Hi,
I’ve just got my plex server working - using for music at moment.
I’m letting last fm put the meta data on… which seems to be taking forever - ive got about 100K songs - its taking days - is this normal?
Also - do the genre tags get put on my last.fm? - if so am I able to manual alter them? there’s too many for me… I want to delete lots of them from the tracks, and maybe add some of my own - leaving me with just a few all encompassing genres - to make things easier for me. Is this possible?
If so - will the changes I make get lost next time the library updates?
Thanks in advance for any help
I can’t answer whether taking days to scan 100k songs is normal. I have around 5500 tracks, and it takes a few minutes. It all depends on your server power, internet connection, etc.
You can edit genres at the album level in Plex, and override what Last.FM does. You’ll be doing them one album at a time, however. I agree, Last.FM has far too many genres to be useful.
In theory, changes you make should not get overwritten by an update. There is a lock icon on each field. When the lock is orange, whatever is in the field should not be overwritten during updates. I believe there have been some bugs reported in this area, but I don’t know the status of them.
Personally, I found Last.FM (and Gracenote, in Premium libraries) to be so fraught with errors in their metadata, that I eventually gave up on both of them, and put in the effort to get my embedded ID3 tags whipped into shape, and configured Plex to use embedded tags, rather than data from the online services. With 100k tracks, that would be a huge effort for you if they aren’t already in partially good shape, but you may find it worth the effort as well.
By the way, when you edit genres and other tags in Plex, you are not editing the embedded tags in your media files. Edits within Plex are stored in Plex’s own database. Plex made a conscious decision to leave original files alone. If you decide to edit your embedded ID3 tags, you’ll want to find a good editing tool, such as MP3Tag, EasyTag, or PuddleTag.
@beckfield Thanks for such a good - and speedy response!
reading what you have said, and having a think about things - I think I might be best placed to get my embedded ID3 tags in order… it’s going to be a big job - because I’m not sure they are in great shape – but long term probably the better solution.
I will look into those editing tools - any recommendation on which is best? I presume I can specify genres as I see fit with these tools?
Before I start on that task, can I just check what you have said - I can get plex to ignore last.fm and use my embedded tags?
Many Thanks for your help
I wasn’t entirely accurate when I said you’d be editing genres on your albums one at a time. You can edit several at a time, as long as you’re making the same change in all selected items.
You can select all your “Rock” albums, for example, click the Edit icon, and add “Rock” to the Genre tag. Repeat for Jazz, Celtic, Scottish Pirate Metal, etc. 
