How to make Plex Music great again
Some one recommended Plex to me, I’m still playing with it and implementing my music. But when I started to uses it I was perplexed. Al my music on one place? Who would’ve thought! It’s a good piece of software.
It’s good but not great, so I collected my feedback, and things I stumbled on in the Music-section of Plex. I wanted to share this in the hopes it gets implemented in the future. For now I feel like Movies and Series is Plex main focus. As a music fanatic I gladly help with feedback for the improvement of Plex Music.
It’s a long one, so thanks for ready in advance! I included all in one article since it has an overlapping theme of increasing the look and feel of the library’s in Plex Music. Here is a summary:
– Links to individual posts –
11/10/2021: tom80H made a suggestion to split this post into multiple parts and he provided links to already existing posts. I thought it might be a good idea to summarize them here and add standalone posts that didn’t exist yet. (Sidenote: I need more upvotes)
Artist metadata
- Artist picture handling
- Artist metadata from a file
- Groups, group members and aliases
- Websites, and other links
- Syncing with Discogs
Album metadata
- Duo albums vs. Various Artist / Trio albums vs. Duo albums
- Appearances (featurings, productions, compilations)
- Splitting album section [ ✓ Implemented + But Got Some Feedback]
Track metadata
- Single tracks on artist level
- Synchronization of track metadata [ ✓ Implemented + Tested ]
Manage Library>Edit...→Advanced>Prefer local metadata - Video metadata
Reddit edit’s
- Custom Posters Playlists [ ✓ Implemented + Tested ]
- Playlist features
- Non-numerical Lables
– Artist metadata –
So there are a lot of things that can be done to improve the looks and feels of how Plex organizes and handles the artist’s metadata.
1. Artist photo’s
The first thing is how you upload photo’s of an artist. Covers for cd’s and poster for movies are very straight forwards. Most of the cd’s are squares-shaped and most of the posters are rectangles. With a photo it’s not that easy. Some are not centered and some are way too zoomed out.
Right here is an example of how an off centered artist photo might look. So basically what you’ve got to do to fix this, is going into an external program and hope that you’ve done it correctly.
What I propose is that, when you upload a photo for an artist, you get a screen like this. This is how Facebook does it when you upload profile pictures. You can move it around until it’s centred, and you’ve got an option to zoom in and out.
2. Artist metadata from a file → Mod: duplicate!
[Mod-Edit: duplicate → Support for Local .nfo (or .txt) files for artist bio and album review/info]
So I was researching this a bit and saw that for movies you can use a .nfo-file, for albums you can tag those files themselves. But there is nothing for the artists. How much I like the metadata for artist being collected automatically from last.fm, my music taste is sometimes too niche.
This means that some metadata is not up to date, not complete, or not there at all. I tested the editing features a bit, but when I had to configurate the server again, I lost these small edits, so a .txt file would be perfect.
Here is an example of how such a file could look like. It would be fantastic to have a file like this, from which Plex would read the information. The other point aren’t in the example, but it works the same way
To make it even better, what if you edit something on Plex, it would be saved automatically in this files. So if something happened to the server itself, it would still be there and can be loaded again.
3. Groups, group members, and aliases
I got a bit inspired from some of my favourite music sites like Discogs and Whosampled. I want to start with groups. I know you can add them in the ‘similar artist’ section, but what I think looks good is place it under the group-name.
Groups: My first idea was to be able to add members, with their role in the group (singer, rapper, instrument, dj, beatmaker, etc.) and maybe even year. But it should be uniform to the “in groups” style, I think that’s better.
If the artist (or their alias) appears in your database the name should be clickable and linking to said page. If some of the artists are not in your database it still should be in the group member list, but not clickable.
Group members: With group members you could do it like this. Right under their name you could place a section with ‘in goups’, and then showing the groups said artist is in. If it’s in your database it’s clickable, otherwise it’s not.
Aliases: This one is optional, but I refer to this part later in my feedback. Some artist have multiple aliases. What I do right know is stating the alias as ‘artist on the track’, but the main-name as ‘artist album’ to group them together.
Which works fine but technically you could also add the aliases in the description, but I would like to see the following option. A place where you can tell Plex which aliases an artist have, it doesn’t have to be displayed, but would be useful for grouping things automatically together
Record labels: The music I listen to sometimes has albums or mixtapes specifically themed after a record label. This is the most close to ‘Various Artist’, but I like to have them on an artist-page of the record label.
So having an option to fill in which artists are signed (just like the group, group member options) would be perfect. Problem you get here is that some labels have signed a lot of artists.
Lets say that a record label has more than 10 artist, Plex could show the first ten, and place on the eleventh spot three dots. If you click these dots you get an overview with al the artists signed on that record label.
4. Websites, and other links → Mod: duplicate!
[Mod-Edit: duplicate → [Feature Request] Ability to add a link to an artist's website on the Artist detail page]
Something I would love to see is the ability to add (clickable) links to the artist’s website(s). For example their website, their socials (Instagram, Twitter), their YouTube, Discogs, Spotify, or whatever links you want, so that way you can stay up to date with the artist, check things faster and see when they released something new.
5. Syncing with Discogs → Mod: duplicate!
[Mod-Edit: duplicates → Add link imdb and discogs in movies and albums]
Discogs is a good site for information of artists and their releases. It has bio’s, aliases, websites. This is just a small thought but syncing with Discogs could give different results in comparison to Last.fm. I prefer having my own control to be honest, yet I thought it was good to mention it.
– Album metadata –
Now I want to zoom in on albums itself. Most of the metadata can be added automatically through editing the track’s metadata themself. But I still found some things that should be added.
1. Duo albums vs. Various Artist / 2. Trio albums vs. Duo albums → Mod: duplicate!
[Mod-Edit: duplicate → Better support for albums and tracks with multiple artists]
1. Duo albums vs Various Artist
I don’t know if people who listen to other genres have the same problem, but in the (Dutch) hip-hop it’s common that two artist collab on an album, and that’s it.
So grouping them under Various Artist isn’t right, because you know who are on the album and it’s not a compilation. Adding every duo-album under it’s own artist is making your library very messy very fast. And adding the album twice isn’t good for the space on your server/computer.
So what I purpose is the following. Make Plex able to recognise a duo album. For example I got an album of “Rico & Sticks”, make it that Plex understands it’s an album of both “Rico” and “Sticks”, and display it on their individual pages. Possibly by recognising the &-sign. If one of the two artist doesn’t have their own artist page it should be created.
At the album page you could make it that both “Rico”, “Sticks” are individually clickable. But the “&” isn’t. That way the page redirects to both artists. This is how it would look on the album page.
The problem you might get is that Plex would create pages of artist or band that have the “&” in their name, so you need an option to correct this if necessary. So this is how it would look in the editing window. On the left a duo album and on the right an album with an act that has an &-sign in their name.
2. Trio albums vs Duo albums
Same feedback as for the duo albums. This is still no various artist in my option, but here could it be tricky, since you don’t use the &-sign twice with three artist. So having an option to state the artists on the album in the edit window (just like the example) would be great.
Below is an example of what the album page would look like. This album would thus be displayed on three pages “The Opposites”, “Dio”, “Flinke Namen”.
3. Appearances (featurings, productions, compilations) → Mod: duplicate!
[Mod-Edit: duplicate → Music - Artist View - View All Tracks]
I’m going to be honest that I stole this idea from another post, but I could find the right one I was looking for. I know there are a lot of request about this possibility. I wanted to create a mock-up but I found this post where u/beckfield already created one. So I’m using that, because it’s easier.
I totally agree with this idea. I this section all the artist’s appearances would be displayed. For example a track of this artist on a compilation or mixtape, a featuring on a song from a different artist or a production this artist has made for someone. Definitely one of the biggest additions to be made
I want to contribute something to this conversation, because I think there is a problem this might generate. A lot of music or compilation albums have tracks, featuring and productions from artists not present in the artist-library. Sometimes it’s an one off feature, track or production. Or simply an artist you don’t listen.
It would be amazing if Plex scanned for features, tracks and productions outside the artist’s own album and add them under the appearance section. If an artist or producer is not present in the database, there wouldn’t be an extra page to keep the artist library clean and tidy because of the problem.
I don’t know if people agree with that, so you can always add an option to turn this on/off. Maybe some people like an artist page with only appearances. But I prefer not.
This is also the place where aliases can play a huge role, since some artists produce under a different name.
4. Splitting album section → Mod: implemented!
[Mod-Edit: implemented w/ PMS 1.24.0 → https://www.plex.tv/blog/super-sonic-get-closer-to-your-music-in-plexamp/]
When you add a release from an artist Plex automatically adds said release as an album. But not every release is an album. I would love to see the ability to split releases. Inspiration from this comes from Spotify.
This are the kind of releases I thought off: albums, mixtapes, ep’s, cd single(s) or trackpacks, (remix) contest & kits and stems. I probably mist some, but I also got a solution for that. Make it a box where you can type the form of release.
I know that Spotify groups EP’s and singles together, and that something I myself really dislike. So the ability to type the form of release yourself makes it so you can choose if you want them together or don’t want them together.
In my option ‘Album’ can be used as the default one. If the release has “CD Single” or “EP” in it’s name, then Plex could possibly recognize this, and add it automatically.
– Track metadata –
Now I’m going to zoom in even more, to the track level itself. Not much to say here, but still some things worth mentioning.
1. 'Singular’ tracks
Singular tracks or random music files that do not appear on any album, ep, and so on. My idea about this was to place them in the artist folder. But the problem you get here is that for every artist Plex is going to make an single ‘album’.
I would love to see all my random, unorganised tracks together in one ‘album’. Basically Various Tracks, instead of Various Artists. I think this would be a good way to solve this.
- So put the singular tracks in the artist folder (or maybe a folder called Singular Tracks inside the artist folder)
- Let Plex group them together inside of one album, and display the relevant tracks by the right artist (not only their own singular tracks, but also their featurings (among others) on other singular tracks)
That way you’re not getting lots of albums with a handful of tracks on the albums overview page, but the right data would be displayed by the right artist.
2. Synchronization of track metadata → Mod: implemented!
[Mod-Edit: implemented → ⋮ > Manage Library > Edit... → Advanced > Prefer local metadata]
This one is probably my fault, but why not mention it here too. Sometimes Plex decides to synchronise the album with (I guess) Last.fm, instead of getting the info from the tags I put in there myself with another program (Tag&Rename). I want an option to put ‘metadata from the audio-files’ as the default.
– Video metadata – → Mod: duplicate
[Mod-Edit: duplicate → [Feature Request] Missing Music Video Types]
This is probably going to be the smallest section. But I noticed that in the “Adding Local Artist and Music Videos”-article there is a limited amount of video types to choose from. Sorry if I’m offending someone but I’m missing some more ‘current’ forms of video’s.
For example I would love to see the following added:
- -contest (remix contests)
- -highlights (clips from livestreams, podcasts)
- -livestream (full livestreams)
- -podcasts (full podcasts)
- -reviews (review video’s)
- -youtube (regular youtube video’s)
– Thanks! –
I know it’s a lot of text and images, so thank you very much for reading! I hope this helps to improve Plex Music!
~ Cinnamon
– Reddit Edit’s 1 –
I shared my thoughts on Reddit too, and I got some valuable responses I thought I should share here.
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r/Lingo56 suggestion about No gapless playback is something that should be added to the list as well.
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I saw r/benzo8 and plissk3n (on the Plex Forum) say ID3 tags instead of the .txt-files. Plissk3n got some good point below in this post.
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And I really like Plex design, as someone who listens to a lot of niche music that isn’t on major streaming services like Spotify, but Plex is just missing some essentials.
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r/tampo36 suggestion of custom posters for playlists is a great suggestion too, (link with his example [Implemented] Custom Posters for Playlist - #4 by tampa3)
[Mod: duplicate/implemented → [Implemented] Custom Posters for Playlist] -
r/nicosemp found a request for albums with multiple artists from 2015 with 100+ upvotes, tbh i really don’t think they pay much attention to those forums (Better support for albums and tracks with multiple artists)
[Mod: see above, duplicate]
– Reddit Edit's 2 – → Mod: duplicate(s)!
[Mod-Edit: duplicate(s) → Playlist sorting and searching feature request, Better rating support with playlists]
- another good suggestion thanks to r/averyfollett which is more playlist features (filtering, sorting, seeing track ratings, etc.)
– Edit 3 – → Mod: duplicate!
[Mod-Edit: duplicate → Non-numerical labels for discs]
- good suggestion from Rhayader, which is disc titles for albums with more then one disc.. There’s already a suggestion for it (Non-numerical labels for discs ) but it has been there for a long time now.
