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I have local artist artwork artist-poster.jpg and artist-background.jpg set at the artist level for my music library.
However, if Prefer local metadata is disabled plex does NOT use the local artist artwork.
If we want to use custom local artist artwork then we need to have Prefer local metadata enabled. There should be an option like on movie/tv libraries where Use local assets can be used for all artwork so we can enable local assets but also disable local metadata.
Some additional info:
I have Album Art is already set to local files, this issue is with artist artwork and having metadata disabled.
When I change Prefer local metadata to enabled and refresh my music library the local artist artwork is then picked up.
Cannot vote for my own suggestion due to 5 vote rule
Initially when I created the thread it felt like a bug but on reflection it appeared to me more of a feature request. These are my reasons I moved it this morning …
Both movies and tv libraries have options for Prefer local metadata and Use local assets. Music does not so its the addition of this feature to music libraries.
As artist artwork artist-poster.jpg and artist-background.jpg are not covered in the plex documentation they appear to be some undocumented advanced feature which is partially implemented.
Enabling/Disabling Prefer local metadata effects how local artists artwork so any code related to local assets would need to be refactored to pull it out and into its own area.
Anyhow, if you believe this is a bug then i’m okay with that. I however, feel fully justified in my movement earlier from normal thread to feature suggestion.
Did you check that the locally stored artist photo is not among the available choices when you edit the artist? (keep in mind that you need to Refresh Metadata of the whole artsit if you add the photo to an existing artist)
Yeap, they are there and first on the list but plex is picking the second one on the list when Prefer local metadata is disabled. BTW… I would never manually select anything in the edit dialog’s. Plex makes them locked fields when you select anything which is why I use local artwork instead.
Yeap, full refresh of the entire music library was done just to be sure after setting Prefer local metadata to disabled. For good measure I also done a plex dance on single artist and all their albums, same result.
Only thing I did not try was creation of a whole new library as it seemed overkill based on the results I seen.
Also, when I switched back to Prefer local metadata to enabled and force refreshed the library the artist artwork came back (as expected).
That is the expected behaviour.
If you don’t want local metadata to be preferred, then the metadata from plex’s metadata agent is used.
The artist photo is metadata .
So you want plex’s metadata preferably used, but only for artist photos you want Plex to automatically prefer your locally stored photos?
Metadata in this context is embedded into files, tags etc but are not local assets on disk alongside the files.
Artist background and artist posters are not metadata and should be considered exactly the same as posters, fanart, shows and seasons are for video media. These are local assets. As yourself, what makes music so special that artist artwork becomes metadata but posters do not ?
Anyhow, if plex consider these metadata then that just reinforces the move of this topic from normal thread to feature request.
