Music - Wrong cover art in Player & library (Plex shows cover which doesn't fit to folder / IDTag picture)

[beckersbest]

Hi guys,

since a few weeks I moved from KODI to Plex (pass as used for TV also), so far a pretty good decision, very handy program. However in my daily use I’ve an issue with the music library and the cover pic which shows up in the Plex player:

I organize my music in folders and I’m very careful in maintaining the right ID information in all mp3 files. As an example:
x:\Music\Sampler\Technobase.FM\Technobase.FM Vol. 1
x:\Music\Sampler\Technobase.FM\Technobase.FM Vol. 2 …
x:\Music\Sampler\Technobase.FM\Technobase.FM Vol. 21

Within each folder beside all the mp3 files I’ve a folder.jpg, moreover each single mp3-file has the cover.jpg in its IDtag (Windows Explorer view):

The IDtag information looks as follows (MP3tag view):

The issue starts when putting “Technobase.FM” into Album interpret. This tag information helps me to filter more easy and get faster to what I’m looking for. No matter what folder.jpg or IDtag cover information I use, Plex - somehow for me by accident - takes a different picture:

Btw as you can see in the above iPhone screenshot the Vol. 03 / 04 / 05 show different cover arts. Nevertheless structually it has exactly the same information as Vol 01 / 02 / … / 06 … and Vol. 04 shows a different cover but also not the right one …

And that is my problem. When removing the Album Interpret information everything works fine again. Nevertheless my expectation is that the right cover pic should show up depending on album title / folder.jpg / ID-Tag cover information. At least the Album Interpret should not be the information taken into account. Am I wrong with my expectation or do I make any other mistake? And I would really like to keep the Album interpret information as it is if possible…

Thanks for help,
Thorsten

[OttoKerner]

1. Hunt for hidden image files in your album folders.
   How do I remove an incorrect tv show poster - #3 by OttoKerner

2. Make sure there are no image files in the folders higher up in the folder hierarchy
   Hunt for hidden image files in there as well.

3. Since you have your meta tags and file names in perfect order, rearrange the metadata agents as shown in this post:
   Best way to add album, singles & ep to a Premium Music Library - #8 by OttoKerner
   Do also check ‘use embedded metatags’ in the properties of you rmusic library.

4. Perform the Plex Dance with all albums of this ‘artist’.
   (with music, you can omit step 4 of the dance)

Here are some more tips regarding music in Plex

multi-disc albums

Organizing Music - Soundtracks and Various Artists (Hit collections)

I am going to do a bit of copy/paste of posts I did in the Plex Pass only forums: ===== 1.“Various Artists” is the usual choice for ‘Sampler’ style albums. There may be exceptions for ‘collaboration’ albums which are credited to all participating artists on the album cover. 2. use the title of the single as it appears on the cover. You can augment that information with (CDM) or (single) or (Maxi) or (EP) as it fits. If it is a genuine release, Gracenote should have no problem identifying it. …

possible ‘side car’ files for music

Music Album artwork

Little tip: If you have lots of bootlegs etc. you want to bring your embedded metatags into order first. Then you need to have the Local Media Assets agent in top position. I wouldn’t trust last.fm to fetch correct info about bootlegs and special editions of albums, like those recent expanded re-releases of Zappa albums. Put as much info into the meta tags as possible. Put a cover art inside the album folder and you should be good. Makes sure to set at least ‘AlbumArtist’ and ‘AlbumTitle’ to…

soundtracks and ‘various artists’

Plex Folder View - folder.jpg not recognized?

@naddel81 said: album view does not work properly, because if you have various artists on an album (most cases) then it shows them as “various artists” instead of the album name. folder view would be the best option and I guess it has been asked before. is it too hard to implement? You can put what you like into the AlbumArtist meta tag, if you don’t like it to appear under VA. You could use the game title or the game developer or the game ‘universe’ (if you have several albums which fit in…

[beckersbest]

@OttoKerner: Thanks a lot for your quick feedback, appreciated.

However I just went through all mentioned tipps and notes. I followed all of them like

1. naming and folder structure
2. definitely no hidden files
3. agents correctly prioritized
4. absolutely clean mp3 tags (all done with mp3tag and double checked)

The only thing I do differently is using the album artist tag to “group” my sampler collections like

• Technobase.FM
• Club Sounds
• Dream Dance
• …

And as mentioned in the “Organizing Music - Soundtracks and Various Artits (Hit collections)” thread it seems to me that Plex treats “Various Artists” albums pretty different and that seems to cause the issue.

I tested different settings creating a new music library just including my technobase.fm albums. And depending on which sampler is added to the database at the end this is the cover art shows up for all other samplers. Restarting this process opening one sampler and pressing “Refresh Metadata” will cause all other albums having “Technobase.FM” as Album artist will be switched to this cover art:

So for my understanding it’s definitely the treatment of “Various artists” versus a specific album artist name like “Technobase.FM”.

Any ideas how to solve this issue without changing the album artist entry to “various artists”?

Thanks again
Thorsten

[OttoKerner]

@beckersbest

The only thing I do differently is using the album artist tag to “group” my sampler collections like

That’s OK.

@beckersbest

And as mentioned in the “Organizing Music - Soundtracks and Various Artits (Hit collections)” thread it seems to me that Plex treats “Various Artists” albums pretty different and that seems to cause the issue.

No, I don’t think so.

@beckersbest

definitely no hidden files

Have you also looked for ‘system’ files? These are not shown, even when you have activated the display of hidden files in Windows explorer.
It needs another check box to see those system files.

@beckersbest

So for my understanding it’s definitely the treatment of “Various artists” versus a specific album artist name like “Technobase.FM”.

No, I certainly don’t think so.
Part of the issue may be that the “Artist” Technobase has no photo.
Do you have a picture which could represent the “artist” Technobase?
Add it as artist-poster.jpg into your folder Technobase.FM.

Another possible issue:
Do you use a separate music library for your samplers? I wouldn’t think so.
If you only pointed Plex to ‘x:\Music’, then ‘Sampler’ would be the ‘artist’ folder.
I see 2 ways to solve that.
1 leave out the additional subfolder Sampler:

x:\Music\
   Artist Name \
      Album Title \
         1. Artist - Title.mp3
         2. Artist - Title.mp3
         3. Artist - Title.mp3
         ...
   Technobase.FM \    <-- treat it as a regular artist
      Album Title \
         1. Artist - Title.mp3
         2. Artist - Title.mp3
         3. Artist - Title.mp3
         ...

This solution won’t collect all sampler albums in a common top folder anymore. The sampler “artists” will appear amongst your regular artist folders.

2 Here is a second way. This one requires you to move all samplers outside of x:\Music so Music and Samplers can be added independently to your music library.

x:\Music\
   Artist Name \
      Album Title \
         1. Artist - Title.mp3
         2. Artist - Title.mp3
         3. Artist - Title.mp3
         ...
x:\Samplers\ <-- Add this folder additionally to your Plex music library
   Technobase.FM \    
      Album Title \
         1. Artist - Title.mp3
         2. Artist - Title.mp3
         3. Artist - Title.mp3
         ...

[beckersbest]

Hi OttoKerner,

sorry for the very late feedback, all good now, after using the premium functions (I initially created the libraries without having the plex pass) it works like a flaw. One thing I figured out is that it sometimes get stuck in connection with the running and syncing OneDrive client due to file access issues. However that’s not Plex’ fault … so getting closer to the lifetime pass

Thx again Thorsten