Music doesn't show up with Plex Music agent - but does with Plex Music Scanner

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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1

Server Version#: 1.25.5.5492

I am experiencing a confusing issue.

When i create a music library (using default settings for scanner and agent), it will scan all my files and look like it is scanning successfully. Then after a bit of time, it will complete. No music will show up.

If i then delete the library and recreate, but choose the Plex Music Scanner instead of Plex Music - the same thing will happen, but all my music will show up.

  • The music is 100% tagged with musicbrainz.
  • named according to the plex docs (only difference is inclusion of year like [1999]).
  • Files are 100% flac.
  • The files are shared from a NAS via NFS.
  • File permissions should be fine (same perms as movies, etc)
  • Box is beefy and is dedicated to plex
  • If i use the old agent/scanner - then album art, etc doesn’t show up consistently.
  • if i use the new agent/scanner - than nothing shows up :wink:

I have troubleshooted the file permissions, the file names, etc. Spent a bunch of time in the forums searching comparable issues (can’t find a comp).

There are some logs with errors:

Feb 01, 2022 13:21:46.310 [0x7f653e99cb38] DEBUG - Directory had 23 files, database had 0 files, can't skip.
Feb 01, 2022 13:21:46.363 [0x7f653e2b7b38] ERROR - Error parsing content.
Feb 01, 2022 13:21:46.363 [0x7f653e2b7b38] ERROR - Error parsing XML: Error parsing file.
Feb 01, 2022 13:21:46.363 [0x7f653e2b7b38] ERROR - Music Scanner: Error reading match results.

which seem to happen only when using new scanner.

any help would be awesome.

2

Is Plex configured to prefer local metadata? There are some important tips in this How-To:

[HowTo] Configure Plex to use embedded metadata (music)

3

I have tried both ways (actually 4 ways):

  • Plex Music / Without local metadata: No music shows up
  • Plex Music / With local metadata: No music shows up
  • Plex Music Scanner (old) / With local metadata: Music shows up / Metadata is fine
  • Plex Music Scanner (old) / Without local metadata: Music shows up / Metadata is fine

Would prefer to use Plex Music.

Thanks for the reply! I had forgot to mention that i had tried that.

4

I’d try with a temporary subset of your whole collection.
Restrict it to a few artists only and give the scanner (plenty!) extra time after the spinner has stopped.
The scanning process works completely different when using Plex Music and can take a whole lot more time.

In fact, I recommend you to set both
“Analyze audio tracks for loudness”
and
“Analyze audio tracks for sonic features”
to either “disabled” or “as a scheduled task” before starting the scan.

You should definitely stick with the recommended folder organization in the above linked article. (Which applies to Sampler style albums as well! Don’t use a different folder schema for these.)

5

Trying this now.

6

Doesn’t seem to have worked. Nothing is showing up.

I tried it with a super small number of artists (12ish) and it didn’t work. and then tried it with 1 artist directory and it also didn’t work.

i have no idea. I suppose i will stay with the old scanner and agent (which consistently works).

Let me know if yall have other ideas?

7

Do you have perhaps some entries related to plex in your hosts file or use a DNS resolver with a “filter” feature (PiHole et al.)?

8

I do use a DNS filter service (adguard). I can disable that and try again.

I originally thought that it may be blocking requests, but nothing is coming from that server. Let me force it to use 8.8.8.8 and see what happens.

9

Turns out i was bypassing adguard already

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# For more information, see netplan(5).
network:
  version: 2
  renderer: networkd
  ethernets:
    eno1:
      dhcp4: yes
      nameservers:
             addresses: [8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4]

I may route it through adguard to at least see what requests are being made. Maybe it is blocked another way.

10

Couldn’t find anything unusual. Requests to plex.tv as you would imagine.

Same result when bypassing adguard as using adguard.

I am going to light up a new box and install plex there - see if a new install sees my music. if it does, maybe it is an nvidia code path thing? that is the only difference between my server i can imagine (also that doesn’t really make sense - but here we are lol).

FWIW here is my docker-compose

version: '2'
services:
  plex-nvidia:
    runtime: nvidia
    container_name: plex-nvidia
    image: plexinc/pms-docker:plexpass
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - TZ=America/Chicago
      - PLEX_CLAIM=
      - NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all
      - NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=compute,video,utility
      - VERSION=latest
    network_mode: host
    volumes:
      - /home/harper/data/plex/config:/config
      - /home/harper/data/plex/transcode:/transcode
      - /home/harper/data/plex/tmp:/tmp
      - /home/harper/data/plex/deb:/deb
      - /home/harper/data/plex/dvr:/dvr
      - /media:/media
    devices:
     - /dev/dri:/dev/dri

pretty standard

11

i now have no idea.

  • I created a new plex instance on a different server.
  • I copied a two artists into a local directory to that server (not via a nas, etc).
  • I downloaded a creative commons artist from archive.org that is mp3 (not flac).
  • the file naming follows the recommended plex filenaming
  • everything is local
  • I created two music libraries: 1) using the new scanner/agent, 2) using the old scanner/agent

The new scanner has no artists, etc showing up. The old scanner has the 3 artists and their music showing up.

On the new scanner library, if i browse by folder, it shows the artist folders and album folders - but doesn’t show any files.

On the old scanner library, everything shows up as you would expect.

Next step is to tar all this up and try it outside my network.

12

Jumping on the bandwagon and helping to bump this issue. I was about to create a post regarding this exact issue, but then I found this post which is basically the same problem I’m having.

2 months ago I built a new server and moved over my existing PMS install. Everything tested and confirmed working. After installing the new version and confirming everything was working as expected, I noticed the “Upgrade library” notice next to the Music library. So I read up and realized it looks like they’re moving away from Last.FM, so I clicked the link…it switched me over to Plex Music. Since then adding any new music does not match any metadata or even pull from local metadata. My entire library is FLAC and my ID3 tags are meticulous. I tested with one album (The Cult - “Love”) and it would not pull the artist art or bio, or even the cover for the album (despite being in the tag itself). Note: I’ve always had “Prefer local metadata” checked since I meticiulously maintain tags for all my music…it’s all consistent. I checked the MusicBrainz website and ensured it had info for this Cult album, which it did. After trying with other music and getting the same results, I finally said “screw it” and switched it back to Plex Music Scanner/Last.FM. Everything popped in immediately.

I’m working fine now due to switching back to Plex Music Scanner/Last.FM, but I’m again receiving the orange notice at the top right barking at me about upgrading my library. I’m assuming this means Plex is moving away from Last.FM and at some point I’m going to get screwed with adding new music. So it would be beneficial to get this resolved.

Let me know if any logs would be helpful, and if so which specific log you’d like me to pull.

13

I was never able to resolve this. But we are in the same boat.

What kind of device are you running PMS on?

14

Windows Server 2019 Standard
PMS version # 1.25.9.5721

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