It seems crazy but PLEX is just not able to do some pretty basic things.
Anyone heard of fleetwood mac? Apparently the plex music scraper has not.
Infact over 100 artists in my library, most of which are main stream are simply not picked up.
Can anyone explain how I could convince it to do better, I feel sure it must be something odd in my library.
Plex just use the metadata embedded in your files. If there is no metadata, then Plex doesn't recognize anything.
I use Winamp and put metadata on all my files (name of the song, artist, order and so on) then put them on a folder for Plex to scan and all goes fine. This works for MP3 and flac flawlessly. You can also add the picture of the album to each file so that Plex will produce it. The only problem with this process is that each song must be updated manually... Quite time consuming but well worth it for a perfect library.
Plex just use the metadata embedded in your files. If there is no metadata, then Plex doesn't recognize anything.
I use Winamp and put metadata on all my files (name of the song, artist, order and so on) then put them on a folder for Plex to scan and all goes fine. This works for MP3 and flac flawlessly. You can also add the picture of the album to each file so that Plex will produce it. The only problem with this process is that each song must be updated manually... Quite time consuming but well worth it for a perfect library.
I am doing the same now that I discovered mp3tag which allows me to do batch updates on multiple tracks. Have not used Winamp for ages - does it offer similar functionality.
I found it best to get all the tags right and correcting errors like sometimes albums get split with a track as unknown artist and the rest identified - so again using mp3tag operating at folder level to make sure all are correct. Have still got a lot to correct. Noticed some artists appearing as separate because of use of extended characters in one but not the other (foreign characters)
For MP3 I mostly use MP3-Info which is a shell extension for windows which will appear on the Context Menu->Property and which you can use to do batch metadata for mp3 files in a folder. However I use winamp which doesn't have any batch capacity (as far I know) for flac or other music format.
And yes Björk is not Bjork sometimes... but you can merge the folders if needed.
For MP3 I mostly use MP3-Info which is a shell extension for windows which will appear on the Context Menu->Property and which you can use to do batch metadata for mp3 files in a folder. However I use winamp which doesn't have any batch capacity (as far I know) for flac or other music format.
Thanks for the info. I actually do not mean batch as in batch jobs / batch file execution. I meant I am doing multi track selections at a time as I have view of whole windows folder structure within mp3tag and I can sort different ways and then sort on folder and album and multi select lines and update multiple entries in one go - eg set all tracks to the same year or same disc number or artist etc... and has built it facilities for converting file names to meta tags splitting filename in to say track number, album, track name, artist - whichever you decide from that
That's what I mean too by batch, a whole lot of files named as the same time with a folder for AC/DC for instance with all tha albums in it, you just right click the AC/DC folder then Property, the the MP3-Info Tab and there you can add the band name in the proper field and also absolutely in the "orchestra" field as this is the one taken for the artist name by Plex, then click on the button before the field to copy that name on all the mp3, then you save and voilà! All you mp3 now have there proper artist name that will be recognized by Plex. You can do the same for each alb um folder and add the picture of the album to each mp3 file too in the same process of doing once the propagating the change. only for the name of each file you have to select them one by one which is also done inside the MP3-Info menu as it will go back and forth among all the files in a folder or the files you selected. It's a handy, simple and powerful tool but only works with MP3 files.
Of course MP3-Info is also able to recognize the sort order and name of a song if you have a proper naming for your files or just tell him how you files are named so it can extract the useful metadata from the file name. Something which Winamp does too luckily.
I still use winamp to rip the CD I buy (yeah I'm the one who keeps buying CDs) and also as the alarm clock to wake up he morning with a track list and a windows task.
Plex does not always use the tag info in mp3's when it scans the music files. I have several albums that Plex consistently gets the wrong info for (specifically track numbers) even though the MP3 tag info is correct. Plex doesn't let you manually edit the track numbers it uses and so if any track numbers show up wrong or in accurate or even duplicated it's just tough luck.
Below is a good example of how Plex ignores embedded info and puts whatever it feels like for track numbers (in this case all tracks are numbered "0"
Here is another one that Plex didn't even bother to put any track numbers in at all for even though they are present and correct in the file tags
I've double checked all the albums with issues and each and every one has the correct tag info and also checked last/fm for correct info in case it was getting info from there for some reason and everything appears as it should be. I don't know if this is a scanner issue or not but it has to be related to scanners,agents or some other setting in Plex. Whatever it is it's highly annoying and if Plex allowed you to just edit track numbers like you can with all other info it wouldn't be a problem but for some reason the Devs don't allow you to do this. I'd prefer Plex to work properly in the first place but at they could at least add the option to edit stuff it does get wrong if it doesn't work as it should.
Just to ask some other forum users I'd like to know how to force Plex to use embedded track info before it checks last.fm. I have it set to use personal media artists/albums first and last.fm is last on the list in eadch case so I'm assuming it's supposed to grab info from tracks first before checking online, please correct me if I'm wrong.
This track numbering issue is only happening on a few albums out of my whole collection but that and lack of playlists and not being able to search for tracks/artists in compilation albums on the Android/GTV client (which is what I mainly use) makes Plex only a toy for my music needs at the moment because other available software is just better at it. I'd love for it to work properly but will have to wait till fixing music issues and adding needed features becomes a higher priority than it is at the moment :(
If anyone has any advice on how I might work around my problem or let me know if there is some setting I've missed I'd appreciate any help on the matter.
One question, is could create allmusic.con agents and discogs.com? are better databases last.fm
Sorry for my english
I don't know whats going on but my music was pretty much perfect, I organised my files better i.e. one folder for Artists one for compilations and one for soundtracks/ost and now after a rescan i have loads of empty albums and metadata scanner refuses to find the album when i manually update it. Last FM seems to be a bit rubbish.
1. How do I fix and 2. Can i use another metadata agent ?
Track numbers do appear to be ignored. Plex players plays songs alphabetically, not in the order of the track numbers for some albums. I know I have the track numbers in the wma tags but not in the title or filename.
CONSTANT problems with mp3 files
i use MP3Tag and all files have album, title, artist, album artist, comment
all files are in folders with ALBUM name.
am ready ALMOST to abandon plex because of the PAIN this causes. if i edit the file tags - the current PLEX 99 out 100 times WILL NOT MAKE THE CHANGE
if i do a bunch of files in a folder - forget it. i have to delete the section and readd it and then pray that it reads the tags correctly.
my entire music library is mp3 and i have hundreds of files.
this is getting to be a nightmare.
i may have to go back to using iTunes (WHICH I LOATHE) to organize the data and then play thru the iTUnes channel in plex.
i really dont want to have to do that .... its a whole other set of problems.
but i am not getting ANY RESPONSES regarding the library updating issues (change a tag and PMS either doesnt recognize that there is a change or WILL NOT UPDATE MANUALLY).
this is getting to be a huge PITA.
CONSTANT problems with mp3 files
i use MP3Tag and all files have album, title, artist, album artist, comment
all files are in folders with ALBUM name.
am ready ALMOST to abandon plex because of the PAIN this causes. if i edit the file tags - the current PLEX 99 out 100 times WILL NOT MAKE THE CHANGE
if i do a bunch of files in a folder - forget it. i have to delete the section and readd it and then pray that it reads the tags correctly.
my entire music library is mp3 and i have hundreds of files.
this is getting to be a nightmare.
i may have to go back to using iTunes (WHICH I LOATHE) to organize the data and then play thru the iTUnes channel in plex.
i really dont want to have to do that .... its a whole other set of problems.
but i am not getting ANY RESPONSES regarding the library updating issues (change a tag and PMS either doesnt recognize that there is a change or WILL NOT UPDATE MANUALLY).
this is getting to be a huge PITA.
may be this is a new problem in the new 0.9.9.5 version?
Why not try earlier version - see Downloads Archive https://plexapp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/200287708-Downloads-Archive
First post. I guess I've lost my lurker status.
I was having this exact problem. Sometimes if I restarted the server I could get some more metadata and cover art downloaded for artists. But then it would seem to give up again. C'mon, it should know who Billy Joel is, right? I kept digging through the forums for a resolution to no avail. This problem seems to be fairly common, too. Maybe this is already a known potential resolution but I didn't see it so thought I'd post.
While troubleshooting I checked my router's logs and wow. Just WOW. My Plex server had established over 1000 sessions at one time which is the default maximum allowed on my router. Why so many sessions, Plex? My guess is that it (or the agents?) just does it all in one *fail* swoop rather than waiting on previous sessions to close before moving to the next. As soon as I allowed unlimited sessions on my router for my Plex server's IP and forced a refresh in Plex it updated every single album and artist complete with cover art. So, check your router's logs or just make the number of sessions unlimited while you updated a large library. It worked for me.
You should check your file permissions. I had this same issue with both movies and music and had to do a recursive chown/chmod on linux in order for my music and movies to be recognized. Here are the commands:
chmod -R 775 Music
chown -R username:username Music
Just substitute the "username" for whatever your account is. I had copied the data from a thumb drive so the permissions were wrong and Plex wouldn't detect the data.
-Cheers
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