in the playlist are not identified by the matched GUID (like ratings are)
99% of the time this is true. However, even when artist/abums/tracks are 100% matched the plex guids can change when doing a plex dance after a period of time. I’ve never fully understood why this happens but I suspect its something to do with back-end mapping between plex, musicbrainz and track release relationships.
For example, for reasons I’ll not get into here (you can read this [HowTo] Configure Popular Tracks Section to Prioritise Albums over every other release type! if your interest), I typically plex dance my entire music library once a year. Yes, the whole library…
I currently have 1,305 Artists with 10,174 albums, 150,396 tracks and over 45k music play history. ALL are tagged with musicbrainz picard and match 100% with plex. I ran a test a week or so back in prep for this yearly plex dance and approx 200 tracks changed their plex guids which had ratings and/or play history previously. I know this by querying the db.
SELECT * FROM metadata_item_settings WHERE metadata_item_settings.guid NOT IN (SELECT metadata_items.guid from metadata_items);
SELECT * FROM metadata_item_views WHERE metadata_item_views.guid NOT IN (SELECT metadata_items.guid from metadata_items);
This can mess up playlist etc… and I typically have to manually fix any I care about directly in the db.
Unmatched content when a plex dance is done has always changed the guid="local://xxxxxx"
id for me which means you lose your ratings and if they are part of a playlist they’ll be removed, as the id link to it no longer exists.
Thank you for sharing some of your insight! My library is not quite as large as yours (~1200 Artists, ~2500 albums, ~32000 tracks). The mistake I made when initially fully moving to Plex was to not be aware of the significance of “Matching” and I’ve been building playlists, ratings, and play history with this incomplete Matched state.
I only discovered this because I am migrating the music library to different storage. I rsync’d the library to new storage path, added it in Plex music library, and was surprised to see 1:1 duplicates, with ratings missing.
In Movie or TV libraries, if there is a duplicate that is the same movie or episode, when you go to File Info, you will see two locations listed. I don’t know why this does not happen for a Music library.
So, I think my path forward is to:
- change the external mountpoint of my Plex LXC to the new storage, but keep the internal mountpoint the same as it is now (such that, to plex, it’s the same directory inside the container)
- manually match the unmatched albums (~500, so will be tedious)
- in parallel, using musicbrainz Picard to tag everything correctly for peace of mind/futureproofing
for #2 and #3, is there anyway I can trigger a re-match that is not the initial add to library? I understood that a plex dance was the only way to trigger an automatic re-match
As an aside, I understand I’m well into power-user territory here. Are there any other external tools you use to manage the library that is 3rd party to plex (Kometa?)
Correct, if you update the local tags within your files, tagging/updating them with musicbrainz or some other tool then when you plex dance the system to try an match them. Also, remember tagging is only part of this, you need to also follow naming rules.
So, for example Lady Gaga
and the album Joker - Folie a deux
(Release group “Joker: Folie à deux: Music From the Motion Picture” by Phoenix & Gaga - MusicBrainz). If you put this album in a folder called \Lady Gaga\Joker - Folie a deux (2024)
plex WILL NOT MATCH IT and it’ll be unmatched when scanned into plex.
Reason being that the first artist listed is Joaquin Phoenix
(Joaquin Phoenix - MusicBrainz) so for auto matching to work it would need to be in \Joaquin Phoenix\Joker - Folie a deux (2024)
. You can of course manually match it but for auto matching it will not and its just something to be aware of.
I’m not aware of any way to match local plex guids with actual matched plex guids however maybe someone else from the community knows how. Manually fixing these up would be a nightmare and not practical.
If it was me and I was in your situation, I’d get the tagging right and naming right, then plex dance everything, ensure they are all matched and then create your playlists/rating again. Lot of work yes but its the only way if you want the content matched.
As matching is so important, what do you do for singles that plex can’t find/match?
Has never happened and I’ve 100s of single releases. As long as the single releases exist as records on musicbrainz, are tagged and you follow the plex naming they match.
EDIT: just checked and I’ve 453 single release types.
Take this release:
Can’t find this on discogs or musicbrainz, though perhaps I’m not searching correctly.
THere are quite a few like this.
As I said …
… and upon a quick check I don’t see it listed. You can always add it yourself which will help yourself and the wider community.
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