I just now noticed that my Music library is a Basic music library and thus not using the Plex Premium Music agent. When I looked online to see why I might consider changing it, the relevant support pages basically give me a sales pitch. But when it comes down to it, the scanners included in both the Last.fm and Plex Premium Music agents don’t show much difference (in fact, the Last.fm agent has additional scanners that Premium does not; and both include LyricFind even though the Premium Music overview suggests otherwise.) Well, there is a Mix option in Premium, so… umm… yay?
So can someone explain to me, without giving a sales pitch for a Plex Pass (because I have one), why the Plex Premium Music agent is different or better?
Honestly, personally I prefer the basic music library despite being a subscriber.
Some differences:
With premium you get backgrounds from fanart.tv without hassle, with basic you need to get a (free) api key from that website and input it yourself in the agent to get such images.
The genres are different. Basic use last.fm genres. Premium use from gracenote. The difference here is that last fm genres are user based and can be a bit silly at times but still accurate, but gracenotes are much less descriptive. Personally I vastly prefer lastfm here.
Premium has a fingerprint technique, which can correct your metadata a bit in case it’s messy. On the flip side, scans take longer with this and if you already have correct metadata it’s pretty useless.
Premium has Plex mix which automatically creates a playlist for you from a track. For me that worked awful, but perhaps for other music it’s better.
Premium has album reviews which is pretty cool IMO.
And as you have already found out, lyrics are on both and works the same. Pictures of artists works the same (with the noted exception of fanart.tv). Biographies are a bit hit and miss on both premium and basic tbh. Btw, the basic library does not have more agents. It just seems that way since they are included under the premium music agent.
Hope this helps. Personally I like to browse/listen by genre and that’s why I chose basic.
I was under the impression that last.fm was defunct. Am I wrong?
“The ability to access the large catalogue of music stored on the site was later removed entirely, replaced by links to Youtube and Spotify where available.”
REF: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last.fm
@sGarver said:
I was under the impression that last.fm was defunct. Am I wrong?
“The ability to access the large catalogue of music stored on the site was later removed entirely, replaced by links to Youtube and Spotify where available.”
REF: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last.fm
That refers to actually playing music on the lastfm website. Like playing a track from an artist right on the website itself. Lastfm still operates as a social music site and still has artist pictures, artist biographies, a similar artists system and user voted genres. All of which Plex still uses.
In my opinion, the artist pictures in a Premium library are usually of a higher quality. (though you may only notice this if you’re using a Plex client in full screen (tv) screen mode).
You can combine a Premium library with your own embedded meta tags, which is the mode I prefer.
Apart from that, @beckfield has summed it up pretty well, above.
So basically the answer is “there’s not much of an appreciable difference.” Getting an API key from fanart.tvis super easy (I just did it); and I don’t use Moods or Mixes.
@OttoKerner said:
You can combine a Premium library with your own embedded meta tags, which is the mode I prefer.
Embedded tags work with Basic libraries too, don’t they?
@beckfield said:
Embedded tags work with Basic libraries too, don’t they?
Sure, but without the better artist pics, the album reviews and the in-depth artist bios. Bio stuff from last.fm is sometimes cringe-inducing:
“There are 3 artists named -----------.” period. end of text. :-/
“Licensed under a ■■■.■■■.■■■ public domain license bla bla”
@beckfield said:
Embedded tags work with Basic libraries too, don’t they?
Sure, but without the better artist pics, the album reviews and the in-depth artist bios. Bio stuff from last.fm is sometimes cringe-inducing:
“There are 3 artists named -----------.” period. end of text. :-/
“Licensed under a ..**** public domain license bla bla”
Okay. It just sounded to me like you were saying embedded tags only work with Premium libraries. That’s all I was questioning.
I am currently noticing that Last.fm is a complete waste of time as it never finds any of my music, even though it is clearly on their site. For example, I have the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Deluxe Edition) by The Beatles and even though it is on their site named exactly as I have it - I even copied and pasted it to be sure - it still will not match on Plex Cloud and I have to manually tweak everything. I should also say that I have meticulously and accurately completed all of the metadata but alas, still no match :’(
