There has been sporadic but consistent concerns raised since at least 2010 regarding PLEX’s music (especially classical!) and ID3 tag limitations and while I remain hopeful for some resolution my optimism has dimmed. While many of the challenges I noted back in 2013 have been addressed and some really great features I had never considered have been added other issues stubbornly remain. Consider Van Cliburn: World’s Favorite Piano Music. Each track should be tagged at the composer, composition and movement level. I can do this in Yate and Media Monkey so I don’t need PLEX to do anything more than allow me to view, sort and filter by these tags. For a really unusual album consider Hush by Yo Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin. Each track has 2 artists and a composer.
Basically, I see no reason for PLEX to reinvent the wheel. I can do all my ID3 editing in 3rd party software but need PLEX to:
- Realize that a file has been modified. It was previously fairly good at this but more recently I find I need to remove the album from PLEX, edit it on my computer (rather than on the server), and reload the file. Rescanning library files is no longer adequate for PLEX to detect ID3 changes.
- Map PLEX ID3 fields to Yate/MM ID3 fields. Allowing me to edit displayed field name would be nice.
- Display the ID3 fields during playback (with scrolling if necessary).
Also, I can download a track but I can’t download an album. Is this an oversight or a copyright issue?
