Server Version#: 1.25.8.5621
I am adding music to the server running on my NAS, and though the files are perfectly tagged and also follow the directory guidelines, the release dates keep being incorrectly set.
For example (this is one of lots), “10cc - Sheet Music”
This is an album from 1974 and when added to Plex, it has the release date set to 1993. Not only does it do that, it also alters the files own tags to 1993 (i have set the files all to write protected so i do not have to keep re-tagging them after each failed attempt at fixing).
I have the Agents with Local Media Assets enabled and set first in all places, and have the library set as Plex Music for both Agent and Scanner, and also ‘prefer local metadata’ is ticked.
If i set the Agent to Personal Music Artists (and do the plex dance) then the dates are correct, but… I lose ‘recommended tracks’ ‘artist bios’ etc totally (even though they are selected in the library settings.
Surely there must be a way to stop this behaviour from ruining the library? All I want is it to either,
Retain the album date as in my own meta, or
Use musicbrainz ‘original release date’ tag and not the ‘release date’ (which will pull re-releases).
Any help would be HUGELY appreciated.
As an example, there is the folder
And this is the tags
so, setting the library to use “Personal Media Artists” as the agent results in the correct dates from the meta, but… I lose all the lovely extras that plex gives us.
Setting the agent to “Plex Music” reinstates the extras, but borks the album dates 
Don’t get me started on other artists like ‘the beatles’ lol
What software are you using to update meta data?
I ask because most taggers come with 2 fields for dates, unfortunately my music server packed up yesterday so cannot check which fields affect what, not sure it will help as it seems like Plex picks up the correct field on change of agent:
I don’t have much input on the rest of this issue, but Plex should not (and in my experience, has never) alter tags in any of your media (movies, TV shows, music, whatever). If you believe it is doing so, that would be considered a bug and should be reported, with supporting server logs.
Having said that, are you certain that there’s nothing else utilizing those folders which may actually be making the modifications? Because that may explain both the tag changing issue and the behavior you’re seeing in Plex itself. Particularly if you told Plex to prefer local metadata for the library (in the library’s advanced settings). You could try disabling that and see what Plex comes up with for album dates.
Did a little quick test, unless the album is completely unmatched, @greatflash is right, Plex retains the year, record label, mood, style etc from MusicBrainz. the track information is from meta data. A way around it would be to match the artist and unmatch the projects underneath.
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I have used several to try and fix this, including Picard, Lidarr, and manually editing with Mp3Tag.
Just got back from the school run, so catch up on the other posts in a mo and do some tests. Thanks.
It’s possible the albums are matched to a “re-release” of an album, not the original. In that case, the release date might not make sense or appear incorrect.
If your library is configured to use local tags/metadata, in MusicBrainz Picard, edit the tags for the album highlighted in this image. All of the tracks for an album must have the same data for the date fields, you can’t mix and match.
.
In MP3Tag, when viewing the “Extended Tags” for the album, edit these fields:
It works 100% of the time for me. You will probably have to refresh metadata for the new tags to show up.
Thanks for the heads up about other software running. I still had Lidarr running on the NAS and that was the cause of the year being re-written. Thank heavens for that as that’s a very simple fix 
As to Plex and the year, still back to that issue. I have the year for both (as a test) set to 1974, and yet plex still shows the album as 1993, no matter what I do..
Even if I ‘fix match’ it refuses to change.
What’s odd, Plex says ‘originally available’ as 1993?
As you know, the date of any re-releases is not what I want, I want the date of my album release - originally.
And, I cannot manually change the year. lol
my tags look like this,
This is across all files.
I don’t think I have a “Date” tag in any of my files, but I may have configured MP3Tag to display the tag with a different name. Try removing that field. I also see that that date is 2202 - my calendar says that’s a few years away. 
Change the the YEAR tag to what you want (in YYYY) format, change ORIGYEAR to something in the YYYY-MM-DD format. (I think you can just use YYYY too, but I’m not sure)
The date tag is not used in reference to the audio files meta.
Anyway, for me, and regardless of what dates or years i put in, Plex will always look up the album and use the date returned from it’s matching regardless of me asking it to use my meta. I cannot find a solution to that at all?
This it the latest meta test, and…
Also, it may be picking this up as the German reissue due to the publisher/label being referenced. From Musicbrainz:
The “Label” here matches the publisher in your tags.
I was just checking the same.
Though, the main thing is, I am asking Plex to use my Meta when available, and all 3 Dates are set to 1974, yet it is ignoring my request and finding it’s own date and using that.
It looks like your album is matched to the German release as @pshanew suggested.
Are you certain you have the library configured to use local metadata? I’m pretty sure even if there’s a better match at MusicBrainz, Plex will use your embedded tags for all data. I know that I have changed the date fields to get the proper release dates and a refresh of metadata for the artist (doesn’t always work for just the album) bring in the proper data.
so, now removing all release info, music brainz markers, etc, and just leaving the year there for Plex.
Doing the Plex Dance again lol…
So, the only place to ask Plex to use my own meta is the tick-box in the Library settings? Just checking.
ok, stripped back all meta on the files -
Removed all from plex, rescanned, put back, rescanned, and…
I think I give up…
So, the year is there in triplicate, and yet Plex still insists in using it’s own.
is there Cache that I should delete?
