Meta data for Plex App 2 lines

[AllenSR]

Server Version#: current on Synology NAS
Player Version#: Currwnt IOS

I need some documentation on how Plex Server indexes files so that when read by IOS Plex App the tracks have two lines:

1. track title
2. track artist which may be different from AlbumArtist. Per Plex defined behavior this line is empty when the “tags” match the artist folder the track is on or something like that.

My library was created from DBPowerAmp FLAC and Tidal FLAC purchases. I have a few tracks that have the 2) line filled in with the “featuring” or “artist” kn my server. I am trying to figure how I need to change the meta data to see this behavior on the albums that are important to have it. I may write a Python script to update the library.

From what I have observed: a track will have a second line when Meta “ALBUMARTIST” tag is different from “Artist” tag or possibly the name of the Artist in the parent folder to my album or something like that.

I have some M4a files that work exactly correctly in Plex. Have a few FLAC track files that also seem to work. I am just looking for documentation on the rules Plex Server uses to index these items.

Any ideas?

[AllenSR]

Thank you! Which tag ends up underneath the album title – Example “A treasury of hymns Vol 1” and which tag ends up below the first track name?

This album is working correctly. All of the artists match except for the first one.

I just want to verify that I can use Meta Data like this and it will work. I have seen posts that imply that somehow the Artist and Album folder names get added to the algorithm. Is that bogus?

Allen

[TeknoJunky]

the reason track 1 is displayed differently, is due to the track artist being different than the album artist;

album artist > ralph carmichael AND the london symphony
track artist > ralph carmichael & the london symphony

unfortunately, plex will not display the track artist unless it differs from the album artist.

I don’t like, others don’t like it, but that is currently how it is.

[AllenSR]

Thanks. When properly done you can have a different “ARTIST” for each song. TechnoJunky identified what Plex does when the two are different. Between the two of you it seems like if I fix one bad ALBUMARTIST tase this album will fix itself.

In this case here is the ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST tags for an album I bought from Tidal. Below,: TITLE, ALBUM, ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST are all correct except for one tag as highlighted (hopefully). The error in this purchased album is caused because Tidal changed both ALBUMARTIST and ARTIST. As a result Plex moved this to a Various Artists folder and didn’t identify the one song (track 8) that should have “Tiffany Coburn feat. Voctave” in the second line similar to what happened with the Ralph Charmichael graphic. Tomorrow I will try editing that one bad ALBUMARTIST tag and see what happens. It is interesting that Tidal displays this a tad different from the meta. See graphic hopefully at the end.

IMHO – I wish there was a Plex sponsored doc that states how this library scan works along with suggestions.

TITLE=Near to the Heart of God
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn

TITLE=How Great Thou Art
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn feat. Voctave
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn feat. Voctave

TITLE=Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn

TITLE=Jesus
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn

TITLE=That’s What Love Can Do
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn

TITLE=Blessed Assurance
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn

TITLE=The Way of Love
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn

TITLE=Easter Song (Hear the Bells Ringing)
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn

TITLE=Not in My Strength
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn

[AllenSR]

Yes that is why it is there.

unfortunately, plex will not display the track artist unless it differs from the album artist

.Agreed but the goal is to figure out how to use Plex as-is and change the tags so this works as designed and friendly. The good news – it should work if I get the tags set correctly.

I wish Plex didn’t create new discs if the files are all in one folder albeit there is probably a really good reason Plex does this.

Between the two of you this may be coming together.

[TeknoJunky]

since the last plex music upgrade, plex music became a bit more inflexible in how you must have your files organized and tagged.

plex really doesn’t want to use your tags at all, it wants to provide the metadata itself so it can manage it on its own.

for some people this is great, they don’t have to worry much about their tags or whatever.

for others, who spend the time and energy to curate their own tags and organize their music their own way, plex kind of gets in the way.

at the heart of it, plex is leveraging the ‘beets’ program and musicbrainz metadata.

unfortunately there are still systemic issues and limitations to the music, like lack of support for a lot of advanced tags, no support for multiple artists (these get lumped into various artists), no support for customized album artists, and as you have seen above, plex intentionally removes TRACK ARTIST data whenever it is the same as the album artist.

as trumpy already posted above, for best compatibility you need to organize the files how plex wants, instead of how you want.

you can choose to either let plex pull and manage its own metadata, or make limited use of your local tags/metadata, you can control these options in the ‘advanced settings’ of your music library.

keep scrolling to see other options too

---

@AllenSR

TITLE=How Great Thou Art
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn feat. Voctave
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn feat. Voctave

this is not correct, the album artist should be tiffany coburn alone, with the track artist featuring voctave

TITLE=How Great Thou Art
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn feat. Voctave
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn

[AllenSR]

Precisely. Between you and Terumpy81 I have a solution. Your last post is exactly what I saw. Before telling you how I fixed it and the bad tag from Tidal, I want to thank you all for getting me in the correct context.

First off, this problem was caused by Tidal mis-tagging the Voctave track. From my post:

TITLE=Near to the Heart of God
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn

TITLE=How Great Thou Art
ARTIST=Tiffany Coburn feat. Voctave
ALBUM=Near to the Heart: Cherished Hymns & Songs of Inspiration
ALBUMARTIST=Tiffany Coburn feat. Voctave

Plex goes absolutely crazy if you don’t follow its rules. Whereas that is totally unfortunate, my goal was to find the Plex rules and adopt them. 99% of my current library worked fine so I didn’t want to change the entire server to local meta-data. I also appreciate the fact one can overwrite each record in the GUI.

Notice the difference in tags between the two songs. The issue: Tidal should have labeled ALBUMARTIST “Tiffany Coburn” for all of the tracks in the album. Unfortunately Tidal didn’t didn’t do that for How Great Thou Art. This caused the Album to now be listed under “Various Artists.”

The fix is simple – fix the ALBUMARTIST mistake in “How Great Thou Art.” Unfortunately not quite that simple, albeit it should be.

The issue that should be resolved by Plex.

• When I changed the tag the album was now correct. Unfortunately this should have moved the Album to a Tiffany Coburn artist and corrected the tracks. Unfortunately it didn’t do that. I totally clobbered all track data for the album because the SQL database in the PLEX folder was now lost.

The solution

1. Stop Plex Server
2. Delete the entire album from the server
3. Restart server and rescan library. Wait for it to complete
4. Add the album back to the server with the correct Meta tag in the one son
5. Restart the server and rescan library.

Problem now fixed. So one needs to fix the PlexApp on IOS. I think this pretty much fixes itself but I have found restarting the app and doing a music rescan will fix it.

See image that is now correct and largely matches Tidal.

Notice the corrected Track 8 listing.

Request
Can we please ask Plex to look at this and see what they can do to make this easier

1. Document how the tags should be done.
2. Share how users can overwrite them in the GUI if they don’t like it
3. Re-think the Various Artists concept and use the ARTIST in the second line by default.
4. Give the users a compatibility option to make it work as-is.
5. Make certain you don’t blow up your partners like DBPowerAmp that also use “Various Artists”

Rationalle, Numerous places like Time Life produce Collections. In this case “Time Life” might be preferred but I can make the case for “Various Artists.”

Many popular and classical artists will have soloists on the second line. Users want to know who is singing the solo.

Thanks for considering this.

[AllenSR]

TechnoJunky, Can I respectfully disagree with your statement as I proved in my last post. Plex Server handles multiple artists, in a folder, correctly with either M4A or FLAC as long as one follows the Plex Server requirements of only one ALBUMARTIST in a folder.

[Plexmedia server has] no support for multiple artists (these get lumped into various artists)

The reason for “Various Artists” is when there are multiple ALBUMARTIST tags in the folder not multiple ARTIST tags. I agree with this decision totally. Simply put, all ALBUMARTIST tags in a folder must be the same and “match” the Artist folder name. I do not know if it actually compares ALBUMARTIST with the folder name but it might.

I disagree with the fact you cannot change ALBUMARTIST tag in one track post scan without creating a mess due to a Plex bug.. That said, Plex is doing a great job making decisions that merges stuff from many producers i.e. Tidal and DBPowerAmp are only two producers. Ideally though, since Tidal is one of the Plex Server partners I would think Plex would want to handle their stuff a tad better.

In my case, I want to keep the CD, as released by the producer, in one piece without a mess. I am not trying to merge multiple unrelated songs into a new “album.” IMHO, that should also be Plex’s goal. Most users shouldn’t want to spend time re-tagging CDs and online purchases. I completely agree with the Plex decision to simply display the ARTIST tag without modification when it doesn’t match ALBUMARTIST.

Simple request: Plex could easily give users (Desktop/IOS/Android) the ability to scan a local directory and tell you what it will do with it. This same utility program could overwrite ALBUMARTIST or ARTIST for the user and tell you what it will do with that. I believe that would solve a myriad of Plex bugs i.e. i.e. changing tags after release can cause a real mess.

Note: I like the “prefer local metadata” but only if that is done on an album-by-album basis since 98% of my server is good and I don’t want to break the entire Plex database.

My above mentioned utility program could also let you know what changes would happen if you changed the Prefer Local Meta Data flag but I recommend making this a lower priority since it would involve a lot more work by Plex. If Plex gave the the technical-guru a REST/JSON API that worked on a directory the technical-guru could loop through the entire server to format the output however they wanted to help with decisions. I doubt Plex will do this unless they saw a benefit to using REST/JSON APIs for a lot of the implementation. The public facing REST/JSON APIs should be documented with OpenAPI (formerly Swagger) or equivalent for C+ implementations.