I think I said the opposite.
Yesterday I created a brand new Plex music library on a different PC, using an exact copy of my music library/folders. The result was less than perfect.
The good news is that Plex used my ID3v2.3 tags (when it came to album release dates), rather than inserting its own, based upon album re-issue dates. I was able to verify that all my ID3v2.3 tags were complete, and all albums appeared with proper poster art, etc. Plex music also seemed to do a much better job at matching obscure artists, as compared with my initial Plex build, and the Premium library builds.
The bad news is that Plex music only found 2308 artists (out of 2340). A metadata refresh did not change that outcome. Additionally, Plex music placed the poster art of “Yonder Mountain String Band” randomly (and quite extensively) throughout the library - rather than the correct poster art for the corresponding artist.
The screenshot below shows the newly-built library (on different PC). Note that it shows a count of 2308 artists - and the random insertion of “Yonder Mountain String Band” for certain artists.
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This screenshot shows my current/original library (on my server). Note the artist count correctly reported as 2339.
While I have some degree of faith that I probably would not ‘lose’ any artists (or album release dates), if I were to perform an “Upgrade to Plex Music” on my server, I will certainly lose artist pictures that I placed within Plex for obscure/unknown artists. If Plex had the provision to LOCK artwork, perhaps that would preserve my artwork, during the upgrade (something that would be worth mentioning to the product development team).
Could you ascertain that the Plex development team shares your concern that my library will fall into disrepair more and more in the coming years? Is it imperative that I upgrade to Plex Music?
I’m pretty sure this is due to a hidden thumbnail picture, located high up in the folder hierarchy of your music collection. See How do I remove an incorrect tv show poster - #3 by OttoKerner
Most likely this is due to artists records which are actually a collaboration between artists and are already existent as single entities in the library.
Plex cannot handle these at the moment, so collaboration “artists” like Elton John & Leon Russel are assimilated into the former single artist Elton John.
I only know that the code for the last.fm support is no longer maintained and won’t be getting updates and bugfixes.
In general the Python-based scanners and agents are going to be replaced by native C++ code.
This process started with the new music support and is now in a public preview phase for the Movies media type. New Plex Media Server movie scanner and agent preview
I’ve been able to do some interesting comparisons between the two separate libraries. Placing the two libraries side-by-side, I can see which artists have been affected with the new Plex Music build. I concur that the “missing” artists seem to be with certain collaborations. To go through every artist, will be a time intensive process, but I should be able to eventually determine which artists got combined. It is strange how Plex music leaves some of them alone, yet will combine others. Going forward, I will probably consolidate most collaborations into one singular “Album Artist”, while leaving the “Artist” field as the full collaborative name (in the ID3v2.3 tags). I had been doing that with certain artists already. For example, listing all Frank Zappa’s releases (solo and with Mothers of Invention) under “Frank Zappa”, or “Bob Seger” to include his solo works and those with The Bob Seger Band, etc.
As far as the weird poster art or fanart of Yonder Mountain String Band appearing throughout the library, I have no answer. There aren’t ANY extraneous files within my library folder(s), hidden or otherwise. No jpg’s or thumbs.db. I keep the music folder limited to mp3 and m4a files only. It is fair to note that a similar thing happened when I tried building a Plex library on a NAS back in 2016. The only way I could get it to build properly was to only add a few hundred albums at a time. Plex seemed to choke at doing an initial scan on my full library (and it was much smaller 4 years ago). Needless to say, I was forced to abandon the NAS approach, as it was too slow anyway. At least I can edit the artists who have the silly YMSB art to see if Plex correctly matched the artist or not. When it did match, the correct art was available as a Poster option, making it quick to fix. Naturally, I’ve been making notes of artists Plex couldn’t find, so I can plan ahead for the upgrade on my main server.
Looks like I have quite a bit of work to do before I upgrade my basic library to Plex Music. With ample preparation, I should be able to avoid a lot of work fixing things after-the-fact. Perhaps this is the price I pay for being such an early adopter of Plex (2012), or by having a rather extensive and diverse library. Who knows… since I will be upgrading (vs doing a clean build), maybe some of my existing Plex metadata will remain during the conversion. Time will tell.
Otto, thank you again for all your help! Usually my friends call me for help with Plex, but the multi-CD track scrambling issue was certainly out of my league. Most importantly, I understand the need to migrate my library to Plex Music, to avoid problems down the road.
Sorry for writing a book!
Cheers,
Jim
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I have done the same thing. All albums where the master was involved are tagged with Frank Zappa as Album Artist.
Because to me it doesn’t make the slightest sense to separate them out into “Mothers” and “Solo”.
It was all his right from the beginning.
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