Hi Guys,
Wonder if you can help with this. I am trying to match multiple VA albums and the refresh metadata keep incorrectly matching the artist to several wrong artists. It seems to keep using the wrong artists over and over, not like a slight mismatch, e.g. Imany was matched to Hailee Steinfeld. Hailee Stainfield is one of the artist that the metadata refresh cycle seems to default to as in incorrect match repeatedly
When I run fix match it defaults to “various artists” as the artist. It seems to be using Personal Media Artists as the default agent. I then manually search using last.fm and it immediately fixes finds the correct artist.
I have seen all the threads about priority etc and this doesn’t seem to be an option in the new library interface or setup. How do I make last.fm the default match in a premium music library.
My tags now look like this, i have modified them to fix some of the other issues reported in the forums
filenames are %artist% - %title%
“album artist = artist”
“artist = artist”
“album = hits of 00’s” - generic grouping now to try to remove mismatch
“title = song title”
I have deleted the library several times and got the same issue selecting different order of options under server settings - agents.
Plex Version is 1.9.7.4460
How do I get Plex to use use by match the artist correctly by either using last.fm as default or personal media library stop selecting the wrong match?
The ‘Album Artist’ must be set to ‘Various Artists’ on sampler style albums (albums which collect tracks from different artists)
The Album Artist must be set to the same value for every track of one particular album.
If you want Plex to give oyur embedded meta tags priority, you must not only tick the checkbox ‘Use embedded tags’ but also do this:
Settings - Server - Agents - Albums - Plex Premium Music
make sure the line ‘Local Media Assets’ has a checkmark and sits at the top of the list
Give your metatags another quick check,
Make sure your folder structure is also OK
(you might also want to include the track number into your file names)
then perform the ‘Plex Dance’ “light” (you can omit step 4 with music)
Thanks Otto,
I just changed album artist from various artist as the plex was picking up using album artist instead of the artist meta tag. This has been documented in the forums. Is there a fix for this? If so would prefer to change album artist back to “various artists”
My main issue seems to be that last.fm finds the artist immediately but in the current configuration the library seems to default to “personal media agents” rather then last.fm Last.fm seems to match immediately.
I recently changed file structure to reflect suggested, however have large amount of files in some folder to keep flat. I have found that helps with errors in connection. (issue posted to forum with no responses.)
Music - VA
–> 90’s
-----> artist - song title
Prefer not to use track numbers if possible, also burned my CD’s over many years. Not sure how I would go about this without reburning.
By deleting the library and and running the “dance” steps does this achieve the same? I sync my library connection with the cloud and moving them causes a large issue in replication. But is ok if I must do this…
and another to help with the issues with connections etc I also moved my libraries into separate folders and mapped separate libraries to each folder. would I need to do the dance for all of them or are they completely different?
@bridjee said:
Music - VA
→ 90’s
-----> artist - song title
This will not work in a Premium Music library.
You don’t have an Album folder there. The Premium library needs Albums. Real existing albums, not some made-up ones.
Prefer not to use track numbers if possible, also burned my CD’s over many years. Not sure how I would go about this without reburning.
Erm, we are talking about media files on a hard disk, not about CDs. They can be renamed and retagged and re-organized as you see fit.
By deleting the library and and running the “dance” steps does this achieve the same? I sync my library connection with the cloud and moving them causes a large issue in replication. But is ok if I must do this…
If you want to solve major issues like you describe, then yes, you cannot avoid a resync.
You should only start a sync if all the music appears in your local Plex like you wish it should.
Maybe you should think about creating a regular (last.fm) music library.
Your existing Premium library unfortunately cannot be converted.
But you can create this new library additionally to the Premium library, so you can experiment without affecting your existing library and your already synced items.
If you go that way, make sure to also make the same change in the agent configuration for the last.fm agent also:
Settings - Server - Agents - Albums - last.fm
make sure the line ‘Local Media Assets’ has a checkmark and sits at the top of the list
Ok thanks Otto, will try to go ahead, and try your suggestions
The premium library needing albums maybe the issues. I have played with folders and tags so much over the years much of this info is lost. I used to use another player that corrupted a large number of my tags. So i have used your suggested MP3 tool to fix.
If the track numbers can be anything that is easy of course I can renumber.
Has the various artist tag been fixed? I would like to put this back at the same time.
@bridjee said:
Has the various artist tag been fixed? I would like to put this back at the same time.
There is nothing to fix. If you name your files like I said and have the embedded meta tags like shown in my links, then they will work.
… Unless you mean something different by that.
This is well commented on all over reddit and these forums. When you view Library -> All -> Artists -> Instead of showing artists on screen it shows various artists only instead of searching by artist as it picks up album artist instead of the track artist.
@bridjee said:
Instead of showing artists on screen it shows various artists only instead of searching by artist as it picks up album artist instead of the track artist.
There is nothing you can do about that, unfortunately.
Thanks for your help Otto,
So I am going setup up two libraries, one premium and one basic and point to same folder as suggested and let the matching happen and see how it goes. This may take some time.
I’ll let you know how it goes,
Hi Otto,
I have set up a basic collection and a premium library with the same folders.
I still have “fake” albums and folders as well as setting album artist to title artist. Apart from that the rest of the tags are
Here is what I observed;
Matches in both of them seem to be about the same %. (very high).
The non matches are different between the agents.
Most of the non- matches are collaborations. (multiple artist credits),
Where premium can’t find a match it replaces it with a “random” match from the collection,
Where last.fm can’t match it leaves a black box (which I sort of prefer, easy to identify and rectify)
The premium library defaults to personal media agents searches to fix match
The basic library defaults to last.fm
This makes correcting the matches a bit more time consuming changing the agent on every search to fix.
This would be great to be able to hard set the agent and only start a bulk scan to only match items without a match.
Would also be great to be able to filter on unmatched or no art to find these and manual fix easily.
I also found that using AREN to rename files and MP3Tag match tag to be consistent increased the match performance.
Just to close this off there are a couple of points that would be great if could be fixed;
Plex follow the meta tag “standard” and use artist for artist i.e. not use album artist for artist.
Then match the artist as well, as the album. This similar to what happens now for artists albums.
It would be also great if plex behaved the same when playing tracks from a compilation album as it does for an artists album. That is album cover as thumbnail and artist as background, rather then a black screen.
The impacts of not fixing the issues above are;
playlists that have items from compilation albums show various artists as the artist not the true artist.
you cannot see “by artist” across compilations.
When playing playlists there is an inconsistent experience.
There is an alternative and that is to change the album artist to the track artist instead of using various artists. If you do this however you can’t play the album then as Plex sees every track (with different artist) as a different album. Which is a bit weird.
The behaviour around compilation albums is an issue for many people, I use Plex for all my media and it is great for video, however falls shorts at a music player. I am currently defaulting back to using the samsung tv player as is more reliable and doesn’t have the issues above, however doesn’t have all the great features of Plex. So would appreciate if the Plex team could help us out and fix this issue.
to help with the issues with connections etc I also moved my libraries into separate folders and mapped separate libraries to each folder. would I need to do the dance for all of them or are they completely different?
