Server Version#: 1.24.2.4973
Player Version#: Windows 1.33.0.2444-a220eae4/Web Version 4.64.3
When rating music in an existing library changing the ratings of one song/track, the ratings of unrelated tracks are also changed
Setup/what happens/how to reproduce
Create multiple music files as an album with the following metadata:
(Reproduction steps uses itunes created m4a+aac-le music files)
Same Album name/artist name
Set the disk entries to 1/3, 2/3, 3/3
Set track entries to 1/10 … 10/10 for each disk for total 30 entries (30 was reproduction setup, works with less or more)
Place in plex library and rescan so it shows up, plex should show disk 1 1…10, disk 2 1…10 and disk 3 1…10
Open up library in plex client
Navigate to album
Set the track rating of disk 3, tracks 1…10
Disk 1 and disk 2 tracks 1…10 should still have no/default rating
Navigate away from album, and navigate back, disks 1/2 tracks 1…10 now have the ratings applied on disk 3
Note: tracks do not have embedded ratings, they should be blank for the above
What was expected:
Disks 1/2 tracks should still have no rating at step 8 above.
Details:
It looks like for multi-disk albums, any time the rating is modified on disk X, track Y, it is modifying track Y on all disks on that album, instead of only track Y on disk X.
Same issue happens when using both web client and windows client
Issue is not triggered on single disk albums, they keep the correct ratings even after modifying the ratings of different albums.
Issue does not seem to affect different multi disk albums, so charging disk 2 track 1 on album a does not affect disk 2 track 1 on album b. It seems to only affect tracks on the same multi disk album.
Doing the plex library dance does not change outcome.
Library details:
Scanner: Plex Music Scanner
Agent: Personal Media Artists
Album sorting: by name
Sonic analysis: off
Prefer local metadata: on
Store track progress: on
Include related content: on
Artist bios: on
Album reviews: off
Popular tracks: off
concerts: on
Genres: embedded tags
Album art: local files only
Agents → albums → personal media albums order:
Local media assets: on
Personal media albums: on
This means you are still using the old scanner and agent. These will not be receiving any updates and bugfixes. In fact they haven’t already for a very long time.
While the current scanner does not have the issue of changing the ratings of the same track number across multiple disks, it still changes the ratings of multiple tracks when trying to change it for a single track.
Only the difference is I can’t see a pattern because it’s a single linked pair in 2 different albums with different track numbers. It’s linking the ratings of Album A track 2 and Album B track 12.
I can’t be more specific because I can confirm a single linked pair, there were more that I had attributed to mis-clicks. I’m still investigating, but I have to go over all my albums with a fine-toothed comb in comparison now.
I spun up a new windows vm and installed and updated plex and am still experiencing music track rating issues with a fresh install/fresh libraries.
What I did:
Created a new hyper-v vm
Installed a fresh install of windows
Created windows accounts/initial setup
Installed Edge and Plex Server
Did initial plex setup, and did not create any libraries
Updated Plex server for windows to 1.24.2.4973/latest at moment
Mapped previous music files to vm (same library as above)
Created library with following settings:
Type: Music
Language: English
Scanner: Plex Music
Agent: Plex Music
Import from Itunes : Unchecked
Visibility: Exclude from home screen
Album Sorting: By Name
Sonic Analysis: Unchecked
Prefer local metadat: Checked
Store Track Progress: Unchecked
Included related content: Unchecked
Artist Bios: Unchecked
Album Reviews: Unchecked
Popular Tracks: Unchecked
Concerts: Unchecked
Genres: Embedded Tags
Album Art: Local Files only
Let it scan
Rate Album A, track 2 (same affected track as previous post)
Same rating shows up on Album B, track 13 even though I did not rate it
To reiterate: the only thing this has in common with the previous setup is the music files themselves. They were created in itunes (common fields filled, no track rating on files)
This instance does not know (or even have access to) the itunes library metadata file, so it only can see the actual tracks.
When I tried it on my primary plex server, I ended up with dozens of pairs where changing the rating on one track changes it on the other too.
I upgraded my test server to Version 1.24.3.5033 and it had the following patch notes of relevance:
(Music) In some cases, tracks from separate discs could get their ratings linked (#13038)
Unfortunately it does not fix my issue.
Here are the steps I preformed:
(the test server has no activity to minimize noise introduced from using it)
Upgraded Version 1.24.3.5033
Changed rating on Album A
Album B is still linked
Did plex dance on album A (removed linked track, cleared trash, cleaned bundles, replaced track)
Album A is still linked (has a rating even though it should have been added as a new track in library and thus unrated)
I am currently working around it by setting linked tracks to 0 star/unrated and using the following mood tags on tracks: “Broken Rating” and “////” (as needed) while leaving the ratings alone on unbroken files.
The linkages SEEM to be related to the album names, pairs seem to be more likely to form if the albums have words common in their album names. (but this is absolute)
I have been working my albums alphabetically when setting ratings, and it’s usually no more then 2 albums away (I sort them by album → album name → alphabetically).
I upgraded my production instance and it has the same issue.
I also noticed the following in the past when testing it: The current scanner seems to bleed over ratings across libraries in the same instance.
Here is my setup on production:
“Music”: “Plex Music Scanner” (no longer being modified due to lack of support for music scanner
“Music2”: “Plex Music” (current library for production, affected by bugs above in this thread)
“Music3”: “Plex Music” (initial clean library to reproduce results on production, also affected)
Test instance:
“Music”: “Plex Music” (clean library for testing, also affected)
When I created Music on test, it was completely clean as it did not share a database. All instances and libraries use the same underlying folders.
Additionally, when I created Music3 to do my initial testing, a minority of tracks (about 0.1%) had ratings immediately after creation, and they (seemed) matched the ratings in Music2, so it looks like the scanner is not cleanly separating identical tracks across libraries.
Unfortunately, I have to say: If itunes offered a similar client to plexamp (routable/over internet library sharing with download syncing on android) I would simply stop pursuing this as in it’s current state, it requires so much additional work to be an itunes replacement I can’t see the effort making sense to migrate for someone in my situation (a fully curated/properly labeled itunes library with hundreds of hours of albums)
Could this also be a deduplication issue? I also saw a line on incorrect deduplication in the same patch notes.
Note the following issue tracks I have:
1)「Battle in the Dungeon #2 - original -」 from FINAL FANTASY XI - Naoshi Mizuta - DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY Original Soundtrack
2)「Boss Battle - original -」 from FINAL FANTASY XII - Hitoshi Sakimoto - DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY Original Soundtrack
3) Battle In the Dungeon #2 - Naoshi Mizuta - FINAL FANTASY XI (Original Soundtrack)
4) Boss Battle - Hitoshi Sakimoto - Final Fantasy XII (Original Soundtrack)
5) Boss Battle - Hitoshi Sakimoto - STORMBLOOD: FINAL FANTASY XIV (Original Soundtrack)
Are all among the list of tracks that are incorrectly linking, but tracks 1,3 and 2,4 are thematically linked, track 5 has no direct relation besides the fact it has the same name and artist
Note: this observation was made on 1.24.3.5033 plex windows server
/